How often do you send reminders to people saying “don’t forget x”, “remember y”? There’s some suggestion that our subconscious doesn’t hear the negative “don’t”, so doesn’t retain the following information. I haven’t found research that shows this (do let me know if you find some!) but I have noticed that people respond better to … More Remember to use “remember”
Before you start to write, one of the first things you should think about is who your audience is. Who are you writing your document for? Who do you want to read it, and what are their needs? Who Ask yourself if you’re writing for professionals, or for the public. If you’re an engineer, and … More Writing for your audience
Why do some people say “an hotel” or “an historic moment”? Have you ever heard someone say this? They’re looking to book “an hotel”, or they consider an event to be “an historic moment”? (there’s an example at about 1.22 on the video in the article An ‘historic moment’ for the Green Party – James … More ‘A historic’ vs ‘an historic’
We see and use the abbreviations ie, eg, and etc in documents so often that we can forget what they really mean and what the purpose of each one is. We all know that ie means ‘that is’, eg means ‘for example’, and etc is short for ‘etcetera’, but aside from using them as a … More For example, that is, and etcetera
We’ve talked before about what a style guide is, but did you know that there are some famous ones that are used for specific purposes? The Chicago Manual of Style is a style guide for American English, and was started in 1906 by the University of Chicago Press. It’s used by a variety of publishing … More Well-known style guides, and what they’re used for
We’ve already talked about apostrophes, and how to use a possessive apostrophe, but what about where someone’s first name ends in an s – like Jules, Thomas, Chris, Ross, Iris, James, Frances, or Charles; or their last name does – like Williams, Isaacs, Roberts, Phillips, and so on. Jules, Jules’, or Jules’s? Where should the … More Using apostrophes for names ending in s
Having learned how to format a document using Word styles, you might find it useful to create your own Word templates for different styles of documents you create in your business. Why would you need a template? Having created all the styles for one document (say, a business report), you might decide you’d like to … More Creating a Word template
Is there’s a word you’re constantly mistyping, and having to go back and correct? (Perhaps you always mistype the as teh … or maybe that’s just me.) Creating an autocorrect so that Word will correct it for you automatically means you don’t have to fix them up yourself. And remember those macrons we were inserting … More Creating a Word AutoCorrect
Microsoft Word doesn’t make adding macrons to Māori words in your documents a straightforward exercise, or at least it doesn’t feel like one. There’s no key you can just type them in with, and increasingly we’re becoming aware of words that we should have been including macrons on. First of all – what’s a macron? … More Using macrons
Apostrophes are used in English to show that: there are letters missing from the word (contractions) something belongs to someone (possession or ownership). There are exceptions to how these rules apply, and I’ll talk about some of these, too. Possession The general rule is that ’s shows possession. So to say Sam’s or Betty’s shows … More Using apostrophes
Em Rule 