Most style guides have a rigid approach about how to define acronyms. However, if you want the best possible experience for the reader, you need to be flexible. This article explains how.

I don’t know what I hate more: using AI to write, or people saying not to use em dashes because they appear in AI written copy.

Less is often more – especially when it comes to writing.

Oh, commas. They should be easy to use – after all, their purpose is to reflect how we speak – and yet everywhere I look they’re being horribly abused.

Sometimes people get cranky when you use a noun as a verb, and I can see why. For example, instead of writing: We will make a recommendation about who to hire.

When you see one mistake, you’ll usually find others nearby. I always tell people this in my writing and sub-editing workshops, and yet this observation applies to far more than just proofreading.

As with speech, your writing needs to flow smoothly and logically. One paragraph needs to lead to another, so the reader can follow your chain of thought.

I once knew an editor who refused to hire someone purely because he didn’t like their use of the serial comma – a punctuation mark so insidious, contentious and divisive that it even goes under several aliases (it's also known as the series, Harvard or, more commonly, the Oxford comma).