Even if your copy is on message and reads well, small errors can sink you.
Every month, our team — led by proofreader Sarah Muench — shares a proofreading tip or two to help you strengthen your content, one detail at a time.
Pesky Prefixes: Tips on When to Hyphenate
We're living in a fast-paced world, and we tend to jam a lot of things together. We even make up words like hangry, J-Lo and whatev. Words that begin with prefixes — take, for example, [...]
TIP: Medium vs. Media
Is media always the plural of medium? If it were only that simple. But you don't need a medium to ask the now-dead person who invented these rules. We just need to remember a [...]
TIP: Em Dash (Part 2): Em vs. En Dash
So many options. So tempting to type a hyphen, hit the space bar, type another word and see your hyphen magically turn into an en dash. No one will notice ... But an en dash [...]
TIP: Em Dash (Part 1): Spaces or no spaces?
You see it both ways so often that its inconsistency has become consistent, but it still gets under your skin. Should an em dash (—) have spaces before and after it, or should it touch [...]
TIP: A Book Is “Titled.”
"Entitled" entails a right to do something. It is not the same thing as "titled." No: I wrote a book entitled "Grammar and You." Yes: I wrote a book titled "Grammar and You." Yes: [...]
TIP: Health Care vs. Healthcare
The words "health" and "care" are used so frequently together in the English language that they are becoming joined at the hip, but according to AP Style, they require separation surgery. Health care as a [...]