Last week I discussed commas and how to properly use them for pauses versus parentheticals. This week I want to elaborate a bit more on the parentheticals. Here’s my parenthetical example from last week: “His mother, Kathleen, bakes the best cakes.” The commas work here because he has only one mother. This can be applied

A common mistake I see people make in their writing is leaving out the second comma in parenthetical/nonrestrictive/nonessential words, phrases, or clauses. I’m referring to that extra info that could be removed from a sentence without changing its meaning, which is often up to the writer to determine. Here’s an example: “His mother, Kathleen, bakes

I recently spent some time updating my website’s portfolio page. If anyone wants to see a (mostly) comprehensive list of books I’ve worked on, just click on the Portfolio tab at the top of this website. There are some missing because some publishers would be breaking NDAs by allowing me to publicly state that I

I haven’t been shy about the fact that 2024 was the best year of my professional career as an editor. But freelancers are always looking toward the next thing. We’re always hungry. I’ve already got three manuscripts hard scheduled for early next year, and several soft ones that I’m waiting for confirmation on. That being

Last December I made a post about all the books I read for fun throughout the year. The total count was eight, and I said something to the extent of “I hope to top that next year.” That didn’t end up happening. In fact, I barely managed to exceed half of that number, ending up

You know how we often use hyphens in multiple-word descriptions? I actually just used one in that last sentence. Many writers use a hyphen even if the description follows the noun it’s describing, though the Chicago Manual of Style tells us this is usually unnecessary even when such compounds are hyphenated in Merriam-Webster. Here’s an