Antipodes Pride’s pusillanimous, passive, pointless police press release

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The Auckland, New Zealand police and Auckland Pride, an LGBTQ support organization, were unable to come to an agreement about police marching in the Pride parade. They did, however, produce one of the most oblique, passive, and ultimately pointless media releases ever posted. This is what happens when you’re not sure what to say, but … Continued

The new owner of Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com abuses a thesaurus

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Rock Holdings, parent company of Quicken Loans, has acquired Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com. The resulting press release is a perfect example of how an idiot uses a thesaurus. I know this press release was supposed to be funny. Funny is different in a press release. I salute that. And it worked: Google News shows 7,570 articles about … Continued

An editor’s notebook: coda

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All this week, I’ve looked for lessons from the hundreds of thousands of words I’ve edited in the last few years. Here’s a little of what I’ve learned. Writing is difficult. But with enough practice and good coaching, you can get good at it. Editing is a higher level of difficulty. The editor must understand … Continued

An editor’s notebook: when repeated words are the author’s “binky”

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Which words does your author come back to again and again? As an editor, your eye and ear must detect these repetitions, but that’s not sufficient. You need to understand why the author comes back to them and suggest fixes that improve meaning, rather than just creating variety. In a business book I recently edited, the … Continued

An editor’s notebook: How to help authors who get carried away

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One big job of an editor is to provide a perspective from outside the confines of the writer’s head. Writers burble out all sorts of prose that made sense to them when they wrote it. The editor points out what must change for that prose to make sense to everyone else. Today’s examples come from … Continued

An editor’s notebook: When it comes to metaphors, don’t be a slut

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Editors deal in meaning. Metaphors are great for meaning — until they get out of hand. What do you tell an author whose relationship with metaphors has become promiscuous? Today’s example, like yesterday’s, comes from a book I was editing. The author had great ideas and an engaging writing style, but occasionally got carried away. … Continued

An editor’s notebook: Analyzing and untangling sentences

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One of the editor’s primary jobs is to make sentences say what they mean. When the prose gets in the way of the ideas, fix the prose. A focus on the subjects and verbs in sentences can help make prose clearer and reduce the cognitive load on the reader. These examples come from a book … Continued

The danger of metrics: how the Bill James comments dehumanize baseball players

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Bill James, the inventor of the baseball analytical method sabermetrics, controversially tweeted that baseball players could easily be replaced with no effect on the game. This prompted a swift and outraged reaction from players. It also raises a larger point — should businesses focus primarily on metrics, or on people? James was in a Twitter … Continued