This is the archive of all resources, mainly posts focusing on “how to do X” or “what to do when Y” and so on.
WEX has had a few questions in the past couple of months regarding ways of acknowledging academic degrees in our writing, and we hope this posting would help clarify the rules. Capitalization: In [...]
Have you ever wondered what all the commotion was between hyphens and dashes? If you're writing for publication (esp in APA), you might have been given feedback from a reader or an editor about the [...]
Proofreading your own writing can be a difficult enterprise. You’ve read the material so many times that your eye doesn’t catch what can be glaring to an outside reader. Errors or typos are too quickly [...]
Homophones are words that sound the same but are spelled differently. For many writers, homophones are the number one reason for misspelled words. It’s not necessarily that we don’t know how to spell a certain [...]
I recently went through a box of ephemera from high school, including old essays. Each one I read started with a dictionary definition. According to Merriam-Webster, rigid (adj.) means inflexibly set in opinion, or strictly [...]
I’ve found that when working with ESL students, the most challenging thing for me has been explaining verb tenses. Now, as a bilingual person, I completely understand how confusing English is. That doesn’t mean I [...]
Richard Feynman was a Nobel Prize winning physicist who famously challenged colleagues to explain difficult concepts in simple language rather than “hide behind” the esoterica and arcane language of their fields. A popular [...]
If writing is a public act, then, your purpose as a writer is to ignite reader’s interest and understanding of what you are writing about. The “Show, Don’t Tell” strategy emphasizes the reader’s experience of [...]
Descriptive Outlines & Revising for Content and Organization Many writers rely on the organizational value of outlines to organize their thoughts in the initial stages of writing. Outlines can also provide a useful framework to [...]
Perhaps you’ve been told that your writing is wordy or that your heavy phrasing confuses your reader. Most writers face this problem of “overwriting.” However, clear sentences are integral to clarity and facilitating your [...]
Readers agree that effective writing proceeds in some sensible order with each sentence following naturally from the one before it. We generally call that “coherence” or the sense that the material is unified. When the [...]
“You need a comma here. Also, what does this sentence mean?” I know unclear comments are just a part of getting feedback, but I still do a double-take when I see them. What were you, [...]
