The Expert Editor’s editorial blog covers writing, editing, language, and the human side of communication — the same subjects our editors work with every day. Every article is reviewed by the editors on our masthead before publication.
Read our Editorial Standards · Meet the editors behind the work
Featured articles
How grammar and punctuation became subtle social signals
Send a text that ends with a period, and something shifts. It reads a little colder, a little more final, than the same sentence with no punctuation at…
100 editing and proofreading tips for writers
Editing and proofreading are vital for producing great writing. But where should you look? What should you change? As the most comprehensive proofreading list on the web, this…
9 books every writer should read at least once
Ask ten editors for the books that actually changed how they work and you will hear the same handful of titles over and over. Not because editors are…
The ultimate flowchart for finding your next book
Ah, summertime (in the northern hemisphere at least!). That blissfully balmy time of year where school's out, vacations are scheduled, and the beach beckons. Sunshine and family make…
George Orwell’s 6 rules for writing were too absolute. Here’s a more flexible version
George Orwell's essay Politics and the English Language, published in 1946, is a battle cry in the fight against bad English. In Orwell's eyes, written English has become…
16 easy ways to unleash your creativity (Infographic)
Only 25% of people believe they're living up to their creative potential. You may think there isn't a lot you can do about this. You're either born with…
Writing & Editing
How to write clearly and precisely: grammar, editing craft, proofreading, and thesis, essay, and academic writing guides.
The editing pass most writers skip
I ask writers to do one thing before they send me a manuscript they think is finished: read it aloud, start to finish, in…
En dash, em dash, hyphen: the three-dash problem in Australian style
Most of the manuscripts that cross my desk use one horizontal mark for three different jobs. A writer will hyphenate a compound, punctuate an…
Why writers can’t see their own typos (and editors can)
A writer reads a manuscript for the fourth time, satisfied it's clean, and sends it off. An editor opens it an hour later and…
The line-level habits editors watch for in publishable writing
Most writers who submit manuscripts for editing understand their argument. They know what they want to say. The chapters hold together, the reasoning is…
Language & Reading
Vocabulary, words, books, and reading culture: what we read and how language shapes the way we think.
How a word earns its place in the dictionary
Based on a common picture of dictionary editors as gatekeepers, they sit in judgment on which new words are legitimate enough to let through…
Plain English isn’t dumbing down: what readability actually measures
A common assumption treats simple sentences as a sign of simple thinking, and long, elaborate ones as evidence of a sharper mind behind them.…
Rereading: why the books you return to read differently
A book I taught for the better part of two decades reads like a different novel to me now than it did in my…
Why we misread: what skim-reading does to comprehension
A reader opens a long article on their phone, gets three paragraphs in, and starts thumbing down the screen in short, fast strokes —…
The Writer’s Mind
The working experience of writing: perfectionism, procrastination, imposter syndrome, and creative blocks — and how writers work through them.
What forty rejected manuscripts have in common
Somewhere across the manuscripts I've turned back to writers over the years — a rough count puts it near forty, though I stopped keeping…
Deadlines and the writing brain: why constraint helps more than time
Writers tell me some version of the same thing often enough that I've stopped being surprised by it: they do their best work with…
The second-draft slump: why revising feels harder than writing
The first draft of a chapter comes out of a writer in a rush some mornings — messy, but moving. Then the second pass…
Procrastination isn’t a discipline problem: what editors see in the drafts of chronic deadline-missers
The manuscript arrives three weeks late, and the covering email always says the same thing: "Sorry — I’ve been so busy." But editors see…