The Expert Editor editorial team oversees the writing, editing, and fact-checking of this blog. Made up of the company's professional editors and writers, the team applies the same standards to editorial articles that it brings to client manuscripts, theses, and business documents: accurate sourcing, clear language, and review before publication. Articles credited to the editorial team have been produced collaboratively or edited to these standards; individually bylined authors are listed on our Masthead. For how we work, see our Editorial Standards.
Based on a common picture of dictionary editors as gatekeepers, they sit in judgment on which new words are legitimate enough to let through the door. The actual process runs the other way. A word doesn't get approved and then start appearing in print — it has to appear, repeatedly, ...Read More
A common assumption treats simple sentences as a sign of simple thinking, and long, elaborate ones as evidence of a sharper mind behind them. The research on how readers actually judge writing points the other way, and the tools built to measure readability were never designed to reward simplicity ...Read More
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 finds six errors on the first page: a doubled "the," a wrong homophone, a sentence missing its verb. Nothing about the writer's care or competence ...Read More
A reader opens a long article on their phone, gets three paragraphs in, and starts thumbing down the screen in short, fast strokes — eyes catching a bolded phrase here, a number there, landing properly only when something looks like a conclusion. Ask them five minutes later what ...Read More
You finish a good book, close it with the pleasant sense that you have understood it, and a month later you can recall the cover, a general mood, and almost nothing else. This is the ordinary experience of reading, and it is not a sign of a poor ...Read More
An Australian writer sits down to write for an international audience and immediately hits a decision most people never consciously make: which English? The manuscripts we edit are full of the evidence that this decision is usually made by accident — organise in one paragraph and organize in ...Read More