Bought and brought

Another source of confusion for many writers. Here's the lowdown: bought is the past participle of the verb to buy. Brought is the past participle of the verb to bring.

Consider this sentence: Jamie brought some shoes from the shop. Some authors may use sentence this in the mistaken belief that they are describing Jamie buying shoes. Actually, the sentence tells us that Jamie was bringing shoes, not buying.

Remember, bring and buy leads to brought and bought.

Lack of clarity

A problem that I frequently address in my editing work is unclear writing. For example, consider the following: Steve and Matt slipped out by the back door. He shut the door quietly. Can you spot the question this example raises? Who is 'he' in the second sentence - Steve or Matt?

Often, when you write you get caught up in the world you're depicting, and you can forget that the reader isn't inside your head, seeing exactly what you see. You know exactly who shut the door, and your mind assumes the reader does too.

The simplest remedy for such lack of clarity is to read your writing back to yourself slowly, and when you come to pronouns (e.g. he, she, it, they), think carefully whether you need to clarify who exactly the pronoun refers to.

Whilst or while? Amongst or among?

There's no grammatical difference; it's simply a matter of choice. Whilst and amongst are fancy, formal styling; while and among are simple, plain English. So if you want to strike a friendly, modern tone, drop the st.

Organise, organise, organise

When you write anything - from a letter right through to a 90,000-word book - your utmost priority needs to be how you organise the content. Forget about pretty and accurate language for now - that can come later. You need to meticulously plan your structure before you even begin writing, and give a great deal of thought to how the reader will most easily access your information.

Unfortunately, many writers get the process topsy-turvy. If you're writing a stream of consciousness piece or highly creative poem then fine, let the muse take over and lead you wherever she likes. But for any other writing (and that's 99.9 per cent of your writing) you need to plan what you say before you say it. If you don't, your reader gives up on your beautifully worded piece after page one, because the material is chaotic and confusing.

Readers like organised, logical, coherent structures. They like to read your info in manageable chunks (not two-page paragraphs) and to know exactly where they are and where the text is moving to.

A writer who spends time creating a detailed plan for her writing and mapping out the structure of the piece is much more likely to create good writing. I am always happier to review a writer's initial plan and iron out any problems at that early stage than wade through the final piece and try to work out what the writer's haphazard structure should become.

If you want the best out of your writing, do the groundwork and you'll find everything else falls into place from there. If you want the best out of your writing and you don't do the groundwork, you may find yourself in the frustrating situation of having to go back and rewrite much of your beloved text.

Cliches, colloquialisms and corniness in professional writing

In a nutshell, for professional writing that's top-notch, does the job and gets it spot on, steer clear of cliches, avoid colloquialism like the plague, and give corny language a miss because putting pen to paper with these is just not cricket (unless, of course, you're doing it for effect like this).

These three Cs are markers of unimaginative writing that do not belong in professional writing. They make readers feel nauseous and uninspired.

Here are some phrases I've been mercilessly cutting from some professional text:
~ they're sitting ducks
~ you have to dot the Is and cross the Ts
~ needs must
~ at the end of the day
~ when all's said and done
~ it's all Russian to me
~ chipping away
~ progress was up and down
~ like a reg flag to a bull
~ split hairs
~ full steam ahead

The basics of good structuring

All written material - from letter to novel, website to marketing literature - needs an organised, logical, clear structure. Without this, the reader becomes lost and frustrated, and is likely to abandon any attempt at reading early on.

In my work as a copy editor, I come across chaotic, wandering text pretty often, and it's my job to sort it out - sometimes reordering material, sometimes cutting bits entirely. This is not an easy job, which is why I do my best to remind authors of the importance of good structure in their writing, and the absolute necessity of planning all writing.

Flashback to your school days when your teacher told you things like 'you need a beginning, a middle and an end' and 'plan your essay using spider diagrams'. Most of us grow up and discard such valuable teachings, which is a real shame as your teachers were spot on and trying to impress on you the very fundamentals of good writing.

Here are the ten tips I give authors to help them create well-structured writing:
1. Your material needs a clear beginning, middle and end.
2. Opening and closing paragraphs have the most impact, so ensure they act as a neat frame for your piece.
3. You must plan your writing before you begin - ideally on paper, using a mind map or spider diagram.
4. Each paragraph should focus on one topic only.
5. Use headings and sections to help create a logical structure
6. Material must flow in a logical order - plan what goes where before diving in.
7. If it's applicable to the style of writing, consider using tables, figures and numbered/bulleted lists to present information in a structured way.
8. A little trick to test your structure - work your way through your nicely laid out piece giving each paragraph a heading, e.g. Intro, First argument, First argument deconstructed, Second argument, Quote, Second argument disproved, Conclusion. This will help you find any sections that you can't clearly label (which means they are confused and without a central point) and any areas where the order is chaotic, and help you check the overall direction of the piece. Once you've completed this and are happy with the structure, simply remove the headings.
9. When you've finished writing, go through the material with your plan beside you and check that all the material is relevant to the topic - if it isn't, be merciless and cut, cut, cut.
10. Ask someone else - a friend, colleague or copy editor - to read through the finished material. Ask them to be honest and tell you whether the points are clear and easy to grasp, and whether they are lost/frustrated/bored in any sections.

Proofreading systematically

Proofreading is all about being methodical, systematic and organised. There's no way your eye can look for twenty different things at once, which is why a proofreader breaks down the proofreading into stages. Here's an example of a proofreading list for the proofs of a novel:

1. Check all page numbers.
2. Check all running heads.
3. Check chapter breaks and heads.
4. Check prelims.
5. Check endlims.
6. Scan whole book looking for inconsistency in alignment, spacing and font size.
7. Carry out first proofread (read whole text) looking closely at each word.
8. Make any global changes discovered through the first proofread - e.g. changing all instances of proof-reading to proofreading (removing hyphens).
9. Carry out final proofread to catch any mistakes left.

As you can see, proofreading is a lengthy, involved process and to maximise efficiency and accuracy, a proofreader must have a logical approach.

Company - it or they?

Confusion over this is something I come across frequently. Usually, a company (e.g. Perfectly Write) is singular (see how I used is there and not are?). So 'Perfectly Write is a company providing proofreading services and is based in Kent' is correct; 'Perfectly Write' are a company that also offer copy-editing services and are pretty good at copywriting too' is wrong (well, the grammar is, hopefully the sense is not!).

Often, I look at material in which the company switches from singular to plural pretty frequently and the whole document smacks of inconsistency. Like this: Perfectly Write offer a range of services to publishers. They provide proofreading and copy-editing, and the company has experience in publishing. Perfectly Write are dedicated to ensuring consistency in text - its ethos is to make things 'perfectly write'. I would correct this to: Perfectly Write offers a range of services to publishers. It provides proofreading and copy-editing, and the company has experience in publishing. Perfectly Write is dedicated to ensuring consistency in text - its ethos is to make things 'perfectly write'.

Business blogs

Blogs are big for business. Firstly, they improve SEO (search engine optimisation) for a website through the constant addition of new, relevant, keyword-rich copy. Secondly, they are a great way to let customers/clients know a bit more about you and your business.

Whichever style of blog you choose to go with - formal, professional, educative, news-packed, article-driven, diary-style, chatty - if it's a business blog, you need to pay attention to the standard of writing. Your potential and current clients will be judging you on each post you make, so if those posts are poorly written and riddled with typos and grammatical mistakes, you're going to do more harm than good.

If you're serious about writing a regular blog for your company, and you're prepared to admit you aren't a strong, accurate writer, you may want to think about brushing up your writing and proofreading skills. Or hiring a proofreader, copy-editor or copywriter for your blogging, which is becoming more common.

Like they say, If a job's worth doing, it's worth doing properly.

Semi-colons and colons

Many people get muddled over the usage of colons (:) and semi-colons (;).

In simple terms, a colon is an introducer. It points forward and introduces:

• a list (as above)
• an extended quotation or sometimes direct speech. Mr Jones says: “I’m delighted by this promotion. . .”
• an explanation or amplification of the preceding part of the sentence. There was only one thing to do: run.

The last use is the one most people struggle with. Basically, a colon is a rather dramatic punctuation mark: it makes the reader pause and theatrically announces something to come which will add new information to the part of the sentence before the colon. Usually, the part of the sentence before the colon is a complete sentence in itself, and the colon could be replaced with words like namely, that is, for example, for instance, because and therefore.

The semi-colon is a little like a comma but with special powers. It has two main jobs:

• It can join two separate sentences that are closely related. It was his first job as a salesman; before this, he had been a teacher.
• It can help divide up long and complicated lists that may otherwise be confusing. I ordered a prawn cocktail, not with salad; a steak, chips and peas; an ice cream sundae without nuts; and a pitcher of beer.

Correct usage of both colons and semi-colons is important for good, accurate writing. These days, some writers view them as old-fashioned and abandon them altogether, littering the page with dashes and comma splices instead. If you want to be taken seriously in any form of communication, I advise sticking with the rules of English grammar.

Lose and loose

These two words are commonly muddled , and often writers have no idea that they are using them incorrectly.

Lose means to misplace something. Loose is the opposite of tight.

So the following are not correct:
Dropping my handbag made me loose my place in the queue.
I can't afford to loose this job.
The Hawaiian shirt was loud, lose and lousy.

How much easier it would be if they were spelled looze and loose, but that's the English language for you.

Common mistakes in writing

They rear their ugly heads daily as I proofread and edit, worming their way into document after document as if sticking a tongue out at me goading, Catch me if you can. And I do catch them, day after day - mistakes I find so often they jump out at me from the page as if 3D.

Here's my top five:

1. Comma splices: It's amazing how many writers join two sentences together with a comma, and rather alarming how prevalent this has become in published books (take a look at this weekend's HP finale).
2. Missing/incorrect apostrophes: Did you notice the apostrophe in weekend's above? Many seem to feel the apostrophe is either optional, or something to plonk anywhere in the vicinity of the word in question.
3. Random capitals: I spend an impressive amount of my day decapitalising words.
4. Inconsistent styling: It's thirteen miles to London, but three lines later it's 15 days until Christmas.
5. Spellchecked nonsense: Just because that word is spelled correctly, doesn't mean it's the right word. This morning I found the following while proofreading a serious article on a church: The chap is a plaice for queer time (The chapel is a place for quiet time).

Random capitals - the Most Common misTake

I can't even begin to tell you how many times each day I hit 'shift + F3' in Word to decapitalise a word/phrase. Many, many writers out there are trigger happy on that shift key as they type. In my years as a proofreader, capitalisation is the issue I come up against more frequently as I work with authors' texts - yes, far more so than spelling and just that bit more than punctuation. Today I've been marking up proofs, and I'd estimate 75 per cent of my changes are to decapitalise words - my hand is cramped from scribbling the BS 5261 proofreading symbol for 'make lower case'.

Perhaps it's that feeling of power as a writer that does it, to make Some Word Seem Very Important. The downside to a penchant for caps lock, however, is that overuse of upper case is off-putting to a reader, and very often grammatically incorrect.

My advice to the writers I work with is simple: Please do use a capital letter for the first word in a sentence and the name of your hometown, but if you're straying into the realms of 'capitals because I feel like it rather than because they are actually required', take a step back and resist. Your writing will be much stronger as a result, and my F3 key may just survive a few more years of proofreading.

If you need to brush up on the rules, dip into a grammar guide. I recommend Oxford guides, and also English Grammar For Dummies (I edited it, so can guarantee it's a great oracle for things like this).

Leave the complex writing to Dickens...

Good writing is clear, concise and simple. Good writing is not about how many fancy, long words you can ram in a 70-word sentence. It's not about feeling smug that your reader will need a dictionary to fathom your meaning. It's definitely not about confusing, boring or exhausting the reader, or trying to appear clever.

When I write, I try to keep it simple. I know that my readers will be more impressed by copy that's accessible and easy to understand than pompous writing. Just because I know a longer, weightier word for something, doesn't mean I have to use it. I trust that people know my worth as a writer and my intelligence without shoving a regurgitated dictionary down their throats.

Sometimes, it's appropriate to use formal language, for example my terms and conditions are worded formally. But formal writing can still be simple and clear, something which too many people forget.

I was once approached by a student who wanted me to rewrite his theses to make it 'more wordy'. His well-written plain English work was losing him marks from his university tutor because it wasn't 'complex enough'. I was rather glad I couldn't take on the project (it would constitute plagiarism) as to deliberately complicate text seems ridiculous to me.

If you want to win a literary award for a beautifully-written but fairly incomprehensible novel, pick up that dictionary. If you want copy that sells or informs, don't be afraid to keep it simple.

What's your style based on?

One of the most important jobs for a proofreader and copy-editor is to ensure text is consistent. So if on page one of my website I’m a proofreader, copy-editor and copywriter, on page two I can’t be a proof-reader, copyeditor and copy writer (note the spacing and hyphenation).

That’s why it’s essential to stick to one style of writing.

When I started proofreading and editing, I bought myself some lovely huge reference books – now well thumbed and somewhat tatty. I chose Oxford because I particularly like their style, and they publish a wealth of guides answering just about every language question under the sun. They’ve been about a very long time, they know their stuff and their style is popular in printed material.

So when I’m writing or editing, I base my style on Oxford. I have a style sheet I’ve built up over the years with notes on grammar, punctuation and spelling, and I add to this pretty much daily.

There’s only one element of Oxford style I don’t apply – the use of z rather than s as in realise and realize. My feeling is that British English isn’t quite ready for this development – I’ve tried it out once or twice and invariably the response from my client is, ‘But it’s American!’

Although my personal taste is for Oxford style, I also edit within other styles for clients when they ask. One of my clients prefers using Chambers, which is fine – as long as your style is consistent, it’s not important which dictionary you work from.

Invest in a big dictionary – when you’re not using it to help with your writing, it will come in very useful as a step for changing lightbulbs (so that’s why mine are so tatty!).

Keep it simple

Years ago, I took a course in film studies. On day one, the lecturer said something that has stuck with me all these years: ‘People don’t take film studies seriously as an academic field. That’s why we make it as complicated as possible.’

When writing for an audience, simplicity and clarity are key. The only person you impress by mystifying your copy is a code-breaker.

Beating those blind spots

Here's a conversation I commonly have with clients following proofreading or copy-editing their text:

Client: Do you know, I've read this document so many times and I've never noticed that rogue apostrophe/random capital/missing word.
Me: Of course - when you're so close to something, it's often very hard to see every tiny mistake. Your eye has scanned the page that many times, it gets a little bored and starts skipping detail.

That, in a nutshell, is why proofreaders are so important. You may think I’ve read this document so many times, it must be perfect, but unfortunately reading it plenty of times is no guarantee you haven’t got some blind spots.

On my website (www.perfectlywrite.co.uk), you’ll find help on improving your proofreading, as well as other areas of your writing. My top tip? Proofread until you’re sure that it’s 100 per cent right, then ask someone else to proofread it as well. You may be surprised what they find!