“One morning, I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas, I’ll never know.” This famous, funny quote by Groucho Marx neatly sums up the problem of misplaced modifiers. When you’re adding a little bit of detail to a sentence, a modifier that describes something you’re talking about, it’s all too easy to confuse the reader when you put the modifier in the wrong place. Ideally, you want to put the modifier as close as possible to the word or phrase it’s modifying. Read more [...]

There are plenty of words in the English language that sound the same but are spelled very differently, like “you’re” and “your” or “there” and “their.” But even trickier can be the ones that are almost spelled the same and almost sound the same — with some words, just one little vowel can make a big difference in meaning. Let’s take a look at a few examples that trip a lot of freelance writers up: Affect/Effect To “affect” something is to have an impact on Read more [...]

As the days turn darker and October draws to a close, it’s the time of year when many people find themselves in the mood for a scary story. Over my years of editing, I’ve seen quite a few things that made me want to scream, though usually from frustration, not fear. Nonetheless, in honor of this hair-raising holiday, I’ve decided to take a look at ways that writers have made me tremble. If you want to turn your editor from a helpful Dr. Jekyll into a maniacal Mr. Hyde, try these ideas: Don’t Read more [...]