vocabulary

British English for American writers

This entry was posted in Writing and tagged international spelling vocabulary on by

Ghostwriters have to write in a voice different from their normal one, and sometimes even in a different dialect. When writing for a Canadian, British, or Australian site, you want to look like a native writer. It’s tricky to get it really right.

Each nation’s treatment of English is different. British, Australian, and New Zealand English are fairly close to one another (in spelling, not pronunciation!). Canadians use a version that’s somewhere between American and British English. I’ll focus mostly on the American and British versions here, for the sake of brevity.
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The right word 4

This entry was posted in Techniques Writing and tagged usage vocabulary on by

Of all the crimes against good writing, the worst is using the wrong word. A grammatical error looks sloppy, but as long as it doesn’t change the meaning of the sentence, people will get what you mean. Use the wrong word, though, and you fail to convey what you’re trying to say. That amounts to failing as a writer.

Usage errors fall into several categories. This isn’t an exhaustive list, but it includes the types of errors that annoy me the most.
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