Chicago freelance editor Erin Wright shares easy-to-follow writing tips, editing advice, and document software tutorials.
Welcome to your source for easy-to-follow writing tips, editing advice, and document software tutorials for the real world.
I am a Chicagoland freelance editor with twelve years of experience copyediting and proofreading business, technical, research, and nonfiction content.Visit my Hire Me page to learn how I can make your writing shine!
This tutorial shows how to use tags in Word. Specifically, we’ll look at three ways to add tags to Word documents: 1. Add Tags through the Backstage View 2. Add Tags through Advanced Properties 3. Add Tags through Save As Then, we’ll look at how to delete tags in Word documents. The final section shows […]
When to Use Single Quotation Marks Do you follow American-English writing standards? If so, today’s post is for you because it explains two instances when you should use single quotation marks followed by two instances when you may want to use single quotation marks. Please note that single quotation marks are used more frequently in […]
You can use Microsoft Word’s Find and Replace tool to delete extra spaces all at once. Or, you can find extra spaces in Word by customizing your proofing options and then deleting them individually as you type or during a Spelling & Grammar check. These three tasks are explained in this tutorial: Customize Word’s Proofing […]
Ships and boats hold a special place in the human experience. Our ancestors marked this importance by giving thoughtful names to their watercraft just as we do today.1 In fact, we even have guidelines for how to write the names of ships and boats to set them apart from less adventurous modes of travel, like […]
By default, Track Changes in Microsoft Word inherit preset styles from the body content. However, you can change these styles to make your edits more noticeable or easier to read. For example, you can change the font and font size of comments in Word, as shown in this tutorial. This tutorial can also be used […]
As a copy editor, I frequently talk with people about the reference books they use when writing. Oftentimes, the books mentioned are outdated or insufficient. If you’re interested in updating or expanding your reference library, here are three types of books every writer should own: a style guide, a dictionary, and a grammar manual. (Yes, […]
Today’s tutorial explains how to create internal links in PDFs with Adobe Acrobat Pro DC. My last software tutorial showed how to create external links in PDFs and how to delete both external and internal links. Although the two processes are similar, the steps for creating internal links are a bit more complex. Note to […]
Suspended hyphens sound like troublemakers, don’t they? Before we accuse them of cutting class or being chronically late for work, let’s look at their less-than nefarious definition. We’ll follow up with five guidelines for how to use them in your writing (without getting into mischief). What Are Suspended Hyphens? Suspended hyphens, also called suspensive hyphens, […]
This tutorial explains how to create external links in PDFs with Adobe Acrobat Pro DC. Twenty years ago, PDFs were flat files—basically, they were the onscreen equivalent of a piece of paper. You could read them but not interact with them. Today, PDFs can be highly interactive (although, they can still be flat if necessary). […]
Do you have a minute? The following three guidelines explain when to hyphenate numbers with units of time such as hours, days, months, years, and centuries. Before we begin, here are a couple of brief words on multi-word descriptions: multi-word descriptions, such as three-hour, that come before nouns are called compound adjectives, compound modifiers, and […]
Here’s the scenario: You’ve just completed a twenty-page report with seventy-five footnotes when you realize that several of those footnotes should be endnotes. Rather than deleting those footnotes and manually creating new endnotes, follow the steps below to convert individual footnotes to endnotes in Microsoft Word. These steps can also be used to convert individual […]
The writing world is riddled with “rules” based on misunderstood guidelines. One such rule is that we should never start a sentence with a number. While this blanket ban is understandable—depending on the content, starting a sentence with a number can be confusing or disruptive for readers—doing so is generally grammatically acceptable if you follow […]
