I’m a professional writer because I love to write. This passion began for me when my handwriting was still impossible to decipher. Before keeping a formal journal, it was all about writing long letters home while I was at sleep away camp. I’d keep travel journals too, and at some point had an assortment of notebooks each with a few pages of journaling among my doodles and games of tic-tac-toe and CMASH (children of the 80-90’s you know what I’m talking about.)

My first serious journal was a...

I love pointing out the existence of this part of speech, though I’m not going to lie and say for years I confused an oxymoron with a redundancy. Those phrases really kill me too.

An oxymoron is an actual figure of speech, where two contradictory terms, based on their definitions, are put together. A big one that’s everywhere today is #humblebrag. There’s nothing humble about talking yourself up.

People who use oxymorons should know they’re not making any sense, so why does nobody say...

As has become my own little tradition, at the start of each new year, I take a look back at all the books I read in the previous year and highlight my favorites. This is a fun way for me to think about what I enjoyed reading over the last 12 months as well as where I want to take my reading list going forward.

In 2023, I read 45 books. My average book length was 363 pages. According to my Goodreads account, I mostly liked everything I read throughout the year although there were definitely...

There are a lot of terms for the person responsible for editing another person’s content. You can be a Copy Editor, a Proofreader, a Content Editor, a Managing Editor. Sometimes even a plain old Editor edits the copy. What gets confusing to me, when there are so many titles that encompass a few specific tasks, is what they really mean across the board.

If my definition of the term is different than yours, there’s a chance expectations won’t get met. On the flip side, this miscommunication...

Proofreading is a massive skill. You may think you’re good at it — that you can edit and proof at the same time — but let me just say that, from personal experience, this is VERY HARD. Yes, it’s ‘all caps’ hard. That’s because your eye is the ultimate auto corrector. Read fast enough and it will ‘fix’ what’s wrong in your writing before your hands have a chance to. This can lead to frustrating errors, noticed once it’s way too late.

This makes me crazy. Not because I’m a perfectionist. I...