It’s a tiny mark that spawns immense confusion. The beleaguered apostrophe has been in the spotlight since December, following the announcement by John Richards, founder of the Apostrophe Protection Society, that after 18 years of defending the mark, he was…
Twenty-five years ago, when West Coast Editorial Associates was born, I was barely a West Coaster and wasn’t yet an editor. Before moving to Victoria from Toronto in July 1992, I wrote articles for national magazines and reviewed screenplays for…
As editors, we regularly make style sheets for our clients, documenting the decisions we’ve made about spelling, capitalization, and so on that aren’t covered in the larger style guide we’ve been directed to use. Sometimes clients actually ask us to…
T.S. Eliot wrote that April is the cruellest month. To my mind, January on the West Coast runs a close second. Even though we’re past the winter solstice, the hours of darkness still exceed the hours of light, and the…
Last night, it being Halloween—or perhaps Hallowe’en—I spent a few minutes thinking about apostrophes again. My blog writing schedule seems to be governed by dates of note that may or may not take apostrophes (see my April 1 posting on…
Posting a blog entry today, I am, of course, tempted to write something farcical, outrageous, or dare I say, even foolish, it being April 1. But humour can be a dangerous thing when shared with readers unknown. Some so-called jokes…