At the beginning of plain language workshops for workplace writers, I like to show a photo of an outdoor water feature located near a busy retail corner in Vancouver. In particular, I want people to see the sign on the…
Plain language week—October 11–15—is approaching and it’s time to celebrate. In the past, festivities have included public demonstrations, conferences, and art and music exhibitions of plain language. Sadly, there is no special feast or street party celebrating plain language this…
We’re excited to announce that partner Rowena Rae and her sister, Elspeth, will be presenting at Editors British Columbia’s monthly meeting on Wednesday, April 21.
Congratulations to our partner Merrie-Ellen Wilcox on the launch of her new book, Nature Out of Balance: How Invasive Species Are Changing the Planet. Merrie-Ellen’s third book, and her second in the Orca Footprints series, looks at how invasive species—humans…
Writing informational prose, training others how to write and edit, and working with other people’s words is a great way to make a living, as most writers and editors will agree. But for some of us, like our recently “retired”…
Our warm congratulations go to Legal Aid BC on their recent receipt of a Communicator Award of Excellence for the booklet Keeping Aboriginal Kids Safe: Your Family’s Rights, published in 2019. Judged and curated by the New York–based Academy of…
As editors and word enthusiasts, we pay close attention to new entries in the various dictionaries we use to do our work. But in these weird and worrying days, it’s hard to be enthusiastic about the new terms that not…
Who doesn’t find a few words stubbornly hard to spell? When I encounter one of my bugbears, I scribble down multiple versions of it, and the correct one usually jumps out at me. For example, is it “accomodate,” “acommodate,” or…
The Canadian Children’s Book Centre announced the winners of seven awards for children’s literature at a gala event in Toronto last night. Our congratulations to all the winners, including Heather Smith, who won the TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award for…
While doing substantive edits of several business books this year, I found myself repeating the same thing over and over again to authors: “This section could use more of a storytelling style.” These books were about different business subjects, but…