You’re taking the plunge: you’re setting up as a freelance editor. You’re going to have your own company and you’re going to get clients and edit their text and invoice them and make a good living as a midwife of words. But the first choice you face is a big one: What are you going to name your company?

If you read the title and just said “Don’t you mean Felix Ungar?” then you know you are. The very fact that you’re reading this makes it likely that you’re a Felix. You’re probably an editor, and editors tend to be Felixes (or should that be Felices?).

There are five important things to watch for in numbered and bulleted lists. If you’re editing according to a style manual such as The Chicago Manual of Style, you’ll have good guidance for many of these things. But even if your style is entirely at your discretion, you’ll still want to think before you list.

Take our quick test on when to use a and an. Spot the errors: I was at an historic occasion, a meeting at a hotel near an university to discuss an HUD directive, when my recorder ran out of power. For want of an AA battery, my records of the meeting were lost, and it was all consigned to no more than a * in an MS.

How many slip-ups do you count? There are actually six mistakes in there. Let’s see what they are—and why!

It’s important to get a PLS right. When done well, these summaries can improve health literacy in the general public and encourage the pharmaceutical companies that sponsor clinical research to operate more transparently. These eight hacks, adapted from tips by the Plain Language Association International and The Center for Plain Language, will help you master your next PLS.

Lawyers spend a lot of time in Word, but one of the biggest challenges in finding solutions to problems is that Microsoft don’t use the same terms that lawyers use. How can you figure out what to do if you don’t know the term for it?

Drafting complex law documents can be intense work. Fortunately, Microsoft Word has a vast array of free, built-in tools that lawyers can use to make the document creation process easier.

Exploring technology options can quickly become complicated and overwhelming. Even when you focus on document creation workflows, it’s hard to appreciate the options and determine the right-size fit for your needs. To make the right choice, you must see the big picture.

Legal Training and Assessment: Programs and Resources to Supercharge Your Legal Tech Skills

When lawyers spend more time efficiently using Microsoft Word, and less time fighting it, everyone benefits. Lawyers can spend more time drafting arguments rather than drafting documents.

Today, The Chicago Manual of Style moves into proofreading software for the first time. I’m delighted to say that PerfectIt will be its platform. Whether the Manual is part of your work or the basis of your organization’s house style, The Chicago Manual of Style for PerfectIt will give you a new level of confidence in the text you deliver.

Sometimes the best way I can help people is to explain exactly what’s happening. In the case of PerfectIt Cloud, I think it’s going to surprise you. But let’s start with the big news that I know you wanted to hear. The Chicago Manual of Style for PerfectIt Has Feature Parity Across Versions.

Here are some ideas for what to do about 42 of the most hated buzzwords.

Working with a subject matter expert? Follow these six steps to prepare for SME interviews, ask better questions, and create better content.

Are your legal documents showing their age? That’s the question that the Association of Corporate Counsel asked. If you’re reading this, then you probably already know that it’s time to update your form documents and bring them into the modern era.

American Legal Style now consists of more than 125,000 corrections for legal users—that’s four times as many corrections as were available just six months ago. Here’s the story behind the improvements.

For professional editors, climbing to the top of their field and staying there is challenging. Being consistently good at your job means you will have returning clients who will, hopefully, refer others to you.

Before you write technical content, get clear on who will read it. Follow this simple process to understand your audience and tailor your writing accordingly.

The COVID-19 pandemic has shined a spotlight on the World Health Organization (WHO), an intergovernmental organization that works worldwide to promote health, keep the world safe, and serve the vulnerable. As part of their work, WHO publishes a range of documents, from international health standards, to “situation reports” describing progress in fighting a disease, to advice for the public on staying safe and healthy.

The importance of good writing in technical grant proposals is significantly underestimated. Have a thought for the grant review committees. Reviewing 40 or 50 grant applications for three or four funding opportunities is depressing enough, but when they are written by scientists, engineers and tech people with few writing skills, it can be agony. Are you surprised that grant proposal reviewers respond better to well-written proposals?