Articles

Schaefer Wordsmithing helps you with more than editing your writing; we provide articles and posts offering tips and other guidance on writing, grammar, and usage to help you improve your writing.

Below are some of our more recent articles organized by topic.

Writing

LeBron James taking a shot against the LA Lakers

The Passive Voice Is Nothing to Fear

Feb 23, 20235 min read

The passive voice is one of the most popular no-nos for good English writing. Most style guides—and writing software like Microsoft Word and Grammarly—will tell you: avoid using the passive…

Chalkboard with writing

Show, Don’t Tell

Dec 23, 20221 min read

Lower Manhattan, well after the Dutch. Photo by Seva Kruhlov on Pexels.com There are a lot of things to keep straight when you’re writing a story: characters, plot, setting, timeline,…

A trebuchet before a castle. Illustration of the weird trick for better writing

One Weird Trick for Better Writing

Dec 1, 20221 min read

Okay, I promise it’s not that weird; it’s just fun to appropriate click-bait headlines. And I won’t make you sit through a 25-minute video or scroll through pages of text…

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Grammar

strips of paper with the names of different English verb tenses written on them

The Sequence of Tenses in Reported Speech

Nov 5, 20221 min read

In every language, there is a grammatical rule that is so embedded into the language that its native speakers are barely aware of it, even as non-native students of the…

Header image for Ending a Sentence with a Preposition: strips of paper with different prepositions written on them

Ending a Sentence with a Preposition

Sep 26, 20221 min read

There’s an old joke that goes something like this: Some cowboys are mingling at the bar when an Oxford graduate walks in. “Howdy, stranger,” one cowboy says. “Where are you…

Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner as Spock and Kirk standing behind a model of the Starship Enterprise

To Boldly Split Infinitives

Sep 21, 20221 min read

Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go…

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Usage

’ (apostrophe) vs. ‘ (single quotation mark)

Minding Your aPostrophes and Quotation Marks

Dec 19, 20221 min read

In the old days of writing with a typewriter, there was no option to distinguish between an apostrophe ( ’ ) and a single quotation mark ( ‘ )—they were typed with the same…

The words black and white negatively superimposed over an alternate diagonal background of white and black

On Capitalizing “Black” and “White” When Talking about Race

Dec 13, 20221 min read

Questions of racial justice and equity have occupied—as they should—a large role in our national discourse of late. A long-overdue examination of the embedded biases and structural inequities in our…

Keyboard of manual Smith-Corona typewriter

Hyphens, En Dashes, and Em Dashes: What’s the Difference Between -, –, and —?

Oct 17, 20222 min read

Hyphens, En Dashes, and Em Dashes have been around for quite some time, but contemporary writers are not always sure how they should be used or what the difference is…

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Reflection

The words black and white negatively superimposed over an alternate diagonal background of white and black

On Capitalizing “Black” and “White” When Talking about Race

Dec 13, 20221 min read

Questions of racial justice and equity have occupied—as they should—a large role in our national discourse of late. A long-overdue examination of the embedded biases and structural inequities in our…

dictionary entries for original and originality

On Being Original

Nov 23, 20221 min read

For centuries old was better. Old meant tried-and-true, reliable, dependable. This was especially true in the ancient world. The Romans gave a pass to Jewish religious observances because they were…

Map showing the locations of American Indian tribes in the Upper Hudson River Valley

Acknowledging the Land

Nov 14, 20221 min read

With this post, I’m taking a break from our regular posts with grammar, writing, and language tips. Today, I’m reflecting on the wonderful locations where Schaefer Wordsmithing has a physical…

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