Odd Little Morsel

I encountered a rare occurence while editing the other day: a writer misspelled hors d’oeuvre. And, to be more accurate, the writer didn’t misspell it so much as mispunctuate it. She left off the apostrophe. It’s a funny tic of the trade that I come across egregious misspellings of common words every day but a … Continue reading

2010 Bullets

On a rainy day fit for hibernation, The Writing Guide decides to wake up, stand unsteadily on its back legs, and forage once again for elements of bad writing. And if you think comparing a writing blog to a just-awoken grizzly bear constitutes bad writing, feel free to stick that in the comments section. Until … Continue reading

Monday Quickies

The preferred spelling is ambience, not ambiance. When you place it before a noun, the phrase is written multimillion-dollar (note hyphen usage). The phrase period of time can be shortened to time in every instance.