Category Scholarly writing

Honestly, what is it about writers of scholarly books that makes 33.4 percent of them* think they’re above reading instructions—never mind following them—when they receive an edited manuscript or page proofs? Don’t they ask their students to follow directions on…

In response to my invitation to send questions, Albert in Indiana asked about the relative merits of endnotes and footnotes in books. Mr. Meyer prefers footnotes, which allow him to “converse with readers,” over endnotes that “require leafing backward and forward through the pages.” In general I agree—but there are other considerations.

Since it’s fiction, we expect to take liberties with the facts. But how much liberty is too much? At what point does stretching the facts become a disservice to history?

Today, in the last of a series of posts about quoting, I tackle ellipsis—that is, the omission of words, phrases, or longer passages from quotations. The best scholarly writers take care when using ellipsis. First, they use it with restraint…

Part 1 of my advice on quoting covered practices widely accepted in scholarly writing. Also well accepted, but perhaps not so well understood, is that it is permissible to make certain changes in quoted text. The suggestion of tinkering with…

Academics love to quote—as evidence, as embellishment, as filler. Snippets and long blocks. Quotations within quotations. It’s a pity that so many do it so poorly. Here is part 1 of some advice from a copyeditor experienced in tidying up…

Having a number of deadlines last week, I resorted to my emergency ploy of watching more television. As always, it was revelatory. This time I was struck by screenwriters’ never-ending resort to the ancient and lame “Look over there!” strategy…

Kurt Schick’s recent article about what he perceives as overattention to citation formats in the teaching of undergraduates drew passionate replies on every side of the issue (along with the usual number not really having much to do with the issue).

In my line of work, I hear a lot about the annoyances of typing on a computer. What many writers and editors don’t seem to understand is that computers do as they’re told but would be happy (so to speak) to do otherwise. We can tell them what to do! (Read more.)