Joe McVeigh
Google has a style guide for technical writers and from what I’ve read, it’s pretty good. It’s short and sweet on the details, but that’s fine. The guide is direct and it’s not meant as a general writer’s guide. But it makes comments on the passive voice, so you can probably guess what’s...
Joe McVeigh
I recently heard from an old friend who had stumbled upon my website. He said he was shocked when he read this line from my bio: My family says that anymore at the end of the last sentence sounds wrong, but it’s all good. This line piqued his interest because he also puts anymore at the...
Joe McVeigh
But this time it’s… on purpose? What?! Yesterday, Benji Smith became the main character on Writer Twitter. It turns out that Mr. Smith has created a database of novels that he obtained through probably illegal means. Smith used this database in his Prosecraft project, which published statistics...
Joe McVeigh
Content warning: This post is about harmful language and it contains words that are used to dehumanize people. Please take caution. In April 2023, the Atlantic published a 2,500-word opinion piece complaining about language equity style guides. The attack on these guides is misleading, wrong,...
Joe McVeigh
Is this dude about to mansplain mansplaining? Hoo boy. Here we go. This is going to be a long post. I’ll go through each part of the article with my usual irreverence, but don’t be fooled. Thomas’s ideas about language are a real danger to women. So I’ll comment seriously on that as well. Let’s...