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Erin Brenner

Erin Brenner is the founder of Right Touch Editing, a customizable editing service. She has been an editing professional for over 15 years and is sought after for her expertise in language mechanics. She works on a variety of media in all levels of editing. In addition, she provides bite-sized lessons to improve your writing on her blog The Writing Resource and is the editor of Copyediting.com, which offers advice and training for those who edit copy. Follow her on Twitter at @ebrenner or on Facebook.
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Writers Talk About Writing

Do This, Then Do That: Coordinating "Then" Usage
March 25, 2015
By Erin Brenner

Recently in an online forum for editors, someone balked at then being used as a coordinating conjunction, as in: "I went to high school, then I went to college." Coordinating conjunctions, you'll recall, join two items of equal status: two words of the same parts of speech, two phrases of the same type, or two clauses.  Continue reading...
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Writers Talk About Writing

Tricky Plurals Inspire Some Grammatical Back-and-Forths
February 20, 2015
By Erin Brenner

In January, I took part in an interesting discussion on Twitter. Washington Post copyeditor Bill Walsh posted a headline: "Hole-in-the-walls: East, west, and downtown, 19 named." He asked, "Would you take your sister-in-laws to such a place?"  Continue reading...
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Writers Talk About Writing

5 Questions to Ask About a New Word
January 23, 2015
By Erin Brenner

Language allows us to communicate the ideas in our heads with other people. It is a main way we connect with the world around us. Because of that, language becomes very personal to each user. We form affinities for individual words because of what they mean to us.  Continue reading...
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Writers Talk About Writing

Ending the Tug of War over Parallelism
November 21, 2014
By Erin Brenner

Parallelism is something copyeditors obsess about and writers take little notice of. If we could meet in the middle, our sentences would be a lot happier. Parallelism is no more than matching parts of a sentence or multiple sentences grammatically. It creates balance and rhythm in the sentence and brings order and clarity to meaning.  Continue reading...
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Writers Talk About Writing

Don't Use No Double Negatives
September 8, 2014
By Erin Brenner

Double negatives are supposed to be a bad thing. Using two negatives in one clause is not only ungrammatical, it's illogical: it creates an unintended positive meaning. According to this thinking, if you say "Studying grammar rules won't do you no good," you're really saying, "Studying grammar rules will do you good."  Continue reading...
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Writers Talk About Writing

What's It Worth? A Confusing Use of the Apostrophe
July 30, 2014
By Erin Brenner

I asked fellow editors recently what usage rule they wanted to know more about or what rule they saw broken regularly. I received lots of answers (thanks, all!), including this one: "Why is worth preceded with a possessive noun or pronoun, as in two days' worth?"  Continue reading...
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Writers Talk About Writing

The Reason Why Is Because...
June 30, 2014
By Erin Brenner

Pop quiz time, readers! Which of the following sentences is correct?

The reason why they got married is they love each other.
The reason that they got married is they love each other.
The reason they got married is they love each other.
The reason why they got married is because they love each other.  Continue reading...

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