Thomas Mann observed that "a writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people". That's because professional writers know they need to eliminate obstacles to understanding. The more such obstacles they eliminate, the easier it is for readers to focus on the thoughts being conveyed.

Lists, bullets and numbers help to make text stand out (especially when they're used sparingly). But if there are errors in the text, those errors will stand out too. It doesn't matter that details like capitalization or punctuation inconsistencies seem small. The truth is that if they're in a bulleted/numbered list, they'll leap out at readers.

Throughout history, authors have relied on their editors to be their sounding boards, to represent the eye and ear of the reader, and to bring a viewpoint that can't arise spontaneously in the author's head. Do you think that has changed because words are written electronically?

We counted up the number of mistakes when using abbreviations in documents published online, and the results make depressing reading. So here are five things you can check so that your documents make the best impression and you make sure you get proposals, reports and articles accepted.

Since spelling and grammar checkers don't test consistency, documents can seem to be error-free and yet still contain lots of mistakes. Consistency mistakes are notoriously difficult for authors to spot, but they jump out at readers and cast doubt on the author's ability.

It happens to everyone. You think you've finished your work, so you send a document to the printers or email it to your client. One problem: you actually weren't quite done and major embarrassment is on the way. If you're working in MS Word, here's a checklist of five things you should review before you press print

It's not as poetic as Shakespeare's eternal question, but the choice of whether to capitalize the verb 'to be' in titles continues to be pondered through the years. For most people, difficulties with capitalization in titles started at around 9 years old. When your teacher was asked if you're supposed to capitalize all the words in a title, he/she probably said to "capitalize the first and last words and then capitalize all the big words."

When the software on your computer runs an update, do you notice the difference? Software companies spend millions improving and updating their software. But can you actually tell? Over the past two years, we've released around 20 updates to PerfectIt.

We used PerfectIt, Intelligent Editing's add-in for MS Word that finds inconsistencies, to check 3000 randomly selected documents. PerfectIt provides a powerful way to check for inconsistent capitalization because it: Finds entire phrases in capitals, not just individual words; ignores headings and other locations where capital letters are needed; only alerts users to phrases that are both capitalized and lowercase in the same document.

Would you trust a five star hotel offering 'luxry accommodation'? Or an online retailer who asked for your 'adress' in a contact form? I wouldn't. And I'm not alone. However, even if you believe that most of your customers don't care about spelling errors, ignoring those who do is terrible business practice.

When using hyphens it's important to be consistent. There are good reasons to use them, and sometimes there are good reasons for skipping them. However, using hyphens in one location but forgetting to use them elsewhere in the same document is a bad mistake.

Lots of dumb mistakes can slip into even the best writing. Here we look specifically at reports and other technical documents to provide authors with a checklist they can use for their work.

The life of a professional editor is great: I sit in the comfort of my own home reading interesting books – and people pay me to do it! But some bits of the job are repetitious and tedious, and that's where macros come in: they do the boring bits and let me concentrate on engaging with the text. So, over the years, I have developed macros that help with a wide range of common tasks. And they're now available in a free downloadable book, Macros for Editors.

From the first time you handed in an essay to your teacher, people have been checking your grammar. But in many cases, they've been checking it incorrectly. This article looks at five so-called 'rules' that are not actually rules at all. Then it reviews if, and when, you should follow them anyway.