One of the most effective quality-control and disaster-prevention tools ever developed is also one of the simplest: the checklist. Surgeons use checklists. Astronauts use checklists. Stage managers use checklists. And editors use checklists.

Spoiler alert: you probably didn’t lose your last bid because of price. It also probably wasn’t because the deal was fixed from the outset. These are the consolations many companies tell themselves when they are unsuccessful in tenders. We get it. You put all your best people on a tender and committed vast amounts of time and resources to it.

If you're writing a thesis or dissertation, you only need to use PerfectIt once. And a fully functioning version of PerfectIt is free for 14 days (for Mac or PC). So after you've proofread your dissertation, run PerfectIt for free. PerfectIt will quickly help you find any remaining errors.

The first thing you need for truly great corporate documents is a truly great style guide. Knowing it all off the top of your head is not good enough. You’re not the only person handling the text and you may leave the company someday. More importantly, no human can ever be one hundred percent consistent.

Independent editors play a crucial role across nearly every industry. However, if you run your own editing business then you know how difficult it can be to find time to market your services. That’s why we’ve put together this guide to help you demonstrate and market your value.

So much of life is about who’s in your set. Word’s wildcards are really no different. Most of us have a ‘crowd’ that we feel some sort of affinity with. Professional groups, special interests; type of food or music we like; and so on.

Are you getting the most you can from Microsoft Word? Wildcard search is one of the most powerful features in Word. You can use it to quickly find errors and make changes throughout a document in a matter of seconds. However, wildcards can be complicated. Even advanced users can struggle to keep track of wildcard patterns and their meaning. The Wildcard Cookbook by Jack Lyon makes it all easier.

Health conditions are varied and complicated. They can cause pain, confusion, dizziness, slack jaw, belly aches… and that’s just their names! Take for example Stein-Leventhal syndrome, polycystic ovary syndrome, chronic hyperandrogenic anovulation, CHA, and PCOS. As different as they look, these five have something in common: they’re all names for the same thing.

You’re in a management or leadership role, so you have to review draft documents. The question is: Do you micromanage your review? You’re a good manager, so you don’t micromanage other tasks.

In December 2022 we launched our Medical Plain Language Summary style. It’s launched in beta as a living document, and we hope that the medical writing community will continue giving us feedback so that we can keep making it more useful for medical communicators working with plain language summaries.

Creating content for a non-specialist audience means thinking differently about medical information. The increasing requirement for plain language summaries, including the European Union Clinical Trials Regulation, reflects the growing emphasis on improving patient involvement. But translating complex medical terms to non-specialist language can be time consuming. We get so used to medical terminology, it’s easy to miss things when checking. We’ve created a medical plain language summary style in PerfectIt to help with the challenge!

In December 2022 we launched our Medical Plain Language Summary style. It’s launched in beta as a living document, and we hope that the medical writing community will continue giving us feedback so that we can keep making it more useful for medical communicators working with plain language summaries.

Admit it: English spelling is evil and wants you to suffer.

It’s not just that the rules are weird and capricious and there’s an exception to everything. That’s the inevitable fallout of centuries of what linguists call “language contact” and most other people call “invasions and trading.”

Like birds and trees, abbreviations are often seen in the wild and seldom remarked on. But, like slime molds and toads, abbreviations come in more kinds than most people realize and, while some people find them repellant, others can be quite passionate about them.

It’s time to talk about style, darlings—and specifically about setting the style. You’re the editor now, but the state of the prose in your company is—well, darlings, let’s just say it’s not tidy. Many people have put their own distinctive touches on everything they’ve distinctly touched, and it’s a complete mishmash. Even your company’s name is written four different ways.

If you work with medical text, you’re familiar with how authors like to salt their text with SLTs (Simple Lexical Tools) representing SLTs (Standard Learned Terms). Sometimes, however, these are SLT (Single, Limited, or Transient) in use, and much of the time their real function is just as SLTs (Shiny Little Toys).

If your goal is to get everyone in your organization or group to follow your house style—and to learn the principles behind it—there’s more to it than simply adding terms and adjusting settings in the Style Sheet Editor. The exact words you use to describe the issue make a difference.

We live in a capitalist society. Which means it’s full of businesses that are full of businesspeople who just love using Capital Letters because they seem Important.

Hyphenation can seem like the editor’s party trick. A party trick is something that few people know how to do, and while it’s not that important to most people, it’s always impressive to see someone pull it off. You know, like tying a cherry stem into a knot with your tongue.

Hyphenation can seem like the editor’s party trick. A party trick is something that few people know how to do, and while it’s not that important to most people, it’s always impressive to see someone pull it off. You know, like tying a cherry stem into a knot with your tongue.