Why use styles in Microsoft Word?

File under: Business Writing Editing Essay Writing Journal Article Writing Thesis Writing By

  Writing your thesis is taxing as it is; and formatting your thesis to make it look neat and consistent is an essential, but often tedious (and sometimes, confusing) part of the thesis-writing process. Good thing Microsoft Word has Styles—a feature that makes formatting much quicker and less complicated. But what exactly is a style? It is a set of formatting instructions, such as the font size, colour and paragraph spacing to be used, that has been saved, so you don’t have to manually format each section of your document. A style is also what Word uses to identify different parts of your document. This is how you are able to see headings and subheadings on the Navigation Pane. It …

Read more »

Liberate the Hyphen

File under: Business Writing Essay Writing Grammar Journal Article Writing Thesis Writing By

The problem In the complicated workplace of punctuation, the poor old hyphen needs to form a union. It dutifully performs its role of joining compound words and reliably appears when a suffix or prefix needs assistance. However, many students and writers drag the overworked hyphen into use while the en dash and em dash rest sadly on the sidelines. Dashes and hyphens have distinctly different uses, and while the rest of the world seems to have retired the dashes permanently, their correct use is still extremely important in academia and publishing. In fact, the incorrect use of dashes and hyphens is perhaps one of the most common errors encountered during editing. The solution In the interests of resting the exhausted …

Read more »

Writing a Winning Job Application

File under: Business Writing By

Elite Editing is currently in the middle of a major hiring round for new editors. And although advice on how to apply for jobs is available in abundance, we’ve found that even highly qualified applicants make errors that can lose them the job. So we thought it might be useful to remind you about the most important errors to avoid to give yourself the best chance of success. Follow the instructions! If an applicant hasn’t taken the time to read the job ad correctly and shown that they can follow clear instructions, they aren’t going to make the best first impression. Be sure to address the application to the correct person, submit it in the correct manner, and send everything …

Read more »