most writers and editors know that it’s ok to (occasionally and judiciously) split an infinitive. we also know that, barring a more graceful alternative, a sentence-ending preposition is nothing to get upset about.
chatbots are designed to analyze reams of text and then, based on that analysis, generate a sequence of words that would be statistically likely to correspond to a specific prompt. they can answer questions, write new copy, and revise or edit an existing text.
one of the main reasons to insert a hyphen between two words that aren’t normally hyphenated is to help readers sort out the text when those words are used as a compound modifier before a noun.
even writers and editors who work with nontechnical documents will encounter the occasional abbreviated unit of measure or other abbreviation from the sciences. knowing some basic conventions about such expressions will help you spot potential errors.
most writers and editors who work in english will encounter at least the occasional word or phrase from another language. to spot potential problems, it’s a good idea to know some of the conventions of the more commonly used languages, the subject of chapter 11 in cmos.
chicago-style source citations are designed to be both concise and informative. ideally, readers should be able to tell what a citation refers to despite its abbreviated nature.
if you’ve ever written or edited an article or book on a scholarly subject, you probably know your e.g. from your i.e. and ibid. but especially if you spend time with older sources, you’re likely to encounter some abbreviations that haven’t entered the vernacular.
many of us who write or edit for a living spend a lot of time in a word processor, typically either microsoft word or google docs (or both). it’s only natural, then, that we know a lot about these programs. but it’s always good to brush up on the basics.
coordinating conjunctions join pairs of words, phrases, or clauses, but when such a conjunction is interrupted by an intervening phrase or clause, it can be difficult to know where to put the commas. this is especially true when the conjunction joins the parts of a compound sentence.
if you’ve ever had to learn how to use commas with relative clauses—especially clauses introduced by which or that—you may have also encountered the word restrictive and its opposite, nonrestrictive. what do those two words mean, and what do they have to do with commas?
