Eloquence is meticulous
Imagine you’re a beleaguered marketing type. It’s your job to produce clear, compelling, informative communications. But everyone who needs to sign off on your project has been fiddling with the copy. And now something — a headline, a word, maybe even an apostrophe — looks funny. Who do you call? Or, to be correct in a way that is almost obsolete: Whom do you call?
My clients are always welcome to call me.
The English language is governed by a bunch of baffling, oddball rules. Here’s what writers know that non-writers don’t: you don’t have to keep all the arcane statutes of grammar, usage, and style indexed in your head. You just need to know where to find them.
If you don’t have the time or the budget to hire me, you’ll find a wealth of practical, reassuring wisdom in my favorite reference books:
- The Careful Writer by Theodore M. Bernstein is easy to navigate and comfortingly avuncular. It’s as much fun as a venerated tome can be.
- Modern American Usage by Wilson Follett is exactly as dry as its title. But it has a certain unassailable quality that is useful for settling arguments.
- The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White is so revered among writers, it has a nickname: “strunkandwhite.” At 90-some pages, it is practically pocket-sized.
Would you rather just ask me whether a comma is in the right place?
Send me an email.