Category: News

Now that the year is almost over, I’ve reflected on the past 12 months and thrown the spotlight on what worked, what didn’t and what I’ll keep working on. To start, this year didn’t quite begin as expected on a personal front. In early January, I ended up in hospital for four days and emergency surgery. Oops, lesson learnt. When Easter rolled around, we had to say goodbye to our elderly cat. A few months later, we welcomed two new kittens to the family, which escalated the daily chaos (in a good way). An annual occurrence in our house is […]

Tautologies are needlessly repeated concepts in a sentence. It’s best to steer clear of them. For example: The brand new program was launched this week. (It’s just new.) The committee has regular monthly meetings. (They are just regular or monthly.) The curtain was made of blue coloured material. (It was just blue.) The community vote was totally unanimous. (The word totally doesn’t add anything.) She left at 5am in the morning. (The term ‘am’ means in the morning.) This is a new innovation. (Innovations are always new.)

Do you know the difference between hyphens and dashes? Did you know there is more than one dash to choose from? Hyphens (-) are used in compound words or words that contain a prefix with vowels in close succession. For example, well-behaved, student-led, re-enter. Dashes are used to separate phrases within a sentence, or to provide a break or pause. There are two lengths of dash available: an EN rule (–), which is the width of a letter N, and an EM rule (—), the length of a letter M. Your brand’s style guide will determine which dash should be used, […]

There are a few capital conventions when it comes to special days, weeks and times of the year, and of course some other special words that need a capital. But unless you really have to, try not to capitalise much. Capital letters interrupt the eye and can make it harder for your reader to do what they’re doing (read). Unless you’re using a “proper noun” – a product or brand, a place name or person – stick to sentence case. Use capitals in the following phrases: Good Friday Easter Monday Anzac Day New Year Year of the Horse Eureka Stockade […]

Amount and number are two different words with different meanings. They aren’t interchangeable. Number is for things you can count, such as: pebbles, people, ships, classrooms and deadlines Amount is for things you can’t count, such as: snow, anxiety, faith, water and heartache For example: There were a number of classrooms that the students hadn’t used before. There was an incredible amount of snow over the grounds.

Time for a bit of fun. A long, long time ago, a list began of terms used to describe groups of animals or people. For the educated few, these are ‘collective nouns’. The below are just a few highlights. A shrewdness of apes A murder of crows A mob of kangaroos A pandemonium of parrots A bevy of ladies A blush of boys A faith of merchants A hastiness of cooks A herd of moose A colony of ants A cauldron of bats An army of frogs A tower of giraffes A band of gorillas A barrel of monkeys A […]