A Q&A about my job and science journalism
A couple weeks ago, some students from a university in South India got in touch to ask a few questions about my job and about science communication. The correspondence was entirely over email, and I&#…
grammar
5 posts
Why scientists should read more
The amount of communicative effort to describe the fact of a ball being thrown is vanishingly low. It's as simple as saying, "X threw the ball." It takes a bit more effort to describe ho…
Google Docs: A New Hope
I suspect the Google Docs grammar bot is the least useful bot there is. After hundreds of suggestions, I can think of only one instance in which it was right. Is its failure rate so high because it le…
The usefulness of good grammar
Why is good grammar important? In the Indian mainstream media at least, it appears that readers won’t penalise reporters and editors for imperfect use of grammar and punctuation. To be clear, they wi…
The unclosed clause and other things about commas
The Baffler carried a fantastic critique of The New Yorker's use of commas by Kyle Paoletta on August 23. Excerpt: The magazine’s paper subscription slips have long carried a tagline: “The best w…