Carol Waites

13/10/2026

Plain English. Today is International Plain Language Day. Test your knowledge.

Clear language. Better understanding. A more accessible Europe. (European Parliament).   Test yourself on this topic. Imagine that you’re writing an informal email to a colleague.  Example with verb “to request” or “to consult”: “to ask” Write the everyday Germanic equivalents in Eng...

04/10/2026

This week's writing tip helps you move parts of the sentence around to be clearer.

If you tend to put key information late in the sentence, you may lose your reader. Move the following highlighted words to earlier in the sentence to make it flow more smoothly: 1. The most urgent need following the April earthquake and the recent flooding in the western and northern regions is shel...

29/09/2026

This week's writing tip is about using commas with conjunctions. It also looks at breaking up long, complex sentences resulting from using conjunctions.

Conjunctions usually require commas to help the reader distinguish the different parts of a sentence. Here are some examples from Human Rights reports with the commas removed and the conjunctions in bold. Part 1: Put in the missing commas. Part 2: How can we break them up into more easily digested c...

24/09/2026

How well do you distinguish these confusing words? Test yourself.

Do you find these words confusing? Test yourself, then see if you need to refresh your knowledge.   Choose the correct word in each sentence.

15/09/2026

Test your knowledge of basic editing tools for proofreading your document.

08/09/2026

How many Englishes are there and which is the right one for writers? Find out in this week's writing tip.

______________________________________________ Author: Carol Waites Presentation/editing by Christina O’Shaughnessy  https://worldwidewriting.org/ ______________________________________________ Carol Waites (PhD) Email: [email protected] To sign up for the newsletter, go here: Home Beh...

14/07/2026

23/06/2026

Tips on how to use AI to work more efficiently.

AI can help you save time in your daily work. It can be that useful assistant we need to do the lengthy boring part of our work. Try it out if you haven’t yet. Copilot is the one certified in the United Nations and the World Health Organization. It keeps your information confidential. When you hav...

18/05/2026

This week's writing tip is a reality check about confusing punctuation. Enjoy!

Where to put punctuation with conjunctions is often confusing. See this explanation given by Grammarly: Subordinating conjunctions Because, although, since, unless, while, if Starting a sentence with a dependent clause: If the sentence starts with the conjunction, place a comma at the end of the fir...

11/05/2026

Test your editing skills with these examples from UN writing

Proofread and correct these examples from United Nations writings. The United Nations and most international organizations in the UN system use the Editorial Manual online. AI tools won’t help you much to avoid stylistic errors, as they don’t distinguish enough between styles. If it’s importan...