"Editorial archaeology" is my term for trying to reconstruct what a writer originally wrote before it was mangled by grammar-checking software, using my knowledge of how the software works. It's a bit like historical linguists reconstructing unattested earlier word forms from current word forms, based on their knowledge of how languages typically change. One excerpt… Continue reading The G Files Part 6: Editorial archaeology
Author: Rachael Churchill
How to write multiple-choice questions
I have edited a lot of multiple-choice questions (and seen several more throughout my own education). Here is a guide I’ve put together about how to create good multiple-choice questions and avoid creating bad ones. Obviously, make sure the question and answer are correct. Less obviously, make sure none of the distractors (wrong answers) are… Continue reading How to write multiple-choice questions
English: Too illogical for non-native speakers
"You are mostly welcome." I first came across "You are mostly welcome" on a photo of a sign in one of those online collections of mistranslations, but since then I've had a client say it to me in real life. It's a completely logical thing for a non-native speaker of English to say: "most" can… Continue reading English: Too illogical for non-native speakers
The G Files Part 5: You Would Lose Clothes
Happy new academic year! Here's a reminder of how automatic grammar-checking software can mangle your work into nonsense, because it's just applying blind rules and heuristics without understanding the meaning. This is an example I found in the wild in a published article, so, to be fair, I don't know that this one was the… Continue reading The G Files Part 5: You Would Lose Clothes
“Dysambiguation”: Mistaken Disambiguation
Disambiguation means taking an ambiguous sentence and removing the ambiguity. For example, "I like chocolate more than you" is ambiguous. You could disambiguate it to either "I like chocolate more than you do" or "I like chocolate more than I like you." I am coining the term "dysambiguation" to mean disambiguating the wrong way. Suppose… Continue reading “Dysambiguation”: Mistaken Disambiguation
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