Evaluating the Impact of our Written Words

  Do you re-read your business emails? Do you get a colleague to run through a draft report you’ve written?     As the CEO of a professional English editing company, I’ve built my business on the premise that what we write has a huge impact on our personal » Read More

TED Explained – Yang Lan: The Generation that’s Remaking China

TED Talk Summary: Yang Lan, a journalist and entrepreneur who’s been called “the Oprah of China,” offers insight into the next generation of young Chinese citizens — urban, connected (via microblogs) and alert to injustice. The chair of a multiplatform business empire, Yang is pioneering more-open means of communication in » Read More

When to use One or A – Singularly Confusing

Numbers… I hear your groan! Often hard to learn in another language.   I mean, look at the French, for 92 they say ‘four twenties twelve’ (quatre-vingt douze) whereas the Chinese confuse us by grouping tens of thousands together which makes 25,000 ‘two ten thousands five thousand’ (两万五千 – liang » Read More

Top 5 Commonly Confused Uncountable Nouns

I have that dastardly habit of correcting non-native English speakers. It just comes out. The correction, that is. Sometimes they thank me, sometimes they seem impervious to my help (interference) and sometimes they ask me to explain the rules. When it comes to countable and uncountable nouns, I always » Read More