My cousin, a music producer, told me: sure it’s possible to polish a turd. First you bake it, then lacquer it. I reflect on these words as I attempt to language polish the output of Google translate. I wonder what subtle principles of linguistics and aesthetics — principles of which we as sentient language speakers [...]

I’m switching a set of papers from Chicago notes-bibliography style with full bibliography to Chicago notes-bibliography style without full bibliography. As any fule no, this will mean expanding the first occurence of the reference item in the notes from shortened to full form (among other things). Since it’s May, and a sunny evening, it’s important [...]

‘Ibid.’ is an abbreviation for ‘ibidem‘ (‘in the same place’). The full stop in ‘ibid.’ is therefore obligatory. But it can be dashed hard to spot. To automate the search (in MS Word), hit Cntrl-F to bring up the Find/Replace box, enable Wildcards, and enter: ibid[!.] in the find box. This little string finds instances [...]

The sales text for a high-Google-ranked automatic editing tool gives us more information about the quality of the product than the writers presumably intended. It won’t be Utopian to say that every time whatever we write, whether a memo, report or a research material, is precise, accurate and effective in single go. It is possible [...]

To enter Unicode characters by their hexadecimal value (without having to trawl through Word’s fair-weather-friend symbol-entry interface): Enter the hexadecimal value for the Unicode symbol, position cursor at the end of the string, and press alt-X. This toggles between the character and the unicode value.