Author Archive

Deb

I'm an editorial-training consultant, a book editor, an illustrator and the author of 'Grey Areas and Gremlins: A grammar and punctuation refresher'. I teach grammar and editing skills to a wide range of groups and individuals, both publicly and privately. I'm able to deliver the training via Zoom, Skype, e-mail and/or phone.

Video of ASTC Conference 2022 presentation

I presented my paper ‘Two big gremlins: personification and the comma splice’ to members of the Australian Society for Technical Communication (ASTC) in Melbourne on Wednesday, 12 October 2022. The 45-minute video of the presentation is viewable on this blog page.

Colour-coded course notes now available

Hi, everyone. Course notes now available for purchase I’m very pleased to announce the availability of printouts and PDFs of the following five sets of course notes, via my website shop or me directly: ‘Grammar and Punctuation: The basics’ ‘The Parts of Speech: Nouns, verbs and the other seven’ ‘All Your Sentences Sorted: Simple, compound and complex’ ‘Perfect Punctuation: Commas, colons and co.’ ‘Writing Effective Paragraphs: What you need to know’ The price of each printout is $45, and the cost of shipping one or two copies by courier or ordinary mail in Australia is $10; total cost $55. Each printout is secured in a plastic wallet. The price of each PDF is $35. When you’re in the website shop, you can view the two-page agenda for any or all of the five sets of course notes so you can decide whether the content and scope are what you’re after. […]

‘Five years, stuck on my eyes’: An Australian woman’s harrowing ‘historical’ abuse

Author’s note: Please read this highly personal essay if you’ve experienced intimate-partner violence or you have an interest in the subject. The essay is a one-off piece that bears no relation to my grammatical posts or any of my other website content. In the essay, I contextualise and outline the five years of abuse and violence I endured at the hands of ‘Brandon Kray’. I use the present tense and a chronological structure to enable you to be in the thick of the action with me. At the end, I bring the story up to the present day and share a few reflections. On Tuesday, 16 November 2021, I participated in a webinar interview and Q&A session hosted by legal intern Eva Bluett of Forty Four Degrees Pty Ltd. We addressed the legal issues associated with intimate-partner violence, as I allude to in the essay, and discussed ways in which […]