Category: advice

Ulysses switches to paid subscriptions… Faeries wither and die all over the internet

I rarely cover tech stories, but Ulysses is used by so many writers (myself included) I thought it was worth chatting about what is becoming an increasingly popular revenue model for software developers.

You can find the announcement and pricing on the Soulmen website, but the short version is that you can no longer buy Ulysses as a one-off payment; you now pay every month/year if you want to keep on using it.

Realising this won't sit well with their use base, software companies often write a tome of a blog article explaining why this is necessary and why it is good for their customers. You can pretty much skip over whatever they write because it always boils down to two points: Continue reading “Ulysses switches to paid subscriptions… Faeries wither and die all over the internet”

About that ‘dog in the bin’ thing…

Okay, do you remember that Guardian article I was waving about a few days ago?

The Guardian: ten everyday grammar mistakes

Yeah, that one. Well, along with the article there was a picture…

BnHL-6yCMAEHD7w

Yup, that’s the one.

I’ve written the piece, patted myself on the back, gone out, got drunk, come back, gone to sleep… then woke up in the middle of the night screaming, “Christ on a bike! It’s right!”

I’d remembered one of those frayed and faded grammar rules that I picked up in university, but never found a reference to say whether it was real or not. Y’see I think that poster is correct.

As far as I remember the rule goes something like this: the pronoun (in this case ‘it’) refers to the nearest noun (in this case… ‘poo’) which is the  antecedant of the pronoun. (Don’t take my word for it. Check with Grammar Girl.)

But before sticking slavishly to the rules, remember that your writing has two aims:

  1. clarity
  2. not to get laughed at for the wrong reasons.