Johannes Gutenberg is often credited as the inventor of the printing press in 1454. But neither printing nor movable type was actually invented by Johannes Gutenberg, nor did he print the first book. The Chinese actually printed from movable type in 1040, but later discarding the method. Even before printing books from movable type, the [...]

In the year 1007 a Japanese noble woman, Murasaki Shikibu, wrote the world’s first full novel. Called “The tale of Genji,” it tells the story of a prince looking for love and wisdom. In its English translation it covers 54 chapters over 1000 pages of text. By the Middle Ages there were many novels about [...]

The novel has always had the reputation of being light entertainment, almost bordering on the frivolous. Part of the blame for this reputation can be placed on the word novel itself. The word originally derived from the Latin novus, meaning “new.” It came to English by way of the Italian word for short story, novella. [...]

English is the second most spoken language in the world – Mandarin is the most spoken – and has more words than any other language. But English speakers generally use only about 1% of the language. About one third of the more than one million English words are technical terms. Still, every decade new words [...]

You may be under the false impression that before you can get your text published, you must “get the copyright” to your own written material. You might also think that in order to get the copyright, you must “apply” for it. This is just not so. In the following few paragraphs, I’ll give you some [...]

Copyleft is a general method for making a program or other work free, and requiring all modified and extended versions of the program to be free as well. The simplest way to make a program free software is to put it in the public domain, uncopyrighted. This allows people to share the program and their [...]

A Guide to the Well-Written Text by Jan K., The Proofer. Part 1: Everything we do involves communication – written, verbal, and nonverbal. Today, due to the Internet and the World Wide Web, written communication is emerging as the primary format. Writing effectively is now an essential skill. Sadly, writing skills are no longer emphasized [...]

A  Guide to the Well-Written Text by Jan K., The Proofer. Part 2: In Part 1, I gave you some ideas on how to write your text. When your text is finished, you will need to review it in order to spot the flaws, correct the errors and put a final coat of polish on [...]

English is said to be a difficult language to learn: here’s why… • The farm is used to produce produce. • This is a good time to present the present. • We must polish the Polish furniture. • He could lead if he would get the lead out. • The dump was so full that [...]

With the advent of electronic word-processing and spellchecker programs, many people just presume that simply by running spellchecker all of their grammar errors will be caught and corrected. This is simply not so. Spellchecker programs often include some grammar checking, but no man-made program can catch all the innuendos of the English language. This article [...]