Another one of our favorite previously-published posts. *** When you work with the same group of editors for a long time, it becomes a training ground in which you all learn to accommodate each other's styles—especially those of the editor-in-chief. If the big boss hates the word impact (except when talking about car accidents), then everyone learns to edit that word out of their own writing and out of the articles they’re editing. I worked on the same magazine for seven years, and both my bosses were very fond of The Careful Writer by Theodore Bernstein. So I learned not to misuse certain common words, and now I consistently make these edits in the documents of my main corporate client. In turn, the writers at this company are now self-correcting these mistakes. Here are few of the most common word usage errors: Since is a time reference and should not be used to imply cause. Many people had it drilled into their heads that they can’t start a sentence with because, so ...