Tone & Register
All articles on tone & register — practical guides for ESL professionals writing in English.
When to Use Passive Voice on Purpose (and When It Flags You as Non-Native)
Writers are often taught to avoid passive voice entirely, or to use it constantly as a formality signal. Both are wrong. Here's when passive voice is the right choice and when it marks your writing as L1-influenced.
7 min read · 2026-01-08Writing Critical Feedback in English Without Sounding Cold
Critical feedback is one of the hardest things to calibrate across cultural lines. Too direct and you damage the relationship. Too hedged and the message doesn't land. Here is the structure that works.
8 min read · 2025-12-18Why Your 'Just' and 'Actually' Are Undermining Your Credibility
Two of the most common filler words in professional writing do opposite damage: 'just' makes you sound apologetic, 'actually' makes you sound confrontational. Here's how to fix both.
7 min read · 2025-11-22The Politeness Gap: Over-Hedged Asian English in a Sydney Inbox
Politeness conventions from East and Southeast Asian business cultures produce English writing that reads as overly deferential in Australian professional contexts. Here's the specific pattern and how to calibrate it.
8 min read · 2025-11-08