To go boldly

'Make yourself an enemy of the fashionable split infinitive, the dangling participle, the misplaced 'only', the over elaborate sentence, and don't be afraid for the need for logically required hyphens'. So wrote the late Norman Chapman, professor of chemistry at the University of Hull, to a former student who had just been promoted to editor of Education in Chemistry some 20 years ago.  

Thankfully, I had spent the previous five years in Dr Peter Farago's news publication team. Farago, the genius editor of  Chemistry in Britain, an ex-Fleet Street journalist and chemist, pointed me in the direction of  The Economist's pocket style book, and left me in the talented hands of features editor, Nina Hall. It was an apprenticeship for which I shall be forever grateful.