Sally Moss Editorial

12/05/2026

In what world does love win?

A few weeks ago, I went to two events, back to back, that I thought were separate. It turned out they were intimately connected...

EVENT 1: Screening of the People’s Emergency Briefing in Liverpool

This is a powerful 50-minute round-up of where the climate crisis is up to. How close to collapse we are, how nearly we’ve bankrupted nature.

Thankfully, the film also covers the undeniable benefits of facing this head on. It highlights potential responses that are effective and pretty intuitive.

Between pithy updates, we watched famous faces and members of the public process them and react. Watching, I felt what they were feeling, and so did scores of others in the room.

👪 That’s the thing. This film is intended for community screenings only (at least for now), so you can’t be alone with it. You can only watch it alongside the communities you’re ultimately going to have to respond to the crisis with. It makes sense.

Afterwards, I realised that this was the kind of messaging I’ve been hoping to see for a long time. It’s authoritative, digestible, psychologically realistic, savvy, and caring. Even funny in places, if you’ll believe me.

EVENT 2: My Great-Aunt Dot’s funeral

Dot lived to 94 and was loved by several generations. Children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren all attended the funeral. I heard tales of cycling trips to the Welsh countryside in her youth, family get-togethers with abundant buffets, and access to care into her nineties.

And on the way home, I realised this:

💡 Everything we celebrated at Dot’s funeral is what we’re fighting for when we fight climate chaos. The chance of a long life, enough food, decent health, and some leisure. The means to care for the young and the old – to express our love for them in the most fundamental of ways.

In short, the stable existence that we can only have in a stable climate.

There are already too many people in the world who don’t get to enjoy that sort of existence. And already too much biodiversity lost. We’re supposed to be moving the dial towards more of what’s good, not less.

So let’s get on with it, together.

Watching the People’s Emergency Briefing can help with that. Could you organise a screening too? Maybe for your neighbours, colleagues, community group, or students. There are resources to help you - see the links in the comments.

And rest in peace, lovely Aunty Dot. I hope that between us we’ll do everything possible for those children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of yours.

31/01/2026

❤️ ❤️ ❤️

17/12/2025

Here's the second of two recent client testimonials I'm sharing this week because...

💡 Who doesn't love a year-end reminder that their work makes a difference?

💡 As I see it, it's everyone's job nowadays to flag up skills and support that will only ever be available from other human beings (in this case, human editors).

I'll add that it's a great privilege to work with clients who invest the best of themselves in working to make the world a safer, happier place.

The client who wrote this testimonial is a fabulous example, and I look forward to seeing what she does next.

16/12/2025

I've had a couple of bits of great client feedback recently. As we roll on to the year's end, I want to share them for two reasons:

💡 After another year of staring intently at a screen for much of my days, it's warming to be reminded of the good that editors can do for our clients and their projects.
💡 And after seeing the AI industry swell even further in 2025, I like how clients' spontaneous feedback often spells out the key gains of using a *human being* to help them finalise the key texts that represent them.

So here's the first recent testimonial!

05/10/2025

Beautiful ❤️ No such thing as 'just words'.

“It was my grandmother, Sighle Humphreys, who taught me Irish and when I asked her one day what the word for hole was, she replied: ‘Do you mean one dug into the ground by an animal? That’s an uachas. Or one made by fish in a sandy riverbed for spawning? That’s a saothar. Or if it’s been hollowed out by hooves of beasts and then filled by rain it’s a plobán. Or if a lobster is hiding in one it’s a fach. Or if it’s been created as a hideaway by a wild beast it’s a puathais.’” - Thirty Two Words For Field.

Like a saunter on a soft day, guides us down etymological boreens (bóithrín) always hand-holding and assuring that we will be all the better for the journey we embark upon…

Tóg go bóg é Manchan. Our deepest sympathies to his family and all who loved him x

02/10/2025

Book club tonight. Anticipating discussion of racism, cultural appropriation and the publishing industry via this page-turner.

(It also features a complimentary meta-nod to copy-editors: 'superhuman, eagle-eyed monsters that catch continuity errors unseen to the naked eye...')

05/08/2025

I love a good solution.

In a world of problems, it's good to remember there are always powerful actions we can take.

One of the best solution-mongering organisations I know is Ecosystem Restoration Communities. They're busy restoring nearly a hundred thousand hectares globally.

'From the degraded rainforests of Brazil to the arid landscapes of Morocco, Ecosystem Restoration Communities (ERC) is a global movement that harnesses the collective power of individuals and communities to restore our planet’s ecosystems.'

Whether you volunteer with them, donate to them, or simply learn from them, they're worth supporting.

https://www.ecosystemrestorationcommunities.org/

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Got a solution of your own? Need to express it in powerful, persuasive writing that resonates with your target audience? I might be able to help: http://sallymoss-editorial.co.uk/contact-me-with-your-questions-request-quotation/

Ecosystem Restoration Communities - Join our restoration community. Learn ecosystem restoration, volunteer, or donate to help restore Earth.

11/07/2025

You may have heard of Commoners Choir through their appearances on Clare Balding's Ramblings and, more recently, Countryfile.

They're 'a strange yet open and inclusive choir that meets in Leeds', and they concern themselves with such things as inequality and hope.

They've just issued 'Call It A Genocide', a song that spotlights the use and misuse of words in discussions of the horrific events in Palestine.

As their founder, Boff Whalley (once of Chumbawumba), puts it, deploying vital words like genocide can have 'a power far beyond their dictionary meaning'.

(More on that here: https://www.facebook.com/boff.whalley/posts/pfbid0v3iW7wyivEWiwgn9YgVx5j1FiuUvan2R9ZegbrCL423Z8snnne2x8vhwoVZfFLgNl)

And here's the song itself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRHZwb7HCY8&ab_channel=CommonersChoir

And still, as we continue to write songs and sing, it continues. The ethnic cleansing of a people, in front of our eyes on daily newsreels. And still our cou...

27/06/2025

Why is a document like a building?

Because it's built in stages. And sometimes you need a specialist.

I edit from the ground up for positive-impact projects, helping them capture their value and get social and environmental solutions into more people's heads.

https://sallymoss-editorial.co.uk/blog/2025/06/26/editing-from-the-ground-up/

Because it's part of my job to enhance clients' positive impact, whether social or environmental, I often make the most difference if I'm involved early on.

20/06/2025

What is 'glittering sludge'?

It's what we get when we forget that 'understanding language provides the basis of smart thinking'.

And that 'Language is humanity’s superpower. Without it, culture, cultural evolution, global cooperation, and the accumulation of knowledge across generations would be impossible'.

In more detail: 'glittering sludge' is AI-ed writing that is miraculously free of typos and other glitches - those issues that show the writer's working-out - but also freer of value. 'The writing is getting better. The ideas are getting worse.'

As an editor, a writer, a human, I agree it's better to use the brains we were born with to think and write for ourselves. To work at it. To risk the imperfections and errors that come with originality and absorption. To collaborate with great minds, living and dead, and find ways of our own to evolve our culture.

There will always be the option to collaborate with editors afterwards, if we need to prime our prose and wrangle our references.

One professor's reflections on the end of an era, as AI tools such as ChatGPT have murdered the student essay (RIP). Here's why that threatens the future of human cognition—and how to save ourselves.