Topic: Copy Editing

How Do We Love Thee, Grammar? Count the Ways on Grammar Day

Flickr/Daniel Silliman

Grammar. In honor of its beauty and, more importantly, its usefulness to all of us, there is a National Grammar Day, a day that grammarians have been celebrating since 2008. How should a word-minded person celebrate? 

By Jen Doll

Jan 17, 2013

The Singular 'They' Must Be Stopped

The misused word is everywhere, proliferating like fruit flies 'round a bowl of rotting bananas. We must stop it before it goes too far.

Comments | 10,346 Views

By Jen Doll

Dec 10, 2012

Year in Review

The Best (Worst?) Typos, Mistakes, and Correrctions of 2012

Which were the best—most amusing, most mortifying, funniest, most cringeworthy, and most interesting—mistakes of the year? Herewith, our favorites.

Comments | 78,628 Views

By Jen Doll

Nov 27, 2012

A Perfectly Nice, Well-Intentioned Rant About Hyphens

Let's take a minute to get Grammar-Real: It has come to my attention of late that many of us are using hyphens wrong. This is not, of course, the hyphen's fault.

Comments | 13,085 Views

By Jen Doll

Sep 21, 2012

National Punctuation Day Is Coming! How Will You Mark the Occasion?

Prepare yourself, people who love words and writing and those symbols we use to designate pauses and emotions and inflections (and such) throughout our prose and occasionally poetry as well. Monday is the annual holiday of National Punctuation Day!

Comments | 984 Views

By Jen Doll

Sep 11, 2012

If One Were to Use the Subjunctive Mood Properly

The New York Times' After Deadline blog contains a fantastic letter to the paper's editor from March of 1924 that reminds us that the more things change, the more they stay the same, copy-wise and otherwise.

Comments | 8,794 Views

By Jen Doll

Aug 21, 2012

The Imagined Lives of Punctuation Marks

We feel strongly about the punctuation we interact with in our daily lives. Today, we learn something about the @ that we did not know, leading us to wonder about the personality traits of our other favorite grammatical marks?

Comments | 15,754 Views

By Jen Doll

Aug 8, 2012

Let's Go Ahead and Declare It the Year of the Exclamation Point!

Years from now when we think back to the early times of the decade of 2010, we will surely think of a new wave of Internet-life in which complete and total social media immersion really began. And we'll also think of the exclamation point.

Comments | 1,035 Views

By Jen Doll

Aug 6, 2012

Embracing the Age of Autocorrect

Of course you know autocorrect. You've probably found yourself a target of its accidentally rude, crude expressions at least once, possibly with unfortunate ends, sometimes with amusing ones.

Comments | 1,479 Views

By Connor Simpson

Aug 2, 2012

Copy Editors Beware the Breastroke

The Olympics are a confusing time for everyone with all the obscure sports like dressage, swimming, and gymnastics. It can be especially bad for the copy editors who have to keep track of the obscure terms that come with each sport. Obscure terms like the "breaststroke." 

Comments | 896 Views

By Jen Doll

Jul 24, 2012

Zombie Words Are Coming for Your Brains

Have you used a zombie noun today? Hang your head in shame, because you're part of the problem. 

Comments | 5,863 Views

By Jen Doll

Jun 20, 2012

Grammar Is Dead, Long Live Grammar Nerds

Some of us never forget the first sentence we conjugated. Others of us are, like, LOL, WTF?

Comments | 42,072 Views

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