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Editing a Library Book? Shame on You.
A friend of mine posted a series of four photos on Facebook the other day, showing pages in a book she’d checked out from the library. (The book was Sue Grafton’s N Is for Noose, which I haven’t read.)...
View Article#WordUse Series: Standing Around With My Finger in the Dike, Feeling Hopeful
Yes, I am trying to hold back a flood. And I’m a little annoyed with the AP Stylebook. As the Washington Post says: The barbarians have done it, finally infiltrated a remaining bastion of order in a...
View Article#WordUse Series: Many Teaspoonsful of Sugar Help the Medicine Go Down …
My Facebook friends and I engaged in an etymological rabbit chase the other day. I do, seriously, get a kick out of this stuff, even if I really should be working instead of hopping around my office...
View ArticleShort Saturday: Stammer Verbs
I love it when I find an article that gives me a name for something I’ve noticed in editing, but didn’t know what to call it. Such is the case when I read this article at Jane Friedman’s website: “2...
View Article#WordUse Series: The Language Metamorphosis
We’ve talked a lot here about how the language we use—the words, the grammar—is a constantly evolving, living, almost breathing thing. (And still, still we want to stop that process! Human nature, I...
View ArticleShort Saturday: What Will the English Language Be Like in the Future?
We’ve talked a lot about how language—words and grammar—changes over time (here’s one of my posts with links to many of the rest: “The Language Metamorphosis”), but this article takes a really long...
View Article“Hostility Has Always Made Itself Loudly Felt”
In Britain, … [a] more common complaint is that British English is generally being tainted by Americanisms. As I have suggested, outrage at American influence was common among Victorian defenders of...
View ArticleTruth.
“Reading other people’s raw copy is like looking at your grandmother naked.” When veteran reporter Rafael Alvarez was temporarily assigned to the metro desk, this was his verdict after his first week’s...
View ArticleShort Saturday: If You Only Read One Thing …
A comma splice is only a little error, easily fixed. If you gave me a manuscript full of run-on sentences caused by them, it would be an easy edit. But—the “world’s top* grammarian,” this short article...
View ArticleIt Was Not an Historic Event
I’ve noticed a lot of people of a certain age tend to use the indefinite article an before the word historic (or historical): The radio announcer said, “It was an historic event.” This is actually...
View ArticleWordplay: Neglected Positives, Inpeas, and Falsies
Prefixes like “in,” “non,” “un,” “dis,” and “im” make words negative, yes? There may be grammatical particulars I am not addressing here, but generally speaking. So you have a positive word like...
View ArticleProper English: Us Versus Them
A writer friend of mine posted a little meme* on Facebook the other day: Never make fun of someone if they mispronounce a word. It means they learned it by reading. I doubt there’s any data to support...
View ArticleShort Saturday: Give That Kid a Book!
I have said this more than once: I learned a lot from reading books. It led directly to my current vocation, for one thing. But before that, for example, it led to my acquisition of an excellent...
View ArticleThe Irony of Books for Everyone
The first half of the [eighteenth] century had witnessed a massive surge in printing and the appetite for print. Books circulated freely thanks in part to the new commercial lending libraries, and...
View ArticleIs That a Flaute, Good Sir?
Recently I was editing a manuscript whose author had used the word flautist. Having been raised in a musical household and taken classical piano lessons for many years, I am familiar with the word; as...
View ArticleA Device for the Eye Rather Than for the Ear *
The apostrophe, that is. And what I’ve been seeing lately makes my eyes bleed, y’all. I know I’m not the first. (Here’s looking at you, Lynn Truss. Thanks for bringing it to our attention, but you need...
View ArticleGiving Up Your Language
Consider for a moment the effects of being asked to change the language you use. … Brian Friel’s play Translations, written in 1980, depicts this in an Irish setting. The action takes place in County...
View ArticleThe Writer’s Defining Twitch
I have just started Joseph Brodsky’s book On Grief and Reason. Let me say I have only read one essay in a collection of thirty, and I flipped through the book, sizing up the chapters, actually counting...
View ArticleShort Saturday: Every Dialect Has a Grammar
You know I’m endlessly fascinated by accents, regionalisms, and linguistic diversity in general. And every once in a while I find something that tickles my dialect interest. In “The Grammar Rules...
View ArticleShort Saturday: The Way We Speak
By now you surely know I’m fascinated by the way people speak, how they use syntax and language. It’s almost inevitably a result of the location of our upbringing. And I was delighted when a friend...
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