Driving the gauntlet
Writing can be running a gantlet between people who follow an imaginary rule and people who are utterly unaware of it.
You have been given bad advice
Great Fowler’s ghost! There has been some serious grammar and usage malpractice out there.
The dying copy editor: a whimsical fiction
He had worked on metropolitan newspaper copy desks for more than forty years, but now, as his body failed, his family had been told by the doctors that the end
Just split the damn infinitive
The charming article by Mary Norris on attending the recent national conference of ACES: The Society for Editing, “Dropped Hyphens, Split Infinitives, and Other
Last day of class
This morning was the last day of class in my twenty-fourth year of teaching editing at Loyola University Maryland. The concluding remarks to my students are
A meditation on mowing
I was cutting the grass this morning, pushing the mower across the yard, turning, and pushing it back in the opposite direction, when boustrophedon popped into
For pasting above the desk
Over the years I’ve assembled a number of quotations on writing, editing, and grammar. From this selection, pick what would be most helpful to you if you look
Victory lap
Last week at the national conference of ACES: The Society for Editing, Paula Froke, editor of the Associated Press Stylebook, asked a question during the
Defending the AP Stylebook
Great Fowler’s ghost! That it should have come to this. I am defending the Associated Press Stylebook.
A purist walks into a bar: A Grammarnoir episode
I’m sitting in the bar, enjoying a quiet pint of Smithwick’s, when this nimrod wearing a red Make America Grammatical Again cap comes through the door and sits
Anyone for Grammanoir?
With National Grammar Day (March Fourth) approaching, I had made no plans to write a Grammarnoir episode this year, but this morning I have been challenged on
Make room on the shelf for "Dreyer's English," and make Dreyer's English your English
In writing about writers’ and editors’ crotchets, Benjamin Dreyer praises “the bracingly peeve-dismantling Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage. If
Speaking terms
Rawley Grau, a former colleague, posed a question on Facebook about a New York Times usage. Why, he wondered, does The Times use the term spokeswoman rather
We heal with the knife
I tell students in my editing class at Loyola University Maryland that editing is like surgery.
Take the cache and let the edit go
Today on Morning Joe, Mika Brzezinski quoted from a text and pronounced the word cache as “cash-ay.” This is a common confusion.
The Republic in safe hands
Yesterday, as the 116th Congress assumed office, two Muslim representatives were sworn in as they held copies of the Quran—one of them, Rep. Rashida Tlaib of
The usual suspects
During four decades of editing in big-time journalism, I’ve encountered few exotic specimens. You sit at the bench for hours, and it’s always the same damned
Lay that burden down
One of the readers of yesterday’s post on the increasingly rapid decay of whom in general usage asked the inevitable question: “What's your thinking on
Just use "who"
All right, people, we have been here before. I’m going to go over this one last time and then be done with it. Most of you should just give up on whom and not
The 'correct' and the common
I drifted into—and later abandoned—one of those frustrating online discussion on grammar in which a participant insisted on distinguishing between what is
Keep the 'X' in 'Xmas'
It is a little tiresome to have to repeat explanation year after year, but I know people on Facebook who persist in posting crackpot memes like this: “It's
The most irritating holiday songs
The holiday spirit fades quickly once stores and broadcasters start blaring tunes that annoy.
Toss Strunk and White. Here is the little book about language you need
There is a book I have been craving for years, and now June Casagrande has written it.
I hear what that dog whistle means
Last week I reposted on Facebook a short guide to code words: “globalist,” “Soros,” “New York values,” and others, all to be translated as “Jew.” How do I
You know the type
I have tried since I was an undergraduate, without much success, to interest others in Randall Jarrell’s witty and epigrammatic academic novel, Pictures from an