Writers and Editors

You can now order the new 16th edition of the The Chicago Manual of Style , the style bible for books and some magazines. This time it is simultaneously releasing a subscription to an online edition)  Read More 

Sometimes examples of media inattention to copyediting cry out for public comment. Take the lead sentence in this ABC News story: "Police in Washington state captured a schizophrenic killer who had escaped during an outing from the mental hospital where he had been committed to a state fair."  Read More 

In his classic column about abuse of the apostrophe, Keith Waterhouse wrote, "The AAAA has two simple goals. Its first is to round up and confiscate superfluous apostrophes from, for example, fruit and vegetable stalls where potato's, tomatoe's and apple's are openly on sale. Its second is to redistribute as many as possible of these impounded apostrophes, restoring missing apostrophes where they have been lost, Read More 

I used to have a little sign above my office door that said "Abandon hopefully all ye who enter here," and for years I've tried not gritting my teeth when people said things like, "Hopefully it won't rain." My poor daughter grew up with this bias against using "hopefully" in the sense of "it is hoped,"  Read More 

"I do hope you realize that every time you use disinterested to mean uninterested, an angel dies," writes Roy Blount Jr., "and every time you write very unique, or 'We will hire whomever is more qualified,' thousands of literate people lose yet another little smidgen of hope.  Read More