Voodoo for Copyeditors
A few years ago I visited the creepy but fascinating Voodoo Museum in New Orleans. I didn’t need to take the tour in order to believe in curses. I myself live under two that I know of. The first one…
Writer, Editor, Helper
(The Subversive Copy Editor)
Writer, Editor, Helper
(The Subversive Copy Editor)
Carol Saller
“Beautiful Piece”: An Interview with Joseph G. Peterson
My long-time colleague Joseph G. Peterson is also a novelist whose first book, Beautiful Piece, was published last year by Northern Illinois University Press in their Switchgrass imprint. The book is a stunner, pulling the reader straight into the troubled…
Don’t Panic! Tips for Learning CMOS 16
It’s clear from the chatter online that many of you already have the sixteenth edition of The Chicago Manual of Style, and that you love it. But, you know, at some point you’re going to have to open it. Cracking…
What’s in a Voice? Getting Attitude from an App
In a previous post I compared formal English to artificial speech generated by computers in the way it tends to remove personality from the text. But I’m sure you’ve noticed that nowadays many of the robots we talk to on…
A Window on Art: In Conversation with Art Quilter Clairan Ferrono
When friend and neighbor Clairan Ferrono joined my quilting group years ago, I remember the rest of us cocking eyebrows at the new gal’s weird choices of color, her oddly shaped pieces, and her inability to quilt in straight lines.…
Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Badges
Recently commenters in this space scolded me for writing the phrase “smarter than me,” saying, in one case, “There is no reason to dumb down the language for conversation. When we speak correctly, we reinforce the proper use of the…
Double Punctuation :: A Start
The logic behind many punctuation rules is difficult to discern—for the excellent reason that there isn’t any.
Fix it! Stat! A Copyeditor’s Patience
The first summer I was legally able to work, I applied for a job as a telemarketer. I dressed up, went to the dubious address downtown, found the dog-eared little walk-up suite, and was told by a man in a…
Right, Wrong, and the Quest for Peace
In Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error, Kathryn Schulz contrasts the embarrassment and deflation of being wrong with that “gleeful little rush when we are right.” Going further, she points out the extra-delicious feeling we have when someone…
English 101: Still Learning
Q. Which formation is more correct, “The information requested” or “The requested information”? Questions like this to the online Q&A at the Chicago Manual of Style used to get me riled.