Like other professionals, editors do interesting things when they’re not at their desks. In my “spare time,” I keep honey bees. Now, editing and beekeeping aren’t always the perfect combination. For example, the bees will inevitably swarm just as you…
Delete, search, replace, revise, revise, revise—changes and corrections are so easy with our electronic tools. But what if your words were literally cast in stone and you wanted to change them? Cemeteries are sometimes called “gardens of stone” and the…
After 66 years of comic strip life, Rex Morgan M.D. is welcoming an editor into the soap-operatic world that revolves around his medical practice. This gratifying development follows a storyline about domestic violence that saw Buck, Rex’s friend from high…
Like witnessing the demolition of a derelict building, there’s something splendid about seeing a false language idol topple. And topple it did when the Associated Press Stylebook announced in March that it’s now okay to use “over” interchangeably with “more…
These days the discussion about busyness, that long-lauded work-ethic virtue, doesn’t focus on how to become busier (most of us could write the ebook 10 Ways to Achieve a 16-Hour Work Day… if only we had time). Rather, the new…
In his new grammar and style guide, For Who the Bell Tolls, David Marsh of The Guardian newspaper offers a host of suggestions for navigating the ever-changing grammatical peals of the English language. He recommends, for example, not fussing over split infinitives, conjunctions…
During December’s gift-giving tradition, book sales skyrocket. This is good news for book lovers and for all promoters of the value and joy of reading. According to BookTrust columnist Matt Haig, though, book snob grinches lurk everywhere. “If books ever…
If you’ve ever puzzled over why “limb” and “debt” have a silent b, and what’s with the “i before e except after c” dictum when there are so many departures from the so-called rule, here’s the book for you. “For every quirk of spelling, there's…
When it comes to exercising your command of English grammar and usage in public, are you a respected but restrained and constructive source of knowledge … or a boorish, bullying show-off? What’s the difference between being helpful and being insufferable?…