Search

Enter your keywords

Search results

Golf balls and stones on sand under water.

Filed under:

GETTABLE GRAMMAR: Taking issue with “issues”

Thursday July 11, 2013

I think I remember the first time I heard the word issues used as a synonym for problems. I was watching a long-forgotten television sitcom, and one character commented on another’s weird behaviour by saying, “She has issues.” She overenunciated the word issues and at the same time made little scratching gestures with her index […]

Tagged

Tagged

editing publishing style useage word choice

Filed under:

EAC The Editors Weeklyblog The Inner Editor – The Useful Conversation – V Durksen

Alberta editor Virginia Durksen puts the rest the notion of war between prescriptivism and descriptivism and speaks in favour of useful conversations instead. This week on The Editors’ Weekly (July 24, 2013).

Tagged

Filed under:

book_typo

A published typo might seem like the end of the world to an editor, but do all editors experience feelings of failure when they see a typo in their work? Virginia Durksen suggests editors need not be perfectionists, in The Editors’ Weekly blog, “Myth: Perfection is the Goal.”

Tagged

The love of money is not only the root of all evil; it is also the root of ghastly copy.

Filed under:

WASTED WORDS: Squandering Words on Money

Wednesday October 9, 2013

The love of money is not only the root of all evil; it is also the root of ghastly copy. I find it particularly ironic that word economy has only a fleeting acquaintance with commerce. Consider the grating and ubiquitous tautology, expensive price, as in, “The house with a river view comes at a more […]

Tagged

Tagged

editing redundancies redundancy tautologies tautology Wasted Words wordiness

bowl of sugar

Filed under:

Victoria Neufeldt

Shy Words

Tuesday December 17, 2013

When I took on the commitment, a year ago, of contributing blog postings about language, I began bravely by tossing out a little ditty that came into my mind, inspired by Dr. Seuss: “New words, old words, shy words, bold words.” Well, I’ve talked about old words and new words, but shy words? What was […]

Tagged

Tagged

etymology language lexicon shy words vocabulary

Filed under:

editor_definition

dictionary definition of an editor

Tagged

Filed under:

fedora

The Editor’s Fedora

Tagged

Filed under:

pen_dictionary

As an editor Karen Virag never seemed to flinch when she spotted a gaffe. Why should she? She had the smarts to identify the problem and the skill to correct it. She also recognized that without bad writing she wouldn’t have a job.

Tagged

Filed under:

watch_schedule

If you’re just starting out as a freelancer, whether you’re a writer or an editor, keep in mind that the only way to survive is to be brutally efficient .

Tagged

An open dictionary shows the letter A on the left page and the letter B on the right page.

Filed under:

Wasted Words: Careless Pirates

Tuesday May 27, 2014

To create a great language simply plunder other tongues of their attractive words, assimilate them and profess longstanding ownership. English proves this. Oxford has half a million distinct words. Add technical and slang and you’ve topped one million, says the Global Language Monitor. Most are swag. Unfortunately, piracy can be thoughtless. We are all accomplices, […]

Tagged

Tagged

language tautology usage Wasted Words word choice