25 Percent Off at the Arrant Pedantry Store
Today’s the biggest sale of the year at the Arrant Pedantry Store, with 25 percent off all orders. There’s no coupon code required—just click the “Redeem” button below the navigation bar. And don’t forget that you can customize colors and even put the designs on other products. The sale only lasts today, so check it […]
I Am Begging You to Learn How Dictionaries Work
It’s a phenomenon as predictable as the tides: a dictionary adds new words or definitions, and then people grouse about those changes, either because they don’t like the new words and think that the dictionary is declaring them acceptable, or because they personally have never heard of those words before and therefore don’t see why […]
A Sale and a Speaking Event
Today through May 28, you can get 20 percent off everything at the Arrant Pedantry Store—just click the “Redeem” button on the blue bar near the top. Check out old favorites like Stet Wars and Battlestar Grammatica or newer items like Hwæt and Ask Me About the Great Vowel Shift (fair warning: people will actually […]
What I Learned from Teaching Editing
Last semester I finally had the opportunity to do something I’d thought about for many years: teach a college class. I’d applied for a full-time teaching professor job before, but I’d been passed over in favor of someone with more experience. I’d also been approached about adjuncting before, but I passed up the opportunity because […]
Right, Wrong, and Relative
A while ago at work, I ran into a common problem: trying to decide whether to stop editing out a usage I don’t like. In this case, it was a particular use of “as such” that was bothering me. To me, “as such” is a prepositional phrase, and “such” is a pronoun that must refer […]
Umlauts, Diaereses, and the New Yorker
Several weeks ago, the satirical viral content site Clickhole posted this article: “Going Rogue: ‘The New Yorker’ Has Announced That They’re Going To Start Putting An Umlaut Over Every Letter ‘O’ And No One Can Stop Them”. I’ve long enjoyed poking at the New Yorker for its distractingly idiosyncratic style,* but I had a couple […]
The “Only” Comma, pt. 1
A little while ago, one of my coworkers came to me with a conundrum. She had come across a sentence like “Ryan founded the company with his brother Scott” in something she was editing, and she couldn’t figure out if “brother” should be followed by a comma. She’d already spent quite a bit of time […]
My Latest for Grammar Girl: “Verbing Nouns and Nouning Verbs”
A lot of people dislike it when nouns like task and dialogue are turned into verbs, but this process has been a normal part of English for centuries. In my latest piece for Grammar Girl, I explain why we should all relax a little about verbing nouns. Read the whole piece or listen to the […]
Get 20 Percent Off at the Arrant Pedantry Store
Today and tomorrow only, you can get 20 percent off T-shirts and other items at the Arrant Pedantry Store. Just use the code ANYTHING20 at checkout. And remember that you can customize the design color and even put the designs on other items, including mugs and phone cases. Just hit the pencil icon below the […]
The Style Guide Alignment Chart
I’ve been thinking a lot about style guides lately, and I decided that what the world really needs right now is the definitive style guide alignment chart. I posted a version on Twitter the other day, but I wanted to do a slightly expanded version here. (Quotes are taken from easydamus.com.) Lawful Good: The Chicago […]