With the recent release of the new Hobbit movie, The Desolation of Smaug, a lot of people have been talking about the pronunciation of the titular dragon’s name. The inclination for English speakers is to pronounce it like smog, but Tolkien made clear in his appendixes to The Lord of the Rings that the combination […]
I have a new post up on Visual Thesaurus about the use, misuse, and history of the word electrocute. Some usage commentators today insist that it be used only to refer to death by electric shock; that is, you can’t say you’ve been electrocuted if you lived to tell the tale. But the history, unsurprisingly, […]
My last post, “12 Mistakes Nearly Everyone Who Writes about Grammar Mistakes Makes”, drew a lot of comments, some supportive and some critical. But no point drew as much ire as my claim that irregardless is a word. Some stated flatly, “Irregardless is not a word.” One ignorantly demanded, “Show me a dictionary that actually […]
Today through November 24th, you can get 15 percent off all orders at the Arrant Pedantry Store when you use the coupon code WITHLOVE at checkout. It’s a good chance to get the word nerd in your life (or yourself) a little something for Christmas.
There are a lot of bad grammar posts in the world. These days, anyone with a blog and a bunch of pet peeves can crank out a click-bait listicle of supposed grammar errors. There’s just one problem—these articles are often full of mistakes of one sort or another themselves. Once you’ve read a few, you […]
I recently received a review copy of Keith Houston’s new book, Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols, and Other Typographical Marks, based on his excellent blog of the same name. The first delightful surprise I found inside is that, in a tribute to medieval manuscripts and early printed books, the book is rubricated—the […]
Once again I apologize for not posting anything new lately. I had a crazy summer of freelancing, job hunting, moving, and starting a new job, so I just haven’t had time to write recently. I hope to have something soon. But in the meanwhile, you can enjoy free shipping from the Arrant Pedantry Store when […]
Summer officially began just a few days ago—at least that’s what the calendar says. June 20 was the summer solstice, the day when the northern hemisphere is most inclined towards the sun and consequently receives the most daylight. By this definition, summer lasts until the autumnal equinox, in late September, when days and nights are […]
I have a couple of new posts up elsewhere: a brief one at Copyediting discussing those dialect maps that are making the rounds and asking whether Americans really talk that differently from each other, and a longer one at Visual Thesaurus (subscription required) discussing the role of copy editors in driving restrictive relative which out […]
As many of you probably know, editors usually use Microsoft Word’s Tracking Changes feature to mark their editing changes. The days of writing in red pen all over hard copies of documents are largely gone. What this means is that authors and editors can communicate by email, sending versions of the document back and forth […]
