June Casagrande's Blog
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Aug.25.2010
Yesterday I showed a writer friend this passage* from an article I was copy editing about a young couple's courtship:
Supporting each other through their education and in their career dreams has been a vein running through their 10-year relationship that continues today as Jones pursues her...
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Aug.19.2010
The Chicago Manual of Style's new 16th edition is out, complete with updated style rules for book publishers and anyone else who follows this style. Some major style changes are here.
Per Chicago,
* web now takes a lowercase W, even though Internet and World Wide Web are still treated as proper...
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5 comments
Jul.28.2010
Bryan Garner, author of "Garner's Modern American Usage" tweeted this morning about two really fun words I thought I'd pass along:
"Two of my favorite words: 'ultracrepidarian' and 'mumpsimus.' They're closely related.
"ultracrepidarian = one who pretends to greater...
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6 comments
Jul.23.2010
Below is the first page of Stieg Larsson's "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest." Below that is the same page with the copyedits and queries I would have made had it been my job to do so. Below that is a sample rewrite.
The edits are similar to what I do to some of the feature articles...
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3 comments
Jul.13.2010
After my recent post about Stieg Larsson, I got an itch to compare his verbs to some other writers'. Not that verbs are the biggest problem with Larsson's writing. Far from it. Still, I was curious. So here is an inventory of verbs from a page of Larsson's "The Girl Who Played with Fire,...
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9 comments
Jul.12.2010
I'm reading Stieg Larsson's "The Girl Who Played with Fire," though I don't know why. It's the second in a trilogy, after "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo."
The prose in "Dragon" was pretty bad. But the story was fast-paced enough to distract me from the writing....
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1 comment
Jun.21.2010
Came across this in my copy editing today:
"Taking a leading role in putting a fresh face on this world-famous celebrity mecca ..."
Of the first six words, three are "ing" forms. Yuck, yuck, and yuck. And the utter hollowness of "taking a role in putting" deeply...
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6 comments
Mar.05.2010
I really enjoyed reading blog posts from the Red Room blog contest on typos.
Its nice too no were all inn the same bote. : )
I'm a writer, a copy editor, and a generally error-prone person. And through that experience, I have an opinion on whose "fault" a typo in print is.
Typos are...
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2 comments
Feb.03.2010
Merriam-Webster says that the adverb form of "supposed" is indeed "supposedly," but the adverb form of "supposable" is "supposably."
Webster's New World is a little vaguer, noting "supposably" only as a "related form" of "supposed....
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6 comments
Dec.31.2009
Reuters today reported on some overused and icky terms that are now "banned."
Think "sexting," "unfriended," and any compound including the word "czar."
The Reuters piece is extremely informative -- not for what it says but for how it says it. You see, the...
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2 comments
Dec.28.2009
I thought fellow writers would enjoy a sentence I came across in my copy editing work recently:
"Recovery time varies but is approximately about one week."
I bow down in awe of the inefficiency. I enjoyed this so much I was almost reluctant to change it. On the other hand, razing it was...
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Oct.26.2009
I've never found word origins very interesting. Every once in a while, I'll wonder how we ended up with a word like "shampoo," so I'll look it up to see that it comes from a Hindi word meaning "to massage."
But for the most part, in those moments when I'm feeling both...
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12 comments
Oct.19.2009
"Admission is $17 for adults, $10 for children 5 to 12. One child per adult under 5 is complimentary."
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5 comments
Oct.08.2009
"Americans concerned about heart health, but not proactive enough to prevent it."
http://www.physorg.com/news173942032.html
(Thanks to reader 8'FED for that.)
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7 comments
Sep.17.2009
Longtime New York TV newsman Ernie Anastos recently told a colleague, on air, something that sounds a whole lot like "keep fucking that chicken." The context makes it more baffling. It seems he may have been trying to express something akin to "Keep up the good work."
I've...
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4 comments
About June
June Casagrande was born in March and lives in a small house. She wrote a grammar/humor book called "Mortal Syntax" and, before that, one called "Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies." She sincerely hopes you buy a million copies of each.
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Causes June Casagrande Supports
Planned Parenthood, ClimateCrisis.net, the Richard Dawkins Foundation, Pet Orphans of Southern California, KIVA