spelling
November 6, 2009
- I posted this some time ago. Today, I received an email of thanks because it helped someone. I thought it might be worth setting out again for any writer who might be spelling impaired or grammatically challenged. Plus, for dyslexic writers of all ages there is hope. You can improve your writing skills. Here are some of my tried and true writing tricks for challenged writers. - Start A List - ...
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July 7, 2009
- Now here's a delectable word, one of those words that are crisscrossed and bundled up with meaning: spell.Hmm. Wonder what would happen if I opened the door and invited all of those meanings to come and sit inside my story? Perhaps something like this:My Auntie Elaine, having suffered a fainting spell during that spell of warm weather we had last week, gingerly made her way up the stairs to my ...
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July 6, 2009
- The Washington Post had a good piece a few days ago about an increasing number of typos in their paper -- a trend that corresponds with a decrease in the number of copy editors there.The article cites a decade-old study that emphasizes how messy copy can hurt a newspaper's bottom line (that means money, to all you publisher types). The idea is that "each misspelled word, bad apostrophe, ...
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July 3, 2009
- Re-reading the definitions, I've decided that maybe the Los Angeles Times made the wrong call when they referred to several different types of news media as "mediums." (Maybe they were too hasty, as was I in interpreting the meaning of all this.) Here's the full definition from the Times' go-to dictionary, Webster's New World. Note that it offers separate definitions for the plural of ...
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July 3, 2009
- An LA Times story today reports: "Two senior Los Angeles Times editors were given new responsibilities Thursday as part of an effort to create a 24-hour newsroom serving multiple mediums. "Now, back in my day, starry-eyed wannabe wordsmiths were taught that the the plural of "medium" is "media." Yes, we knew, dictionaries grudgingly allowed "mediums" as ...
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July 1, 2009
- "it doesn't faze me" = 612,000 hits"it doesn't phase me" = 1,740,000 hitsSome of the latter are, no doubt, people explaining how to use the word "faze." But one appears to be a bona fide error by an AP writer that got past an AP editor then past a Charleston Daily mail editor.Either way, I'm shocked that the "phase" version occurs almost three times as ...
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June 24, 2009
June 2, 2009
- This was in my e-mail in-box today:"Dear Subscriber,Coming soon, you can expect a little more out of your Los Angeles Times subscription. That's because in addition to the award-winning content you already get, you'll receive our exclusive monthly newsletter, "Above the Fold," in your email.Each month you'll receive premium articles, reviews and exclusive sneak peaks of upcoming ...
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May 27, 2009
- For those who missed it, there's a piece in today's Los Angeles Times about early lexicographers Samuel Johnson and Noah Webster and their influence on spelling. Johnson didn't believe that any word should end with C, and so filled his 3 million-word tome with stuff like "musick" and "publick."Two generations later, enter Webster, who returned fire with a dictionary that nixed ...
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January 8, 2009
- All who doubt the word-conspiracy theory I wrote of yesterday, behold: Not 24 hours after I blogged that the word "Columbia" was out to get me by trying to pass itself off as "Colombia," I found this in a story I was editing:"(The restaurant) Botero, features ... original paintings by the Columbian artist along the walls."Diabolical. So I thought I'd do a Google ...
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