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.
Kurt Vonnegut, Jeffrey Eugenides, Cormac McCarthy, Dave Barry, Erma Bombeck, Augusten Burroughs, Jeannette Walls, Stephen King, Paula Poundstone, David Sedaris, George Carlin, Lynne Truss, Bryan Garner, Virginia Woolf, Christopher Moore, Noah Webster, Jack Daniels
Copy editors and proofreaders are detail-oriented, meticulous, sometimes fussy people prone to neatness and precision in all things, right? I mean, everyone knows that, right?
I noticed recently some rather curious comma choices in the New Yorker. Specifically, its editors seem to prefer to set off with commas prepositional phrases of "in" + a year.
I edited a rather problematic article the other day about a new music venue. It contained some good examples of the ways that wily words can mutiny. Here (disguised, as always) is one example:
