And/or is a surprisingly contentious little conjunction. Some lawyers love it, but most editors hate it—and many judges hate it too. Find out what the problem is in my newest post on Visual Thesaurus, “Clear and/or Unclear”.
I have a new post on Visual Thesaurus, and this one’s open to non-subscribers: The distinction between less and fewer is one of the most popular rules in the peevers’ arsenal. It’s a staple of lists of grammar rules that everyone supposedly gets wrong, and sticklers have pressured stores into changing their signs from “10 […]
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, […]
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 […]
In case you haven’t been following me on Twitter or elsewhere, I’m the newest regular contributor to Visual Thesaurus. You can see my contributor page here. My latest article, “Orwell and Singular ‘They’”, grew out of an experience I had last summer as I was writing a feature article on singular they for Copyediting. I […]
In case you haven’t seen it already, I have a a new post up at Visual Thesaurus. It explores the history of toward and towards and specifically looks at copy editors’ role in driving towards out of use in edited American English. It’s only available to subscribers, but the subscription is only $19.95 a year. […]
