grammar blog

If you ask me whether a verb is in the subjunctive mood, it’ll take me a while at best, require that I look up “subjunctive” before I can do the this hypothetical test set before me at worst.

As a copy editor, I know that typo-riddled content that needs after-the-fact correction simply could not have been reviewed by many people — in all likelihood, it was not reviewed at all.

While the term "buzzword" often refers to catchy or industry-relevant phrases, I am here referring to the phrases and words that become detached from their meaning and lose their impact.

Slang: sometimes its use in publication is lit, but other times it gets wack, and, shall we say, corny? Maybe we should not.

One of the more common critiques of the rise of technology and social media is that it stunts human connection. “Put down your phone and have a real conversation with someone.”

As a copy editor of this publication, the bona fide final bastion against hasty mistakes, I take my job seriously as a prophet of George and Charles Merriam, wielding my holy book.

“You get to the point, eventually, that you see only the grammar.”

Copy editing keeps content reliable, and part of why is it so alarming to see a nationwide trend of publications laying off their copy editors.

I’ve always been struck by how odd language is — how meaningless combinations of speech sounds can be strung together in meaningful ways to somehow create an infinite possibility of phrases.

Of all of the problems I expected I would encounter in the present, the “grammar police” have not turned out to be one of them.