by Jamie Chavez | Apr 23, 2018 | Your Editor Says …
A friend of mine posted a series of four photos on Facebook the other day, showing pages in a book she’d checked out from the library. (The book was Sue Grafton’s N Is for Noose, which I haven’t read.) Someone who’d read the book previously had taken it upon her- or...
by Jamie Chavez | May 15, 2017 | Your Editor Says …
Yes, I am trying to hold back a flood. And I’m a little annoyed with the AP Stylebook. As the Washington Post says: The barbarians have done it, finally infiltrated a remaining bastion of order in a linguistic wasteland. They had already taken the Oxford English...
by Jamie Chavez | Oct 18, 2016 | Words & Language
My Facebook friends and I engaged in an etymological rabbit chase the other day. I do, seriously, get a kick out of this stuff, even if I really should be working instead of hopping around my office pulling reference books off the shelves. One friend wrote: Yesterday,...
by Jamie Chavez | Oct 8, 2016 | The Writing Craft
I love it when I find an article that gives me a name for something I’ve noticed in editing, but didn’t know what to call it. Such is the case when I read this article at Jane Friedman’s website: “2 Stammer Verbs to Avoid in Your Fiction.” What the heck is a stammer...
by Jamie Chavez | Sep 19, 2016 | Words & Language
We’ve talked a lot here about how the language we use—the words, the grammar—is a constantly evolving, living, almost breathing thing. (And still, still we want to stop that process! Human nature, I guess.) I’ve written about it in various ways, from...