by Jamie Chavez | Apr 20, 2015 | Words & Language, Your Editor Says …
I have some bad news for you. You’ve been using that phrase wrong. I’ve had friends and colleagues use it wrong—in writing—and I have bitten my tongue, because, as you know, I am not a corrector unless I’ve been asked to be one. But I recently read it in Roxane Gay’s...
by Jamie Chavez | Nov 14, 2013 | Your Editor Says …
An author friend of mine sent me an email the other day. “Am I crazy?” the subject line asked. Her manuscript was in the copyedit phase; as she worked through the copyedited manuscript, she kept finding changes made by the copyeditor that seemed to go too far. She...
by Jamie Chavez | Feb 2, 2013 | The Arts & Media, Words & Language
There’s a group of people I became very close to in high school, and these many years later, we are still fond friends. Good friends. (My sister says this is unusual at our age—“Who keeps a dozen friends from high school? That’s just weird, James!”—but it’s true.) One...
by Jamie Chavez | May 31, 2012 | The Writing Craft, Words & Language
Teachers—and editors—get out the red pen when we see the same word used several times in the same paragraph (even somewhere on the same page). Most writers don’t realize they’re doing it—they’re just trying to get the words down. But after you’ve gotten the words down...
