by Jamie Chavez | Apr 4, 2016 | Words & Language
A writer friend of mine posted a little meme* on Facebook the other day: Never make fun of someone if they mispronounce a word. It means they learned it by reading. I doubt there’s any data to support this but I feel the truth of it in my bones, having been a child...
by Jamie Chavez | May 2, 2015 | The Book Biz
Yes, those are scare quotes. I was reading this review of the two Steve Jobs biographies (the one Walter Isaacson published in 2011 and a new one called Becoming Steve Jobs) and was about to dash off a letter to the editor, noting that a book that uses the phrase...
by Jamie Chavez | Apr 30, 2015 | Your Editor Says …
I was reading my Entertainment Weekly at lunch the other day (“12 Things You Never Knew About Harry Potter”) and was positively gobsmacked by number nine: The Half-Blood Prince 9. To try to ensure consistency within the books, and keep track of characters, spells, and...
by Jamie Chavez | Apr 27, 2015 | Your Editor Says …
I really love the left-brain/right-brain duality of editing. It’s both prescriptivist and descriptivist. It’s a puzzle and yet has the same elements. Every project’s different … and every project’s the same—in that it has a need for a style guide. You’ve heard me talk...
by Jamie Chavez | Mar 9, 2015 | Authors & Other Writers, Words & Language
I was cleaning my office the other day (it gets so cluttered that eventually I just have to stop and straighten up; in this case, I needed to reclaim some space in the shelved closet and on the desk) … and a dusty page from a notebook fluttered onto the floor. Wow....
