Wendalyn Nichols, editor of the Copyediting newsletter, offers useful tips to copy editors and anyone else who prizes clear and orderly writing. Here she illuminates the proper usage of the surprisingly tricky word "regard."  Continue reading...

What's an apostrophantom? Stan Carey defines it as "an entity that absconds from the printed page, leaving only a ghostly trace of the apostrophe it once was." See it (and its relative the apostrofly) on Carey's Sentence First blog.

Just in time for the beginning of the school year, linguist Neal Whitman investigates how "back to school" got transformed from a prepositional phrase to a noun phrase.

It's time for back to school! With Labor Day just around the corner, back to school is days away for many students across the nation, and for many others it has already come.  Continue reading...

In the United Kingdom, the apostrophe is rapidly disappearing from street signs. But one man has decided to take matters into his own hands.  Continue reading...

Yesterday, our Editorial Emergency crew Simon Glickman and Julia Rubiner offered up a great antidote to semicolon-phobia. "Once you understand their appeal," they advise, "semicolons can be addictive." Simon and Julia aren't the only ones singing the praises of this humble punctuation mark. Lately we've seen surprising expressions of affection for the semicolon, from New York to Paris.  Continue reading...

Admit it — you're afraid of semicolons.

Lots of folks, even professional writers, will cop to this phobia. No fear? Prove it (or engage in a little immersion therapy) by reviewing the following pairs of independent clauses and identifying the ones that would be better served by a semicolon than the period you see there now.  Continue reading...