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Questions for a Newspaper Copyeditor: Pam Nelson
Pam Nelson has been a journalist for 35 years. She is currently an editor at the McClatchy Publishing Center in Charlotte, N.C., and a blogger at The Grammar Guide on the American Copy Editors Society’s website. Tell us how you got into editing and a little about your current editing and blogging gigs. My first job was as a features writer, but I also had copyediting duties. I enjoyed the editing more than the reporting, so after about a year, I moved to the news desk. When the copy desk in Raleigh was abolished (I had been there 24 years), we were given the choice of taking jobs at the McClatchy Publishing Center in Charlotte or taking a severance package and leaving the company. I chose to go to...
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= Member only contentCopyediting Newsletter
Most Recent Issue
Title
February 2012
Being the editor of Copyediting has its privileges, and one of them is the opportunity to dig into new resources and review them for you. This issue, I get to review new editions of old favorites: The American Heritage Dictionary (AHD) and the Concise Oxford English Dictionary (COD). A dictionary is a copyeditor’s best friend, so having two new editions to reference can be a real lifesaver.
The new edition of AHD is long overdue, with AHD4 having been published in 2000. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt took the update seriously, adding 10,000 new words to the new edition and creating a website and a smartphone app for the digitally minded. COD is now in its 12th edition, with 400 new words, 400 new spellings, and 300 new senses. COD now has a website and an app as well, and they’ve been updated along with the print edition. It’s enough to make a word nerd like me swoon.
From our contributors, you’ll find
Grammar on the Edge: Andrew Johnson rethinks expletive constructions.
Currents: Mark Farrell tackles the thorny subject of objectionable copy.
Technically Speaking: Adrienne Montgomerie teaches you to work more efficiently in Acrobat.
In Style: Norm Goldstein looks at state abbreviations across style guides.
Plus, Mark Peters gives us a new resource in Word Resource Roundup, and I answer a lot of little nagging questions in Ask the Editor.
Other Recent Issues
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December 2011
As you may know, the Copyediting website has been redesigned. Our goal with the redesign was to give you more content, on a more frequent basis, particularly through the blog, which now publishes three times a day. Our coverage on the blog includes new words and news stories of interest to copyeditors. As a result, we’ve retired In the News and Dictionary Update from the newsletter. In their place, you’ll find Grammar on the Edge by Andrew Johnson and Word Resource Roundup by Mark Peters. Grammar on the Edge will discuss unusual grammar points, while Word Resource Roundup will aim to teach you to be your own lexicographer using available tools and resources. Let us know what you think of them.
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October 2011
Our main feature in this issue will talk about the sometimes vexing topic of subject-verb agreement. We all learned at some point the simple rule that a subject and its verb must agree in number; that is, a singular subject takes a singular verb, and a plural subject takes a plural verb. Why, then, does Amy Einsohn list 25 subject-verb agreement rules? We’ll break down agreement into three types—formal, notional, and proximity—and talk about each one in turn.
From our contributors, you’ll find
Currents: Guest editor Mark Farrell on saving the semicolon
Technically Speaking: Dick Margulis on troubleshooting e-mail problems
In Style: Norm Goldstein on copyeditors and search engine optimization
—plus In the News with Andrew Johnson, Mark Peters’s Dictionary Update, and a lot of little nagging questions answered in Ask the Editor.
Thanks for researching that for us!
