Dictionaries

Featured Topic: Word Geekery

Hear ye, hear ye, word wonks! Today’s News Roundup has the story of wonk and several idioms, plus news words added to The Oxford English Dictionary.

Featured Topic: The Benefits of Online Dictionaries

One of the benefits of online dictionaries is all the wonderful lessons they share with us outside of definitions.

Admittedly, it takes very little to make me excited about vocab, but every once in a while something truly interesting pops up to remind me just how much I love the richness that can be found in a single word. Today, that something was the announcement of a photo contest on Merriam-Webster's website.

Copyeditors and other creative types and word-workers were surprised by recent developments with two online resources: Adobe’s entire line of Creative Suite (CS), now Creative Cloud (CC), software and The Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE).

Adobe CC

Featured Topic: Flexibility of Language

English is a wonderfully, frustratingly flexible language. Three articles that look at how far it can bend before it breaks.

Featured Topic: Words, Words, Words

In today’s News Roundup: how words get into the Oxford English Dictionary, nine ways to avoid singular they, and fancy-dancy reduplicative compounds.

Featured Topic: Words in the News

It’s not often that a copyeditor’s stock in trade makes mainstream news. In today’s News Roundup: the words we used to discuss the Boston marathon bombings*, the possible dark fate of DARE*, and how immigration enriches English.

Quick! Look up all of the words!

In celebration of National Library Week, Oxford University Press is offering free access to the Oxford English Dictionary to anyone in North or South America.

Featured Topic: Vocabulary

Copyeditors who keep up with word trends help their authors produce the tone and style they’re after. Today’s articles guide you on older usages, a questionable usage, and a new one.

Featured Topic: The Publishing Business

While we copyeditors often focus on abstracts, we must remember that publishing is a business and that concrete things, like profits, matter.