http://www.copyediting.com/wordpress/?prod_abbv=ce Tips and news about language from the editor of Copyediting Mon, 30 Aug 2010 16:21:34 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en CONFUSABLES 9: "Use" vs. "Utilize" Are you making a serious mistake by using utilize on your résumé? Copyediting contributing editor Grant Barrett explains. (2 min.) [podcast]http://www.copyediting.com/media/podcast/use_final.mp3[/podcast] Click here for more FREE podcasts on the topic of copyediting. http://www.copyediting.com/wordpress/?p=548&prod_abbv=ce CONFUSABLES 8: "Reign" vs. "Rein" Are you reining in a passion? Do you reign over proceedings? Copyediting contributing editor Grant Barrett explains. (1 min.) [podcast]http://www.copyediting.com/media/podcast/reign_final.mp3[/podcast] Click here for more FREE podcasts on the topic of copyediting. http://www.copyediting.com/wordpress/?p=546&prod_abbv=ce The National Geographic Style Manual I was hunting around this week to determine whether the style books on my shelves come to anything like a consensus about whether to hyphenate a term like "copyeditor-turned-politician" or "lemonade stand-cum-psychiatrist's clinic." My first hurdle was in even finding the discussion. My brand-new copy of the ... http://www.copyediting.com/wordpress/?p=539&prod_abbv=ce A few tidbits from the copyediting blogosphere: Dick Margulis at words / myth / ampers & virgule contemplates how book-publishing has changed in the last 30 years. "Three weeks of work, in the early 1980s, to get from camera-ready pages to proofs ready to send the customer. Instead of the day ... http://www.copyediting.com/wordpress/?p=537&prod_abbv=ce Many of you have told me you'd like to take more of our audio conferences but have a limited budget. Well, the folks who own Copyediting have a deal for you. They've decided to offer access to a big selection of archived audio conferences, many of them presented by yours ... http://www.copyediting.com/wordpress/?p=531&prod_abbv=ce The Yahoo Style Guide I've been grousing for a very long time now about two big holes that I perceive in the style guide market: a reliable guide to Web style to replace Wired Style, and a guide to style for magazines (so that magazine editors don't have to choose between ... http://www.copyediting.com/wordpress/?p=530&prod_abbv=ce CONFUSABLES 7: "Advisor" vs. "Adviser" Which is the right spelling: "Advisor" or "Adviser"? And what does style have to do with it? (2 min.) [podcast]http://www.copyediting.com/media/podcast/advisor_final.mp3[/podcast] Click here for more FREE podcasts on the topic of copyediting. http://www.copyediting.com/wordpress/?p=529&prod_abbv=ce Field of memes If you study linguistics, you have to get used to words that end in -eme: phoneme, morpheme, sememe (or seme), which, very roughly defined, are units of sound, form, and meaning. The entry in The Oxford English Dictionary for the suffix -eme says, "in Linguistics the termination of many ... http://www.copyediting.com/wordpress/?p=526&prod_abbv=ce Last week on Facebook we linked to an article by Lori Fradkin, a former copyeditor for New York magazine, "What It's Really Like To Be A Copy Editor." It is funny and biting. The article opens this way: "The word is douche bag. Douche space bag. People will insist that it ... http://www.copyediting.com/wordpress/?p=519&prod_abbv=ce More importantly, . . .  A Tip reader wrote to ask, "Please consider discussing the difference between more important and more importantly, as the latter is frequently misused in an attempt to add emphasis." I've written in the pages of Copyediting about this subject before, but it's been a while, and anyway ... http://www.copyediting.com/wordpress/?p=513&prod_abbv=ce