@h-e-saunders.bsky.social, you have been a fantastic ACES president! 🫡 #aces2026

“Someone asks, When will these changes take effect? … about four minutes.” — Colleen Newvine, AP Stylebook product manager. #ACES2026

AP style: Following the change from "health care" to "healthcare," AP now recommends "daycare" and "childcare." #ACES2026

This is mindblowing. I need some selfcare after this. #ACES2026

It's World English Day! A good moment to highlight that English isn't the same all over the world. Here are my favourite differences between British and American English that can actually lead to miscommunications, with full credit to @lynneguist.bsky.social who is the leading authority here!

I've just been asked (by a BrE speaker who distinguishes 'biennial' and 'biannual') whether 'semi-annual' is an AmE solution to that particular annoyance of English. And the answer is 'yes'

#NotAtACES but want to see live posts from the #ACES2026 sessions? Bookmark my blog post, where I’ll add links to the sessions I live-post on Bluesky throughout the conference. carolinavonkampen.com/live-from-ac... #amediting #editorsky #freelanceeditor

Are you attending #ACES2026? Don't miss our #APAStyle session! What's New in APA Style? 2026 Copyediting FAQs Update: AI and Beyond 🕙 April 23, 10:00 a.m. 📍 Chastain D&E, 6th floor #aceseditors #APA7 @acesediting.bsky.social

I thought the "hopefully" debate was over. I was wrong. Sentences like "Hopefully, he'll pass the test" became trendy in the 1960s, and trendy uses annoy people. The AP allows it, but Bryan Garner calls it a "skunked term." Check out the podcast for more! Listen: is.gd/hIdwA3

The Westin Peachtree pool. #ACES2026

PHILLY: I have two local signings on Saturday, April 25, for Indie Bookstore Day! HADDONFIELD, NJ, Inkwood Books, 11am-noon. Lots of cool giveaways! (inkwoodnj.com) MEDIA, PA, Main Point Books, 2-3pm. Local author extravaganza! (mainpointbooks.com) Love your local bookstore, go Flyers!

CMH 🛫ATL. #ACES2026

Just changed an "over" to "more than" for clarity: "The outage lasted more than 15 hours."

"Archaic" means old and out of fashion. "Anachronistic" is something inappropriate for the time period. "Arcane" means understood by few. These are etymologically unrelated.

struck by lightening -> struck by lightning #spellcheckcantsaveyou

Unusually important antedating o'the day for the Historical #Dictionary of #ScienceFiction: "time-travel" v., from 1933 to 1928. (OED has 1937.) (Also cleaned up the rest of the entry.) sfdictionary.com/view/486/tim...

Q. Should “ill” plus a verb be hyphenated? Q. How are titles of books treated in Spanish text? Q. What is the rule on hyphenating multiple colors? We answer these and other questions about Chicago style in the April Q&A at CMOS Online. cmos.style/QandA

Missed the live show? Catch up on our chat with Kory Stamper, where we explored color names, color science, remembering forgotten contributors, and her latest book, "True Color." Watch here: bit.ly/ThatWordVideo #ThatWordChat

Wake up, kids We got the dreamers disease. ‘Radical’ comes from a Latin word meaning "root." Because roots are the deepest part of a plant, ‘radical’ came to describe things understood as fundamental or essential. ‘Radical change’ was a change at the root of a system.

Honest question: are there words that you need to look up every time you encounter them? Words that are at once familiar (you've seen before) but out-of-focus (they send you to the dictionary)? I bet all of us have one or two like this. For me one such word is 'militate.' What are yours?

A MARE, pronounced like MAR-ey, is a large, level, basaltic plain on the surface of the moon. It appears dark to the naked eyes. This MARE comes from the Latin for SEA—because these plains were once thought to be seas, a notion going back to antiquity. The plural, true to the Latin, is MARIA.

"Assent" is agreement; "ascent" is climbing higher. Think "sc"aling a mountain for "ascent." "Ascend" comes from the older "descend," literally "climb down." (Photo by Mark Allen of a recent ascent up a street on the south side of the Arno River in Florence, Italy.)

I see no use for a hyphen in "in depth" at the end of a senctence: The subject of an in-depth article was interviewed in depth. AP Stylebook, Merriam-Webster, and American Heritage are silent, but Oxford's dictionaries enter the older, unhyphenated version. Recent usage trends toward hyphenation.

Some time at the office today.

Our Airbnb host has me feeling at home. Perfetto.

Linguists must have been giddy to hear “Prisencolinensinainciusol” at the Olympic opening. I was. www.npr.org/2012/11/04/1... share.google/7Erdf4Dvc6vy...

#ThatWordChat returns with Joshua Blackburn and Jess Zafarris for a deep dive into wordplay, obscure etymologies, and the new edition of "League of the Lexicon." Tues, Feb 10, 4:30 ET | 20:30 UTC Sign up: ThatWordChat.com #BoardGames #Lexicon #WordNerd

On @99pi.org again! This time round I spoke to Will Aspinall about the storied em dash (‘—′, that is, rather than ‘–′ or ‘-′, but you knew that). Listen at 99percentinvisible.o..., or read my own earlier piece on AI and the em dash at shadycharacters.co.u....

If you are an editor who used the CIA factbook, it’s gone, deleted, so you might want to bookmark this

AI does not obviate the need for human editors. @shellypalmer.bsky.social breaks it down. shellypalmer.com/2026/01/when...

When Canadian editors noticed British spellings appearing in federal budget documents, they did more than note a shift in style. They wrote an open letter to the prime minister. Read the full story: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/16/world/canada/carney-british-spelling.html

The latest Separated by a Common Newsletter is out! Includes: •SbaCL Transatlantic Words of the Year! •More WotYs from around the world (check out the Icelandic one, it's great!) •Links to insightful linguistic content & yet another stupidly addictive game lynneguist.substack.com/p/fiddly-zee

TOMORROW: That Word Chat’s #WOTY panel returns. Experts from the OED, Merriam-Webster, the American Dialect Society, the University of Michigan, the University of Sussex, and Mashed Radish break down the words of 2025. Still time to grab your spot! Register: ThatWordChat.com #ThatWordChat

Here is a seemingly unpopular viewpoint: The military arrest of Maduro was not an attack on Venezuelan sovereignty. Maduro is a criminal who lost an election and was reigning as a dictator. (I can see why the White House struggles to make that case, though.)

Indicted Election-Denying Would-Be Dictator Captures Indicted Election-Denying Dictator

To clarify: Calibri is a *much* better font than Times New Roman and making text more readable is an important goal. So… it’s not (just) a joke. The US government continues to punch down.

In this month's Improve Your Business Writing newsletter, I'm tackling dangling participles. These grammar mistakes can blur meaning and create unintentional humor in professional writing. Read it now: zurl.co/LtBUR #AmEditing #WritingTips

In the latest episode of #ThatWordChat, Peter Sokolowski joins us to talk about the 12th edition of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate—the first full update in 22 years. Watch: bit.ly/ThatWordVideo Listen: thatwordchat.podbean.com #Lexicography #Editing #Publishing #MerriamWebster #CulturalLinguistics

Have something editors can use tomorrow? Submit a proposal to present an ACES Academy webcast.  Start your proposal here: https://aceseditors.org/training/the-aces-academy/want-to-propose-a-webcast

@marthabarnette.bsky.social's book "Friends With Words" is packed with tidbits for word lovers, and in today's podcast we look at some of my favorites: — Why South Carolinians paint porches "haint blue" (to ward off ghosts) — What a "quidnunc" is (a nosy neighbor) 1/2 APPLE: tinyurl.com/2cwb4t92

What is YOUR Word of the Year for 2025?

Our friends at the @efafreelancers.bsky.social are asking the editing community to help with this year's Rate Survey with a public survey open to nonmember freelancers in addition to the member survey. Find the public survey at twp.ai/ImsmoM

Cutting it fine again...November's Separated by a Common Newsletter is up and out! Includes: pled or pleaded? British kids talking trash? Last words and words of the year. Plus links, links, links lynneguist.substack.com/p/pled-head

I think some of the greatest delights in the business of etymology are words—especially everyday words—whose origins we just don’t know. So, this year, I’ll do an etymological Advent calendar on this theme: words with origins that are obscure, uncertain, or otherwise unknown.

It's arrived—and it's gorgeous. I opened @merriam-webster.com's new Twelfth Collegiate at random, and the first word I came across was the second, verbal sense of "load." Huzzah! This spread also showcases some delights, like the illustrations and word lists.

The latest #WotY2025 is from Macquarie Dictionary: AI slop www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Our Policy magazine (.ca) declares #WotY2025 PATHOCRACY www.policymagazine.ca/our-policy-m...

Oh my goodness, it gets earlier every year. The Word of the Year thread starts here with the 2025 German Youth WotY: das crazy uk.news.yahoo.com/das-crazy-vo...

2025 has been an eventful year for Canada's identity. To commemorate the year, The Society for Canadian English is choosing a 2025 word of the year (CWOTY), based on the Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles. Have your say: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

We've just recorded an interview with @lynneguist.bsky.social for the @lexispodcast.bsky.social and then this absolute whopper of a piece gets published. It's jam-packed with clichéd complaints, hoary hyperbole & xenophobic waffle. archive.ph/2025.11.24-0...