I Have Returned, Probably

It was no surprise to me that I hadn't blogged on here in quite a while. It was a small surprise at how long it has actually been. I haven't posted anything on here since January! That's just wrong.

What follows are a few updates and a bit of what you can expect in the future (more posts, I hope!). The tl;dr version is this:

• My ebook is now free. 
• I've been posting about language elsewhere on the internet (and will continue to do so), though I won't be posting much longer at Copyediting.com. 
• I'll be posting a series of connected short stories here soon, for your reading pleasure.
• I hope to be posting here more in the future, as long as I both find the time to write and have something interesting to share.

Here's the fuller version:

Health, Heart, Brexiting, and Begging the Question in a Post-Truth America

Business continues to translate into busy-ness (did I mention that I was promoted to managing editor at The Saturday Evening Post?), and, for better or worse, blogging here lands pretty low on my to-do list. But that doesn't mean I'm not writing! Here are some things for you to look at over at Copyediting.com:

Oh the Horripilation!

Halloween 2010 by Armando Salum, Veracruz, via Wikipedia

As the scary clown population rises, Halloween nears, and the election gets creepier, journalists must surely be looking for some variety in how they describe the eeriness that seems to be pervading our daily lives.

I'm here to help — or rather, I was last week, when I published "Words to Make Your Hair Stand on End" at Copyediting.com. It's chock full of words you can use the next time you'd kill for a good synonym for goose bumps.

And I'm using kill metaphorically, of course. 

And Now, a Few Words from Our Presidential Candidates

Today at Copyediting.com, I wrote about four words used during Monday's presidential debate that sent people to Merriam-Webster's for clarification. But what really has the masses talking (by talking I mean tweeting, and by masses I mean four or five people) is one of the scariest images I've ever used in a post. Here it is:

Roald Dahl and the OED

This week at Copyediting.com, I wrote about the recent update announcement from the Oxford English Dictionary and its honoring of Roald Dahl's linguistic legacy on his hundredth birthday.

The OED Honors Roald Dahl

Last week, the Oxford English Dictionary honored children's
author Roald Dahl in its quarterly update.

I'm rather excited to see scrumdiddlyumptious appear in a dictionary, though I assume it will be some time before Word's spell-checker will recognize it. Guess I'll have to add it myself, because I plan on using it often.

A New Look for Copyediting.com

Copyediting.com is wearing some nice new threads these days. Go to the website now and ooh and aah at the slick new look. (What's even better than how it looks for readers is how it works for contributors.)

Caroling + Warm Alcohol = Wassailing

I've been racking my brain for the last few days trying to think up some words that only pop up around Christmastime so that I can build a blog post around them. Caroling and wassailing came to mind, and I wrote a bit about them over at Copyediting.com.

Turns out that, in many cases, the only real difference between caroling and wassailing is how much alcohol the revelers imbibe.

But I still seem to be stuck. What other seasonal words am I forgetting? What Christmas words make you stop and think?

And the Word of the Year Is(m)...

The lexicographers at Merriam-Webster dictionaries have named their 2015 Word of the Year, and it's not an entire word. It's the suffix -ism.

M-W's WOTY choices are driven by data about what people look up on the Merriam-Webster website and in their dictionary app. This year, seven of the top lookups end in -ism, leading them to bestow WOTY status on this little suffix.

Read more about it at Copyediting.com.

New Word When Again? A Change in Programming

New Word Wednesday will now move to (New Word) Thursday so that, on Wednesdays, I can direct you all to my new weekly vocabulary and usage column at Copyediting.com.

My first post is about the word decimate and its siblings annihilate, obliterate, and devastate.