mastodon 4.7.3Grammar Girl. Podcaster. New York Times bestselling author. Quick and Dirty Tips founder. Bad skier. California. she/her
#AmWriting 6/30 Grammar Girl podcast
#AmReading Long Live Evil (Brennan)
My camera doesn't do it justice, but I feel like I could sit and stare at this ocean forevermore.
Ginger mint lemonade at the parade. Highly re!
Pat does not eat cheese on his burgers, but when someone asked who wants cheddar and who wants Swiss, Pat asked, “Why not both?”
Pat is now the hero of dinner.
The most common vowel sound in English isn't A, E, I, O, U or even Y. It's the schwa, and it sounds more like "uh."
The schwa is written as an upside-down "e," and you hear it at the end of "sofa" and in the middle of "memory."
Amazingly, it can be spelled with *any* vowel letter. The A in "about"? Schwa. The O in "gallon"? Schwa. The E in "taken"? Also schwa.
The schwa is also one reason English spelling is so unpredictable — because so many different letters can represent a single sound.
An f’d up tale of the U.S. healthcare system:
Pat needs an MRI, and the orthopedic surgeon wrote the order Friday morning for a local hospital, because it’s somewhat urgent, and he thought we’d be able to get in same day.
But insurance didn’t approve it until Monday, and we couldn’t get an appt until Wednesday. And they just called, and we have to pay $2,200 on arrival because we haven’t met our deductible.
1/x
@janefriedman@threads.net is reporting that the amount authors will receive in the Anthropic book settlement has gone up because the class-action lawyers have reduced their fees.
It was $3,000 per book (usually split 50/50 with your publisher), but now it's likely to be $3,700 per book (before split).
It's worth your time to see if your name is in the database.
Check here: https://secure.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com/lookup
I made a calendar outline on a watercolor note card, and now I'm doing a tiny drawing each day.
Make art.
Make art.
I gave an interview this morning to Readers Digest about people introducing typos in their writing to prove they are human in this age of AI.
I just don't believe this is a widespread thing. I think people occasionally post about it, and those posts go viral because it's such an outrageous idea.
And if you want to "prove" your writing isn't AI, adding typos has got to be the laziest possible way to do it, so you're just proving you don't care about writing in a different way.
Did you know the fabric in your jeans is named after a city in France?
Denim seems like an American staple. But if you dig into the origin, it's actually a linguistic shortcut for the French phrase "serge de Nîmes," — "serge (a sturdy twill fabric) from Nîmes."
"Denim" is a toponym: a word from the name of a place, and you'll learn about more, such as "jeans" and "sherry," in this week's podcast.
WATCH: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oULr_H44QKo
READ: https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/transcripts/1172/
LISTEN: https://pod.link/173429229
Have you intentionally included typos in your work?
Last week, I talked with Reader's Digest about whether typos are — get this — the new status symbol. 😱
I'd heard of people doing it to "prove" they aren't AI (which I think is a bad idea), but I hadn't heard of the new "status symbol" idea. It's wild!
Did you know George Washington's copy of James Monroe's scathing memoir still exists—complete with Washington's passive-aggressive margin notes?
This week, I talked with Mastodon's very own @overholt@glammr.us, who oversees Harvard's Samuel Johnson collection (and more). We covered books that travel first class, why white gloves damage rare manuscripts, and more.
Check it out!
WATCH: https://youtu.be/wnR57OO94Iw
READ: https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/transcripts/1177/
LISTEN: https://pod.link/173429229
I get to listen to this parody of Alanis Morissette's "Ironic" for work today. :)
AP style lovers: You're going to devour this week's podcast with Anna Jo Bratton, the AP Stylebook editor!
We talked about why they finally made "healthcare" one word, how the six-person committee makes decisions, new AI guidance including "AI slop" and "vibe coding," and Anna Jo's pet peeve that made it into the Stylebook: "petted" is the past tense of "pet" (not "pet").
Check it out!
WATCH: https://youtu.be/KiMGaGFfhsk
READ: https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/transcripts/grammar-girl/1183/
LISTEN: https://pod.link/173429229
Our No Kings event isn't until later this afternoon, so I got to go see some cute goats this morning!
Ever wonder why your accent sounds the way it does — or why people judge you based on how you talk?
Valerie Fridland's new book looks at the social power of accents. We talked about why regional accents have been dying out since Gen X, how we actually *hallucinate* accents based on someone's face, and more.
Check it out!
WATCH: https://youtu.be/xhXeipYt5C0
READ: https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/transcripts/1179/
LISTEN: https://pod.link/173429229
The extra fun thing about my interview this week with @overholt@glammr.us is that he answers a lot of questions asked by YOU (my friends on Mastodon)!
Plus, you get to hear about snippy comments from George Washington in the margins of an old manuscript. :)
WATCH: https://youtu.be/wnR57OO94Iw
READ: https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/transcripts/grammar-girl/1177/
LISTEN: https://pod.link/173429229
New grads always ask me how to find freelance work, so I put together my best tips.
→ Here's just one: Find local events a national publication might want to cover. An editor may be more willing to take a chance on a new writer to save money on travel.
I got gigs this way as a new science writer by offering to cover conferences.
Share this with people you know who are looking for freelance work!
WATCH:https://youtu.be/N7BCrTCVqz4
READ: https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/transcripts/grammar-girl/1192/
LISTEN: https://pod.link/173429229
Do you think "gray" and "grey" are just American and British spellings?
I did — for my whole career. But it turns out color scientists say they can be different colors.
This week, I talked with former Merriam-Webster editor Kory Stamper about her new book "True Color" and the 3,000+ hidden color names lurking in the dictionary, including "begonia," "fiesta," and "sweet william."
Check it out!
WATCH: https://youtu.be/rhzOy8A4KuE
READ: https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/transcripts/grammar-girl/1173/
LISTEN: https://pod.link/173429229
I just noticed the Kindle version of my book THE ULTIMATE WRITING GUIDE FOR STUDENTS is on sale for only $2.99!
I updated the book in 2023 too, so it's still quite fresh. Get it while it's cheap. :)
Pat is very enthusiastically "You go, girl-ing" me, which is unusual, and I just realized he had a glass of wine with lunch, which is also unusual. 😋
People have been asking about the "unavailable" meaning of "out of pocket" for decades, but there's also an "inappropriate" meaning that is spreading. https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/articles/3-meanings-of-out-of-pocket/
helped create the development of --> helped create
I wrote a book with 101 tips about misused words, and here’s just one great reason to buy it: it's on sale right now!
Find the ebook at Bookshop and Barnes & Noble for only $2.99. These deals don’t last long, so grab your copy while you can! 📕
Our brains can retrieve words in just 200 milliseconds—as fast as a blink!
When I say "dog," your brain instantly processes the smell of wet fur, barking sounds, petting sensations, specific dogs from your past, and all your emotions about dogs.
Check out this week's podcast for more about how your brain retrieves words.
WATCH:https://youtu.be/1Bd5-Dl7FsA?si=mGJ9u8Pre1QrkpQB
LISTEN: https://pod.link/173429229
Have you ever groaned at an elaborate pun? It might have been a *feghoot*!
The term comes from a 1956 sci-fi series about time-traveling troubleshooter Ferdinand Feghoot, whose adventures always ended in cringey puns.
This episode is guaranteed to make you laugh, and there's even one piece of "Rocky & Bullwinkle" trivia that made me say, "No way!" out loud. :)
WATCH: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Bd5-Dl7FsA&t=119s
LISTEN: https://pod.link/173429229
Did you know that many people make a distinction between being eager and being anxious?
"Anxious" comes from Latin meaning worried or uneasy. "Eager" goes back through French and once carried plenty of negative meanings — "fierce," "savage," and even "sour." Over time, English softened "eager" into pure enthusiasm. 1/2
OK, here's some stupid fun:
I like to put an emoji before links to my podcast. Which do you think is better to represent YouTube?
If you read nothing about a post except that it "went viral," would you interpret that as the post being well received or poorly received?
Have you ever stared at "principal/principle" and thought, "Wait, which one?"
The old trick—"the principal is your pal"—is just the beginning. That P-A-L spelling has a surprising number of meanings: the lead actor, a CEO, the main part of a loan, and more.
The princiPLE spelling is simpler: a rule or belief.
Check out the podcast for a memory trick!
WATCH: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oULr_H44QKo
READ: https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/transcripts/1172/
LISTEN: https://pod.link/173429229
Would you use "hopefully" like this in a sentence:
Hopefully, the treaty will be ratified.
(I'm going to compare how people feel about this sentence today to an older survey that used the same sentence.)
@Sunny@universeodon.com Thanks! We have our first real doctor's appointment tomorrow, so I'll ask.
Do you love crossword puzzles?
If so, you will love all the trivia in my episode this week with Natan Last, author of "Across the Universe."
For example, the puzzles were more aligned with flappers than intellectuals. And some libraries even banned them!
Plus, you'll learn why WWII finally convinced the NYT to start running puzzles — with clues like "junkyard for Nazi subs" for the Atlantic Ocean.
It's tax day in the U.S., so let's talk abut the word: "tax" dates to the 1300s, from the Latin "taxāre" — "to charge or valuate."
But taxation is way older than the word. In ancient Egypt, governors just walked through your fields and took a portion of your crops. Before money even existed.
This piece has all kinds of fun slang terms for money (and why taxidermy has nothing to do with money): https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/qdtarchive/slang-words-for-money-a-tax-day-special/