We pause for a brief commercial message.
While you are online, marshaling your forces for Christmas shopping, allow me to suggest that The Old Editor Says would be an excellent choice for that student, that aspiring writer, that editor, that stickler, that annoying know-it-all on your list.
A slim volume of fewer than seventy pages of pithy sayings, it distills three decades' worth of editing lore and wisdom, and it is cheap.
The Old Editor Says has been received favorably by Stan Carey of Sentence first, Steve Buttry of The Buttry Diary, Dawn McIlvain Stahl at Copyediting, and Mignon Fogarty, who invited The Old Editor to do a Grammar Girl podcast.
Available in print form or on Kindle.
We regret intruding with a commercial message, but there is no one else to flog that damn book.
We return now to regular programming.