Inkwood Books, Haddonfield, NJ, IBD flier: April 25, 10am to 8pm 11am to 12pm book signing with Kory Stamper [HI, IT'S ME, I'M HERE!] ALL DAY Enter to win a giant stack of books Spend $75 to get a from IBSD tote bag Fine the golden ticket for 12 free audiobooks from Libro.fm Raffle tickets and ARCs with every purchase Special Inciardi prints in the vending machine [these are very cool] Exclusive IBSD items, bookish templrary tattoes, snacks & treats, and more free stuff! (All prizes, totes, and stuff while supplies last) 10am to 6pm: make buttons with singularity press/spin the wheel to win a prize 6pm to 8pm Indie Bookstore Day After Hours Live music with Jess & Falc Dirty Shirleys & savory snacks

Main Point Books, Indie Bookstore Day flyer: Author Appearances at Main Point Book 10am: Erin Entrada Kelly--The Second Life of Snap 10am: Candaca Spizzirri--A Moose in Chartreuse 11am: Matt Phelan--Bartleby 11am: Kyle BEckett--Pizzasaurus 12pm: Nichole Michels--The Giant Orange What-The-What!? 12pm: Jo Piazza--Everyone Is Lying To You 1pm: Alli Hoff Kosik--Too Blessed to Stress 1pm: Lori Litchman--Pennsylvania Day Trips 2pm: Kory Stamper--True Color [THAT'S ME] 2pm: Lee Kelly--My Fair Frauds 3pm: Nancy Schwartz--The Main Line Mutt 3pm: Joseph Natalicchio--Baseball's Most Outrageous Promotions 4pm: Richard McKnight--Light Many Fires 4pm: Skylar Sokolowski--Baking Simplified

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...

Head shot of a fluffy yellow duckling in three-quarter profile against a blue sky with white clouds announcing the April CMOS Q&A.

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.)

Did you note "senctence"? Can we edit in Bluesky yet?

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.

A photograph of the Florentine Duomo against a blue sky in the background of an open library patio, with, on a table, a laptop with an #amediting sticker on it. A mouse, mouse pad, and green water bottle are near.

Some time at the office today.

Two shelves on a bookshelf with a collection of Italian dictionaries and etymology books.

Our Airbnb host has me feeling at home. Perfetto.

It's Gibberish, But Italian Pop Song Still Means Something The song's name is "Prisencolinensinainciusol." That's not a typo; in 1972 Italian pop star Adriano Celentano wanted to mimic what English sounds like to non-English speakers.

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

The Em Dash - 99% Invisible Last summer, Bryan Vance found himself in an argument with a stranger on Reddit. Vance, a Portland-based journalist who runs Stumptown Savings, a newsletter covering local grocery deals, had been accused of using ChatGPT to write his content. The evidence? His use of em dashes. “A Reddit user accused me of using AI, pointing to

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

When AI Fact-Checking Gets the Facts Backward I used a custom-built agentic workflow to fact-check an article I was writing about Apple's reported $5 billion deal with Google to power Siri with Gemini. The AI verified every claim as accurate. It ...

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: www.nytimes.com/2025/12/16/world/canada/...

Fiddly zee This time: Transatlantic Words of 2025, the rest of the WotYs, and more fun links

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.

Grammar Bite: Don’t Dangle Your Participle Participle. Your English teacher used the term once or twice but it didn’t really stick with you.

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: aceseditors.org/training/the-aces-academ...