HeyJaredA Word About...
Words. Words about words. Words about copyediting. The occasional cultural observation.
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 15
- Latest publication
- Oct 1, 2026
- Audience
- Checking…
- Earliest in this view
- Aug 3, 2026
Latest issues
a book! (opens the original)
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My pal Peter Sokolowski, longtime champion Merriam-Webster lexicographer, has written an enthralling history of English-language dictionaries, and it’s a massive amount of fun, and they even let me blurb it! “Peter Sokolowski’s enthralling1 By Definition is a history of dictionaries, which makes it as well a history of how we think, how we perceive, how we communicate—and, yes, how we spell. A chronicle of the layered attempts to codify and capture the English language—with amusing detours
To Tell the Truth (opens the original)
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I lied. One evening a little over a week ago, I took note (at another venue) that it was about to be the birthday of the illustrator Arthur Rackham,1 and in his honor I posted, from his marvelous 1907 edition of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,2 this: <a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!7Y4G!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_prog
Happy Aldo Ray’s birthday! (opens the original)
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After three intense, for me, days of travel, talking talking talking, and travel, I’m more than a bit brain-dead today, but today is/would have been the 100th birthday of the actor Aldo Ray, and I will grab up any opportunity to celebrate the film that made him a star, 1952’s The Marrying Kind, directed by George Cukor, written by Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon,1 and featuring, besides Aldo and, in what I nominate as her best performance, Judy Holliday, a lavish supporting cast including Madge Ken
“Copy editors are like priests.” (opens the original)
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Quite a number of years ago now I was invited to a party at the home of a novelist whose book I’d worked on as a Random House production editor. It was a blazingly hot summer afternoon, and there were perhaps more people in attendance than the little walled-in garden of this swank Upper East Side townhouse could comfortably accommodate. A Word About... is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.<form class="
Write This, Not That! (Mostly.) (opens the original)
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It’s as hot as literal Hell here in the City of Angels (yesterday topped out at 102 degrees; today it’ll reach a mere 96 degrees), or, as darling Lucille Bremer would and indeed did say in Meet Me in St. Louis, “It’s as hot as July!” <source type="image/
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