About Strike-Through
All of us work with language in written-down form—whether we’re stay-at-home parents copying down stories our preschoolers are dictating to us, or mathematicians writing papers full of numbers and Greek letters, or teachers grading English or history papers.
We have to decide when to capitalize words when typing text messages, whether to use hyphens when writing down items on a Post-it note grocery list, and where to put closing quotation marks in a work email.
Often, we don’t think about why we’re making style and grammar decisions.
The point of this newsletter is to change that.
I’m a copyeditor, which means I spend lots of time reading manuscripts (or online content) line by line, analyzing the placement of every punctuation mark, the spelling and formatting of every word, and the general sense and flow of the text.
I’ve beaten many paths “through the thicket that is the English language,” in the words of Professor Drew A. Swanson, and I believe that with enough education anyone can write polished, readable prose—if he or she is willing to devote careful thought to style, grammar, clarity, and consistency.
Strike-Through isn’t a newsletter about how to write. I won’t tell you how to come up with plotlines for a novel or how to start off a newspaper article.
It’s a newsletter about how to edit—how to strike out mistakes from an already written block of words, whether it’s a text message or a 100,000-word academic work.
The noted copyeditor Carol Fisher Saller says that copyediting is, broadly speaking, monitoring “five categories of things”:
Spelling, grammar, and style
Accuracy
Structure
Logic
Elegance
With help from The AP Stylebook and The Chicago Manual of Style, two of the main authorities for copyeditors, I’ll weigh in on topics within those categories, such as how to write down the time of day (“10:00 a.m.”), how to format ellipses (as three spaced periods), and when to use the word “whom.”
My hope is that the tips I provide will help you find more joy in the details of the beautiful and incomparable English language.
Each issue is around 500 to 1,000 words, and issues are typically sent out at the beginning of every month.
If there are any topics you would like me to cover, please let me know in a comment or email.
About Me
My first formal experience with copyediting and proofreading was in 2014, when I was a junior in college. I had the privilege to work on the document volumes of the official Churchill biography for Hillsdale College Press (volumes 18–21, to be exact!).
Since then I have worked as a contract copyeditor and proofreader for academic presses and corporations, covering topics such as American history, literary criticism, theology, biblical studies, marketing, and entrepreneurship.
I’m especially grateful for an excellent foundation in English grammar and usage, thanks to my mother, who homeschooled me from kindergarten through twelfth grade and used the Rod & Staff Building Christian English series.
