Check out these writing, editing, and communications blogs

I’ve made a few tweaks to this site of late, one of which was redoing the links section in the sidebar. Instead of linking to reference material, I’ve added links to some great communications-related blogs. So check them out and if you like one of the sites, please let that webmaster know how you found his or her blog.

Here are the links that I added today (some of them I have mentioned in previous posts):

• A Capital Idea
• A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing
• Bad Language
• commonspace
• Copyblogger
• Copy-Editing Corner
• Editor Evolved
• Quimera
• The Happy Booker
• Will Kelly
• Written Road

Also, if you have, or know of, a good website that covers writing, editing, grammar, communications, publishing, or any other subject in which this blog’s audience might be interested, please send me an e-mail and I will add it to the list.

Q: Which “only” is correct in the sentence “Only I only hit only him only in the eye only yesterday only.”

A: It depends.

On her blog, A Capital Idea, Nicole Stockdale, a copy editor at The Dallas Morning News, wrote about the major changes in meaning that a minor change in word placement can cause. She was citing a presentation the director of copy desks for The New York Times, Merrill Perlman, made.

Merill had the perfect example about how the placement of “only” can change the meaning of a sentence. Start with “I hit him in the eye yesterday.” Add the world only in different places and watch how the emphasis changes:

Only I hit him in the eye yesterday. (No one else hit him.)
I only hit him in the eye yesterday. (I also considered slapping and poking.)
I hit only him in the eye yesterday. (I could have hit plenty of others.)
I hit him only in the eye yesterday. (Not in the nose or the mouth.)
I hit him in the eye only yesterday. (Ah, what a day that was.)
I hit him in the eye yesterday only. (Had it been two days in a row, then you could be mad.)

While easy to notice in other people’s writing, word-placement mistakes are difficult to catch when reviewing something you wrote. So often we read our own writing as we meant it, not as it actually appears. Again, having the computer read back your material to you is a great way of catching these kind of mistakes.

But who edits copy editors?

I’ve recently encountered a few good blogs by professional newspaper copyeditors that have useful posts about style, punctuation, and word choice (even if they don’t use serial commas):

• A Capital Idea—A copy-editing blog covering grammar and newspapers like they’re going out of style
• Blogslot—The blog accompaniment to The Slot: A Spot for Copy Editors
• You Don’t Say: Language and Usage—A blog by John McIntyre, The Baltimore Sun‘s assistant managing editor for the copy desk

Copyeditors (at least these three) have interesting perspectives about language and current events (such as word choice and campaign slogans). Also, it’s interesting getting the perspective of editors whose work is directed predominantly by The Associated Press Stylebook, as opposed to The Chicago Manual of Style that I use most of the time.