m. c. de marco

Via Language Log and also Universal Hub: a grammar vigilante from Somerville and his accomplice were fined and banned from the national park system after editing a historic sign. The Arizona Republic reported last week that

Jeff Michael Deck, 28, of Somerville, Mass., and Benjamin Douglas Herson, 28, of Virginia Beach, Va., pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Flagstaff after damaging a rare, hand-painted sign in Grand Canyon National Park.

Holly Lisle’s One-Pass Manuscript Revision: From First Draft to Last in One Cycle is aimed at those who revise too much:

And let’s debunk one bit of writer myth while we’re here: Doing a seventeenth revision on a project does not make a writer an artist or move him above the writer hoi polloi any more than dressing entirely in black or wearing tweed jackets with leather elbow patches or big, black drover coats.

I’d rather write a whole new novel than revise an old one, so I also found it inspiring. Now all I need is that dr

You can read about my fourth of July elsewhere. I didn’t have any deep political thoughts about the reading of the Declaration of Independence; my deep thought was that unalienable is not a word.

Apparently, unalienable vs. inalienable is still a matter of controversy, or at least confusion. Some blame John Adams, but others say the printer acted alone.