words / myth / ampers & virgule

occasional essays on working with words and pictures
—writing, editing, typographic design, web design, and publishing—
from the perspective of a guy who has been putting squiggly marks on paper for over five decades and on the computer monitor for over two decades

Thursday, December 23, 2021

BLOG MOVED

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My website was getting gray around the temples, but now I have a spiffy new one , and you can find any newer blog posts there , if I get ar...

Tuesday, May 04, 2021

Comma—chameleon

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This is a brief technical essay for editors. Writers are free to listen in. Why do we argue, er, debate, er, discuss commas so often? Why d...

Thursday, January 21, 2021

The lowly speech tag

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I think it's time for a general reconsideration of the convention around commas and speech tags. I'm sensing some grumbling among th...

Tuesday, January 05, 2021

Judging a book by its . . . no, not just its cover

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For most of my life, the public was willing to trust experts—in whatever field—to render judgment on what was better or worse (an argumen...

Sunday, January 03, 2021

Standing type

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I lost track. I produce an annual directory. As directories go, it's not large—under 300 pages in 6″ × 9″ format. But I was looking fo...

Thursday, October 15, 2020

Mycelia of hatred

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I've been thinking (always dangerous, I know). A common metaphor for hatred, bigotry, and discrimination of all kind is that a wind-born...

Sunday, May 27, 2018

What you should expect when you ask for editing

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In a discussion on Facebook, a new editor said that in a copyediting course she had taken, the instructor was a strict prescriptivist about...

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About Me

Dick Margulis: Not the only curmudgeon on the Web but one worth getting to know. This blog will remain here for reference, but any new posts will appear at the blog on my current website.

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