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Stylebot

Hone your writing skills and never use "hone in" again. Get writing tips, have fun with words and learn something new in a one-minute read each week by signing up for Stylebot’s newsletter.

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🎓 Congrats, grads

A note from Stylebot's founder, Laura E. Davis: This is the last week to vote for our team to win the Public Choice Award in the Next Challenge for Media & Journalism. Voting closes on May 19. I wrote this week about our mission and why I started Stylebot. If you love this newsletter and/or care about our mission, please consider casting your vote here if you haven't already. Thank you in advance. Now onto our regularly scheduled programming... Graduation season is upon us, and even if you’re...

about 15 hours ago • 1 min read

Hello Stylebot subscribers, it's Laura, Stylebot's founder. Some of you already know me and Stylebot's origin story. But many of you don't, so here's a quick version: I started Stylebot for my students at the USC Annenberg School of Journalism because I wanted them to engage with our style guide and other foundational newsroom documents as part of their daily workflow. I've spent my whole career doing newsroom innovation, and I firmly believe that in order for journalism to survive, it must...

4 days ago • 1 min read

ICYMI in last week's newsletter: Stylebot is a finalist in the Next Challenge for Media & Journalism, and voting for the Public Choice Award is now open. If you love our work, please show your support by casting your vote here. Thank you in advance! If you’re celebrating Mother’s Day this weekend, you have occasion to both address your mom (You’re the best, Mom) and talk about her (I’m spending the day with my mom). While your mom is certainly the best and deserving of the royal treatment,...

8 days ago • 1 min read

Tomorrow is “Star Wars” Day. For the uninitiated, the informal holiday is a play on the date, May 4, and one of the franchise’s most well-known phrases: “May the Force be with you.” Now, if you strictly follow the rules, you would write “May the fourth.” That’s because the ordinals “first” through “ninth” are spelled out, then you start using numerals at “10th.” But since we use numerals for all dates, most people celebrating this holiday write “May the 4th.” You’ll sometimes see it written...

15 days ago • 1 min read

Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month begins next week. The month celebrates such a diverse group that there's not even one consistent name used to refer to it. Since labels such as "AAPI" are easy to reach for but can often be imprecise, we're sharing a portion of the newsletter we sent last year to mark AAPI Heritage Month. If you've subscribed to this newsletter since May 2023, this will be new. And if you've been with us longer than that, we hope this serves as a good...

22 days ago • 2 min read

Monday marks the 54th annual Earth Day, a day meant to encourage environmentalism, sustainability and climate action. To celebrate, we’re digging a little deeper on the terms climate change and global warming. The terms are often used interchangeably, but global warming is only one aspect of climate change. Global warming is exactly what it sounds like: The temperature of the Earth as a whole is on the rise. But this temperature rise doesn’t happen equally everywhere, with temperatures rising...

29 days ago • 2 min read

Thanks for participating in our eggcorn hunt a couple weeks ago. We know a lot of you found all of them, but here’s the answer key just in case: Original: He had a deep-seeded fear of jellyfish, so she knew the postponement of the scuba diving trip was, for all intensive purposes, a cancellation. She quickly began pouring over travel guides to find another way to spend their time off. Corrected: He had a deep-seated fear of jellyfish, so she knew the postponement of the scuba diving trip was,...

about 1 month ago • 1 min read

Parts of the United States will experience a total solar eclipse on Monday. That means the moon will be between the sun and the Earth for a brief period. It’s a rare event that won’t be visible again in the U.S. until 2044. Much less rare is inconsistent capitalization for the entities involved in this phenomenon. You often see “sun” and “moon” capitalized, even though they don’t need to be. But what about Earth? That’s a different story. Longtime subscribers might remember that we covered...

about 1 month ago • 1 min read

Sunday is Easter, and in honor of the holiday, we’re doing something a little different this week. We can’t take you on an egg hunt, but we can take you on an eggcorn hunt. Longtime readers of this newsletter might remember eggcorns, which are misinterpretations of common phrases. One example is writing “per say” instead of “per se.” So how many eggcorns are in the following paragraph? He had a deep-seeded fear of jellyfish, so she knew the postponement of the scuba diving trip was, for all...

about 2 months ago • 1 min read

If someone has a bad reputation, why do we say they have a “bad rap” and not a “bad rep”? After all, “bad rep” is just a shorter way of saying “bad reputation.” True as that may be, the phrase is in fact bad rap. Confused? We’re here to help. The word “rap” originated as a way to describe a punishment (think “rap on the knuckles”) and evolved to be slang for taking the blame for something. From there, it came to mean a prison sentence or criminal indictment. The term “rap sheet,” meaning...

about 2 months ago • 1 min read
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