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'Tis the (election) season
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Advance voting begins in some states this week, which means election season is fully underway. And yes, "election season" is a term we're recommending you use between now and election week. The reason? The expansion of both mail-in and in-person advance voting has changed norms around elections. And when things change, journalists often need to find new terms that accurately capture the situation. Word choice improves understanding and shifts people's expectations, and in this case, it can help ward off misinformation since the election process itself has become politicized. Journalists play a critical role in getting people accurate, actionable information about voting — and what comes after they cast their ballots. You can do a deep dive on this topic with this Election SOS resource. And you can get all of this advice and more directly in your newsroom's daily workflow by signing up with Stylebot for free through the Knight Election Hub. ❤ Team Stylebot
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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.
We don't have a handy "principal is your pal"-style trick this week to help you remember the difference between the homophones tenant and tenet, but it looks like most of you don't need the help. Nearly 80% of last week's quiz participants got it right. It's a fun little parallel that both "principle" and "tenet" mean "belief," while their homophones can both refer to people. ("Tenant," of course, is an occupant or dweller.) While "tenant" and "tenet" have different meanings now, each word's...
Maybe it's all the back-to-school activity, or maybe you learned the "principal is your pal" trick back in elementary school, but either way, you didn't seem to need much help with last week's quiz. The vast majority of you knew that the principal would announce a new cellphone policy on the first day of school: Would it have been as easy to fill in this blank, though? Their _____ concern is getting all the children there safely. While principle is only a noun, principal is a noun and an...
Most of you didn't fall for it in last week's quiz, but you might say "infamous" is infamous for being misused. Or it might just be famous. Either way, we were impressed with last week's quiz results, with more than 63% of you answering correctly: So if the words famous and infamous aren't interchangeable, what's the difference? "Famous" simply means widely known, while "infamous" means being known for something bad (aka, famous with a bad rap). However, a lot of people seem to use "infamous"...