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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.
Happy Halloween! We definitely didn't scare you off with last week's quiz. In fact, more of you answered than usual, and more than half of you got it right: Here's how we would write the sentence: In this day and age, it's hard to tell whose data is secure. So we count three total errors that we put into two buckets: Contractions and possessive pronouns: Possessive pronouns can be tricky because we're so used to using apostrophes for possessives. But possessive pronouns (its, hers, theirs,...
Well, we failed to wreak havoc with last week's quiz 🙃 Despite the fact that the phrase is sometimes written as "wreck havoc," 80% of you got the right answer. "Wreck havoc" is an understandable mistake, because both "wreck" and "havoc" mean "destruction." But, using that logic with the verb "wreck," which means "to damage," "wreck havoc" means to damage destruction. "Wreak," meanwhile, means "to bring about," hence "wreak havoc." You didn't need the bonus points, but some of you replied to...
We don't often think of chairs as being deep. But roots? Absolutely. And therein lies the confusion between "deep-seated" and "deep-seeded." But most of you weren't fooled by last week's quiz — almost 60% of you knew the phrase is "deep-seated." So how did "deep-seeded" get planted (😉) in our minds? Well, for starters, the two phrases sound alike. Plus, "seeded" makes sense in this context. It's a classic eggcorn, a misheard phrase that sometimes makes logical sense. Some other eggcorn...