Please meet Patricia T. O’Conner, author of the national bestseller, Woe Is I and writer of the very popular blog, Grammarphobia. Please introduce yourself and provide some background information. I’m an author and a blogger, but in my previous life I was a newspaper journalist. At the Wall Street Journal in the early 1980s, I was an editor on the national desk and also wrote the Page 1 “Worldwide” column. Later I moved to the New York Times, where I …
Grammarist is pleased to introduce Lisa McLendon, aka “Madam Grammar.”Please introduce yourself and provide some background information. I’m Lisa McLendon and I teach editing and writing in the journalism school at the University of Kansas. Before this job, I was a newspaper copy editor for 12 years, and before that, I completed a Ph.D. in Slavic linguistics. What inspired you to starting writing your blog, “Madam Grammar?” I wanted to demystify grammar and usage, bust a few language myths and …
Grammarist is happy to introduce Jonathon Owen, editor, layout artist, T-shirt man and writer of the very popular blog, Arrant Pedantry.Please introduce yourself and provide some background information. My name is Jonathon Owen, and I’m an editor, layout artist, and freelance writer. I’ve been working in editing and layout for about thirteen years, and last year I finished a master’s degree in linguistics. I blog about grammar, usage, editing, and other popular language issues. I also write a column called …
Please meet Peter Harvey, EFL teacher, author and translator. Please introduce yourself and provide some background information. I am a qualified UK secondary-school teacher specialising in EFL, but I have never taught in the UK. After teaching English in Germany, Zambia and Saudi Arabia I came to live in Barcelona, Spain, in 1984. Now I teach adults on a freelance basis, translate and write books about English. I studied modern languages at Cambridge and I find that having studied languages …
The Grammarist is proud to introduce, James Harbeck, author, speaker and taster of words.Please introduce yourself and provide some background information. I’m James Harbeck. I make my living as an editor, writer, and layout designer. I blog as a word taster and sentence sommelier. I have a BFA, MA, and PhD in drama (theory, history, criticism) and am working on an MA in linguistics. I run, I sing, I cook, I ski, I occasionally act, I love to travel, I …
Please meet Blair Bolles, technical writer extraordinaire, author of numerous books and blogger for the popular site, Babel’s Dawn. Please introduce yourself and provide some background information. I am a professional writer with over 15 published books on a variety of topics. My first book was a guide to Africa’s wildlife parks, but the first book that I proposed and got published was about the language of children from birth to age 5. It was titled So Much to Say! …
Meet Betty Birner, professor of Linguistics and Cognitive Science at Northern Illinois University. She has also co-authored many academic publications including Introduction to Pragmatics. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell (2013). Please introduce yourself and provide some background information. I’m Dr. Betty Birner, Professor of Linguistics in the Department of English at Northern Illinois University. I received my Ph.D. in Linguistics from Northwestern University in 1992. I specialize in pragmatics, which is the study of language use in context. More specifically, my research focuses …
Arthur Plotnik is a versatile author with a distinguished background in editing and publishing. Two of his nine books have been featured selections of the Book of the Month Club: — The Elements of Expression: Putting Thoughts Into Words (Holt, B&N), now in a new and expanded edition from Viva Editions, with e-book and audio versions. –and The Elements of Editing, (Macmillan-/Longman), a standard reference through more than twenty printings. Please introduce yourself and provide some background information. Hail, noble …
Grammarist is delighted to offer our dedicated readers a featured interview a week. We have had the opportunity to interview numerous grammar experts, grammar bloggers, grammar authors and professors, and would like to share their stories and insights in order to connect you with their witty, shrewd and instructive take on the English language. Grammarist is honored to introduce our first interviewee…Bethany Keeley, author of “the “blog” of “unnecessary” quotation marks.” Bethany admits she doesn’t consider quotation marks a peeve. …