I'm Off the Wagon

Sorry for the silence -- it's been a busy time. (Stay tuned for more on that front.)

Meanwhile (or "In the meantime ...," but, please, not "Meantime ..."), here's a little something I wrote for my actual employer, about life in the correctional system.

And don't forget to follow me on Twitter, where I do most of my writing in this short-attention-span age.

Scholarships for Copy Editors!

Attention, college students: You still have a month and a half to apply to the ACES Education Fund for one of five nifty four-figure scholarships. In addition to the money -- four $1,000 awards and one prestigious $2,500 prize named for Merv Aubespin, the "godfather" of the American Copy Editors Society -- winners get some high-quality exposure to the kind of people who hire copy editors, to the extent that people hire copy editors these days. The application deadline is Nov. 15.

About That Lawyer ...

... there's good news and bad news.

Mark Your Dictionaries

"Tank" is now the official, not-at-all-slangy term for "fall." (In a related development, "rise" has become "spike.")

There's Only One Child Myth

What I'm pretty sure Time is talking about is "the only-child myth." A myth about only children, not the only myth about children.

(If anyone cites "the '-ly' rule" as an excuse for this ridiculous refusal to hyphenate, I'm going to, in the words of a certain Holly Hunter character, lose it.)