Mindy Young
Senior Editor
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Mindy Young, an editor for Online Writing Jobs, got her start as a newspaper copy editor after earning her B.A. from Russell Sage College in Troy, NY. She spent nearly 13 years editing stories, writing headlines, and putting together pages for daily newspapers, and along the way, she also had the opportunity to write food columns and restaurant reviews. After earning a pair of Associated Press awards and a Suburban Newspaper Association award, she left journalism for the world of content marketing, where she puts her skills to work every day for OWJ clients and writers.
Mindy Young's Posts
What’s That Symbol For? Uncommon Punctuation
Have you ever found yourself looking at a symbol in a book, perhaps down in the footnotes, or examining a character on your computer keyboard and wondering, “What the heck is that thing, anyway?” If so, you’re not alone. At the intersection of archaic typography and modern computer programming is a jumble of uncommon punctuation. Here’s a look at some punctuation marks that might leave you scratching your head from time to time, plus one that isn’t used much but perhaps should be.
We’ve Read more [...]
Posted in Fun Stuff
How to Anger a Nerd: Controversial Grammar Rules
Want to start an argument fast in a room full of writers and editors? Come down decisively on one side or the other of these seven contentious grammar issues. While most grammatical conventions are settled and agreed upon, these rules have been making people dig in their heels for generations.
Split Infinitives
Whether you’re a fan of Star Trek or not, its tagline has been causing controversy since the original series debuted. “To boldly go”? “Ouch,” said the grammarians. “You Read more [...]
Posted in Fun Stuff, Writing Tips
Prefixed Pessimists: Words That Are Only Negative
Prefixes are little groups of letters that are usually attached to the beginnings of words to modify their meanings. And interestingly, the most common ones all usually carry negative meanings, like “anti-,” “de-,” “dis-,” or “un-.” These prefixes can be added to words to create pairs of opposites: Something can generate or degenerate, be irrational or rational, or be able or unable. But every once in a while, you’ll come across a word with a negative prefix that doesn’t have Read more [...]
Posted in Fun Stuff
Where to Draw the Lines: Dashes, Hyphens, and Underscores
Judging by a look at most people’s writing, you’d think that the hyphen was the only game in town when it comes to horizontal lines as punctuation. But actually, there are at least four accepted members of this family, some of which come in more handy than others. They are:
The hyphen: -
The en dash: –
The em dash: —
The underscore: _
So what is a dash, what’s the difference between hyphens, dashes, and underscores, and when should we use them?
When to Use a Hyphen
Hyphens Read more [...]
Posted in Writing Tips
Harvesting Eggcorns: Watching Your Figures (of Speech), Part 2
Fairly often, the letters we type to spell out a word or phrase don’t exactly match how we hear or pronounce it, and so it’s probably not surprising that eggcorns are quite common. What is an eggcorn, you might ask? It’s when you make yourself look silly by spelling a word or phrase how you heard it, using a wrong word or part of a word, rather than how it’s actually supposed to be written. The word “eggcorn” is an example of this: It derives from a misspelling of “acorn.” We’ve Read more [...]
Posted in Writing Tips