Donna Lowe

•Proper nouns ending in s that make a z sound, e.g., BuzzFeed News’ [a

the word OK was “born as a lame joke perpetrated by a newspaper editor in 1839.” In short, it’s an abbreviation for “all correct,” and a cool trend at the time—because what else was there to do for fun in 1839?—was to base abbreviations on misspellings or alternate spellings; in this instance we’re talking about “oll korrect.”

“a colon means ‘that is to say’ or ‘here’s what I mean.’”

Bryan A. Garner’s Garner’s Modern English Usage, also known to many in the editing world as the bible

For a noun or other word that traditionally wouldn’t take a verb form, use a hyphen plus ing to create the verb form if the word ends in a vowel

Traditionally, curly (or so-called “smart”) quotes have had a use distinct from straight (also called “regular” or the not-so-nice “dumb”) quotes. Pairs of the former are used to enclose quoted material—and they’re “smart” enough to know when to open a quote and when to close it, hence the moniker—while the latter should be reserved for, say, the s

It’s standard for women to add an “a” to the end of their last name if they aren’t married or if they are commonly known as such

•Chinese names are often formatted as family name first, then given name.

•Bantu names (East/Southern Africa) typically place the family name first and given name second.