![]() “Till” actually predates “until” and means essentially the same thing.Ĭommas around “etc.” The abbreviation “etc.” is a bad choice for news-quality writing because journalism calls for specificity. They all agree that the term you want is “till.” This did not evolve from an error. You can contract it that way if you like, but you’ll be out of sync with every professional editing style in American English. ![]() Everyone, or almost everyone, uses the one-syllable alternative to “until.” It’s pretty natural to assume that the shorter term is actually a shortened form, a truncation that lobs off the first syllable and replaces it with an apostrophe: ’til. The writer wanted “ordnance,” which means military weapons, often artillery, which you don’t want left lying around unexploded. I once edited an article that mentioned “unexploded ordinance.” An ordinance is a rule or law passed by a local government, often dealing with things like parking or potholes, which are unlikely to massively combust. Here are some other things that, as I’ve learned in my editing career, you’ve just got to know. ![]() Only by having read and noted, either consciously or subconsciously, that the correct term is “eke out a living,” would you understand that “eek” is an error. If you’ve heard the expression “eek out a living,” you’re not going to check your dictionary to see if that’s a valid definition of “eek.” Like those other editors, he would send me, the copy editor, an email to tell me when an article was waiting to be reviewed in a shared computer folder.īut, whereas the others would tell me there was a story waiting for me in the queue, he would report he’d sent me something in the “cue.” ![]() It became clear pretty quickly that the newly minted editor was out of his element - not the born wordsmith his colleagues were. Years ago, I worked for a team of editors who hired someone from another department in the company. ![]()
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