Thursday, March 12, 2015

Have you asked these questions?

Just ran across this post: 28 Questions Every English Language and Linguistics Student Has Asked.

My favorite is number 26: Are half of these terms even real words?

But number 27 is a close second: Why does Microsoft Word not appreciate my language skills? There are red and green lines everywhere.

Number 27 is the story of my life as I edit all kinds of interesting stuff with lots of technical terms. And that is also why number 26 is so relevant: I'm not always sure what is a typo and what is a technical term. Yesterday I had to e-mail an author to check on a word that I hadn't ever seen before. It turned out to be a typo, but it looked enough like a technical term—and was placed in a context where it could well have been—that I couldn't be sure!

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