banner
LightNews
bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer
@bcdreyer.social
75K followers 1.4K following 50K posts
America's Copy Editor® author of the New York Times/IndieBound bestseller Dreyer's English and Stet! (the game!) • Random House copy chief/managing editor (ret.) • he/him/his benjamindreyer.com
Posts Media Videos Starter Packs
Pinned
bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · Nov 27
Greetings, new people here at House of Copyediting. Besides first-rate, IISSM, prose advice, you'll get:

• a random theater photo of the day, sometimes more than one
• birthday alerts for dead actresses, and occasionally live ones
• Sallie updates

And it's all free!
our dog, Sallie, a pit mix who looks a bit like a pony or a calf, dozing in bed amid pillows and a quilt
65 36 780
bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 35m
👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻
bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 1d
I'm going to be doing an intense two-hour intensive later this month, and: Check it out!
Being Your Own Best Editor - Five Things I've Learned
Join me in this live two-hour class and discover the Five Things I’ve Learned about how you can make your writing more effective, clearer, and sharper. For more than thirty years I’ve worked to help ...
myfivethings.com
1 2 12
bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 36m
Two full short stories and one special guest spooky excerpt, all in honor of SJ’s birthday (which is the day before).

👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻
bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 1d
OH MY GOSH THIS IS GOING TO BE SO MUCH FUN
December 15, 2025: An Evening of Shirley Jackson Readings – Writers Bloc Presents
writersblocpresents.com
1 10
Reposted by Benjamin Dreyer
resnikoff.bsky.social
Ned Resnikoff @resnikoff.bsky.social · 1h
It's somehow both wildly underreported and just out in the open that the vice president is either a neo-Nazi or, at a bare minimum, a neo-Nazi fellow traveler.
radleybalko.bsky.social
Radley Balko @radleybalko.bsky.social · 2h
Fascinating. Politico notes that when notified of the texts, many state-level Republicans fired or condemned these cretins. Now Vance emerges to excuse the racism, and calls the reaction to it "pearl clutching."

He seems determined to purge the party of its last enclaves of decency.
‘College Group Chat’: JD Vance Dismisses ‘Pearl Clutching’ Over Young Republicans Leak to Attack Jay Jones
Liberals hit back at Vance's blunt dismissal of racist, antisemitic and misogynistic messages leaked from a Young Republicans group chat.
www.mediaite.com
11 440 1.3K
bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 1h
today's not really random theater photo:

birthday girl Jan Miner in a 1980 revival of Lillian Hellman's Watch on the Rhine
1 11
bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 1h
"And you can shout bon voyage, or, frankly, you can both go fuck yourselves."
8
bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 1h
Of course, The Lyons should have been called The Lyonses, or the family should have been called Lyon, but that wasn't LL's fault.
2 6
bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 1h
I saw it three times! The last time, I took Mother Dreyer. Boy, did we have a blast.
3
bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 1h
👇🏻
Letters, we get letters! (part 2)
[further adventures in correspondence and housekeeping]
open.substack.com
6
bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 2h
Celebrating the birthday of glorious and much-missed Linda Lavin.

❤️
in The Last of the Red Hot Lovers in Gypsy in The Lyons
7 1 79
bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 16h
🫢
2
bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 16h
one can of course also play OIK
14
bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 16h
completely unfair that I can play ORC in Scrabble but not ENT
6 3 100
bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 16h
Oops.
1
bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 16h
I can find numerous examples of either, though not as exhortations, and not together.
1 1
bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 17h
Also, I've known the songs "Funny Face" and "Lose That Long Face" (both with Ira Gershwin lyrics, natch) intimately for decades, but it never occurred to me till right this second that Ira rhymed "Peter Pan" and "sweeter pan" in both of them.
16
bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 17h
p.s. no longer (I think); now (I'm sure)
2 1 9
bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 17h
It would never have occurred to me till I learned otherwise that a frown is anything other than a mouth thing.
1 5
bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 17h
That said, Stephen Sondheim coined the phrase "everything's coming up roses," which is pretty cool.
bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 17h
Once upon a time if I'd found myself wondering whether Ira Gershwin coined the phrase "turn that frown upside down," I'd have had to embark on a library quest, or asked similarly trivia-minded friends, and probably come up empty-handed.

Now it's a 20-second google search.

(He didn't.)
5 2 78
bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 17h
(And as adept as I was back then at finding things in reference books, I have l i t e r a l l y no idea how I would have gone about tracking a five-word phrase to its origin in the pre-Internet era.)
1 21
bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 17h
Decades ago I would occasionally phone the reference desk at the New York Public Library in search of some piece of information, and they could be extraordinarily helpful, but it was often impossible to get through in the first place. One has to learn to be self-sufficient.
1 3
bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 17h
Once upon a time if I'd found myself wondering whether Ira Gershwin coined the phrase "turn that frown upside down," I'd have had to embark on a library quest, or asked similarly trivia-minded friends, and probably come up empty-handed.

Now it's a 20-second google search.

(He didn't.)
12 1 75
bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 18h
me: [makes rueful little joke]

you [eager, apparently, to be muted]: Any programs he's closing are going to be rebirthed OUT OF THE ASHES AS A NEW CAPITALIST VENTURE for one of his friends to milk the FCK out of the American public to OFFER a previously NONPROFIT service!!!
2 2 28
bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 18h
"I mean, it's kind of funny when you think about it. Ironic, even."
atrupar.com
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 19h
Trump at the Charlie Kirk memorial event: "They fired sniper rifles at ICE agents, and me. But I made a turn at a good time. I made a turn at a good time. Charlie couldn't believe it, actually."
3 4 47
bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 20h
The film is AMAZEBALLS.
1 3
bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 20h
OF COURSE THEY ARE
1