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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
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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
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bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 3h
Precisely! Yay!
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bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 3h
You do of course have the right to politely decline copyediting, and I know that you know that copy editors are doing their thing in their copyeditorial way in the service of clarity and tidiness.
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bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 3h
That strikes me as highly sensible, practical advice.
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bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 4h
👇🏻👇🏻
bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 9d
There are any number of legitimate reasons to use the passive voice, including not knowing who did the action you’re describing, or the whom is more interesting/germane than the who.

Exonerating the Gestapo is not one of those legitimate reasons.
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bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 4h
👇🏻
bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · Sep 27
Terms You Should Understand Before You Wield Them

• comma splice
• run-on sentence
• passive voice

[copyediting note of the day]
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bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 4h
I always wanted Vanessa Redgrave to play me. 🤷🏻‍♂️
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bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 4h
I’ve just started reading Ira Levin’s The Boys from Brazil, which Random House published in 1976, and am highly pleased to see that it was designed by my former colleague Carole Lowenstein, who designed Dreyer’s English.
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bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 4h
It’s a preference more than a rule, and copy editors tend to wield it because some writers are massively random about it.

I will take some responsibility or blame for this, whichever you prefer.

The preference, that is, not the randomness.
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bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 4h
You got this!
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bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 4h
[cc, to be sure, @stephensposato.bsky.social]
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bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 4h
I have perforce and for perfectly merry reasons been largely offline these last few days, and I’ve found it extremely restful.
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bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 4h
Along with writer Ling Ma and Chicago Public Library star Stephen Sposato, I’m to be one of the three judges of the 2025 Story Prize, and I’m super thrilled about this (plus honored).
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Reposted by Benjamin Dreyer
samadams.bsky.social
Sam Adams @samadams.bsky.social · 8h
welcome to the new era of CBS News, where brave truth-telling takes precedence over spelling Zohran Mamdani’s name correctly
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bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 9h
answer key

👇🏻
bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 10d
If I wielded any actual power over the English language:

1. Everyone uses the series comma.
2. No one definitively declares what a word does or doesn't mean without looking it up first.
3. The phrase "begs the question," in any of its meanings, is banned.

Otherwise you're on your own.
djsziff.bsky.social
David Ziff @djsziff.bsky.social · 10d
But imagine if you had that power!
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bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 9h
Ah, the joke-not-getters have arrived en masse.
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bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 10h
[narrator's voice]

It does not in fact beg the question.
atrupar.com
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 11h
Sean Duffy: "The No Kings protest, Maria, really frustrating. This is part of antifa, paid protesters. It begs the question who's funding it."
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bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 10h
and not to exist
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bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 10h
today's random theater photo:

Leslie Howard and Ilka Chase in Philip Barry's The Animal Kingdom (1932)
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bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 10h
Happy Cornel Wilde's birthday!
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bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 23h
My guess.
bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 1d
today's random theater photo:

Maxwell Anderson's Key Largo (1939)

Paul Muni, José Ferrer, Uta Hagen, and Kal Malden are in there somewhere.
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bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 1d
of 65-year-old what
reuters.com
Reuters @reuters.com · 2d
Trump, 79, has "cardiac age" of 65-year-old, doctor says reut.rs/4mZNZbu
Trump, 79, has "cardiac age" of 65-year-old, doctor says
Donald Trump was found to be in "exceptional health" in a medical evaluation, the U.S. president's doctor said in a memo released by the White House on Friday, with his "cardiac age" 14 years younger than in "chronological age."
reut.rs
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bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 2d
Oh dear how unfortunate.
atrupar.com
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 2d
Witkoff tries to praise Netanyahu in Tel Aviv, but has a hard time finishing his thought because of booing
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Reposted by Benjamin Dreyer
duchessgoldblatt.bsky.social
Duchess Goldblatt @duchessgoldblatt.bsky.social · 2d
Creative expression is the essence of the human experience. Try making a new dish, or stabbing an ai slopper with a wooden stake.
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bcdreyer.social
Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 3d
🙏🏻
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