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Jan Freeman

@janfreeman.bsky.social
509 followers 146 following 477 posts

Mostly retired editor/writer/Boston Globe language columnist; author of centenary edition of Ambrose Bierce's "Write It Right" (Walker, 2009), whose subtitle is too long for this space. Not the Massachusetts poet who shares my name.

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Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
SURPRISED: by the lightweight verb in this morning’s Boston Globe headline: BC professor frets over AI bubble NOT SURPRISED: to discover that the law professor in question is a woman.
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Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
Kind of depends on how you define “answering to,” doesn’t it?
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Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
A message from NYT Wirecutter offered "Ideas for a screen-free summer" and I seriously thought it was about alternative ways to repel bugs. Oh. You mean this kind of screen.
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Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 03/10/2025
Not to be a killjoy, but isn't that what we all learned to call "first person plural" in our school days?
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Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 24/08/2025
Wow, actual stick stamps! But the article was referring to the marks on the floor, not the implement that made them.
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Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 24/08/2025
Oops I mean “stick stamps,” which sounds even less plausible
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Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 24/08/2025
But have you ever heard them called sticker stamps? I haven’t, here in Boston.
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Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 09/08/2025
Yes, some Americans say ROOT and some say ROWT (for highways) and it’s impossible to tell which commenters know this and which have no idea
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Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 09/08/2025
Day
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Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 09/08/2025
Just looking at the photo makes my knees go watery…
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Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 08/08/2025
Had a similar thought when I noticed the subtitles for “Outrageous,” in which Hitler is a major player, consistently spelled the salute “Seig Heil.”
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Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 05/08/2025
COCHLEA is no better
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Reposted by Jan Freeman
Justin Wolfers @justinwolfers.bsky.social · 01/08/2025
Folks who won't be fooled by politicized official economic statistics: - The Fed - The bond market - The stock market - Foreign investors Folks who will be flying blind in the absence of reliable econ data: - All of the above - Small biz - Big biz - Voters
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Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 12/07/2025
If you want the rest of the DARE volumes, I can let you have them for whatever they cost to ship. (Trying so hard to start deaccessioning. Did you know that the older you get, the heavier your books are?)
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Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 12/07/2025
I too thought that was the problem with "the hoi polloi." 🤔
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Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 30/06/2025
Oh it totally is, and one with an unusual history. www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/snuc...
merriam-webster.com
'Sneaked' or 'Snuck': Which is correct?
It's a Modern English Mystery
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Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 30/06/2025
Watching "Outrageous," about the Mitfords and Mosley, and the characters have uttered (versions of) "Want to come with?" 4 times in 3 episodes. Seriously doubt the Mitfords and their set ever used that locution, but willing to hear otherwise from Brits & linguists. (Does BrE do it even today?)
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Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 29/06/2025
Those were generally called "garter belts" where I was. A girdle could have straps for attaching stockings, but was definitely meant to constrict (mainly) the hips/butt.
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Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 29/06/2025
I hope we are all enjoying Justin Wolfers, one of my favorite economists (I know a few), who for some reason is allowed to say true things on TV. Watch him use the word "lying" three times about government debt claims.
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Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 29/06/2025
This drove me nuts when "Moulin Rouge" was a current movie. I don't think I ever once heard the correct vowel at the end of "Moulin." (Not really qualified to nitpick in French, but this one really stood out.)
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Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 29/06/2025
I am old enough to have worn an actual girdle (for a brief historical moment before we said goodbye to all that), and shapeware is definitely not a synonym for girdle. Though, granted, “girdle“ is an old word for many kinds of garments.
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Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 26/06/2025
I would guess many of your readers have heard this word in “Some Like It Hot.”
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Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 25/06/2025
Good call. I've spent the heat wave rereading "Parade's End," or rather mostly listening to an excellent audio version while occasionally consulting my shabby 1979 Vintage paperback.
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Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 25/06/2025
OH has loosened up a lot, but in my formative years you bought liquor at the state store from a guy at a single little window.
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Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 25/06/2025
Moved to CA from OH, can still picture the stunning sight of a shopping cart full of discount vodka bottles first time I walked into the Safeway.
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Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 09/06/2025
The OED's subscription notice tells me: "If you'd not want to renew it you can untick the 'Auto renew' option." Would love comment from BrE speakers — the cites I've found use "you'd not" to mean "you hadn't" or "you didn't," neither of which fits here. @lynneguist.bsky.social
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Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 09/06/2025
I share your love of the newels and risers, but one caution: if you’re old enough to declare that this is your last house, you are definitely old enough for the rule that you never go up or down without a hand on the banister. I realize that can’t apply to moving day, but it’s a life-saving habit.
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Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 07/06/2025
Also the audio versions with Patrick Tull narrating are amazing. I loved them despite having no special interest in either seafaring or the Napoleonic wars.
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Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 02/06/2025
That’s not just for contronyms like “nonplussed,” now taken to mean its opposite, but also means usages that are popular but disapproved of by segments of the population.
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Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 02/06/2025
Bryan Garner, author of the big usage books of our era, calls them “skunked terms.”
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Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 02/06/2025
And then there's "collop" as well ... or rather, there it isn't.
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Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 02/06/2025
I tried it and was not thinking of it as BrE, but who knows? It might be a word I learned in childhood from Winnie-the-Pooh.
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Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 31/05/2025
Her dance card?
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Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 30/05/2025
Just re-read this — it's on the weird side for Sayers (the dream part), and the Wimsey involvement is too little, too late. But short and entertaining enough!
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Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 28/05/2025
It was worse because it was on my phone, where the x's that close ads are so tiny you can barely see them. So I gave up and waited for the clarity of daylight and the laptop screen!
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Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 28/05/2025
Now I see, the "#2 and #3" skeet refers to your previous skeet describing those examples, not to anything about the answers. (I couldn't read the explanations last night because I kept getting whisked off to ad sites, but I did correctly ID the passives, as an editor should.)
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Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 28/05/2025
Yes, I think lots of people (especially those who, like me, would never have watched "The Apprentice") underestimate the effect of having him play the role of "successful boss" on TV for years.
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Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 28/05/2025
I’m not seeing the passive in #2?
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Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 24/05/2025
And they won’t correct the information until Thursday or Friday.
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Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 22/05/2025
Amused that your phone wrote “homophones” Instead of the near-homophone you must have intended…
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Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 22/05/2025
This is what milkshakes were invented for, but of course you could always make a healthy version if you aren’t feeling very sorry for yourself…
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Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 21/05/2025
This was me when my husband tried reading me Proust at bedtime.
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Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
I researched a lot of old usage books for my commentary on Bierce’s “Write It Right,” and I never saw this so-called rule. Guessing it’s the 20th-century invention of some sensitive schoolteacher.
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Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 19/05/2025
But… I am a right-handed person and I hold my phone in my left hand because I’m using my right hand to do whatever I’m doing on the phone (other than talking, of course). So are you doing everything on the screen with your non-dominant hand?
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Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 16/05/2025
I heard the name from grandchildren before I saw the show and for the longest time I thought it was called Papa Troll.
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Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 15/05/2025
Write It Right itself is online, but I'd love to send you a copy of the centenary edition I did in 2009, called Write It Right: The Celebrated Cynic's Language Peeves Deciphered, Appraised, and Annotated for 21st-Century Readers." (IOW I explain the history of his rules, when possible.) DM me?
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Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 15/05/2025
Hi Mignon — Bierce is more famous for DD, but he also wrote an actual usage guide, called Write It Right. The advice is pretty standard for the era, but there's plenty of fun, thanks to Bierce's wit and weirdness. (Don't call a building "dilapidated" unless it's made of stone, b/c "lapis"=stone.)1/2
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Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 03/05/2025
For me the magic is in the refills. I trace this fondness back to the post-dental appointment milkshakes of childhood, when they gave you a small glass along with the apparently bottomless metal blender container.
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Reposted by Jan Freeman
Boston Tom Levenson @tomlevenson.bsky.social · 29/04/2025
Trump is channeling King Cnut without the slightest grasp of the point the Danish monarch was trying to make.
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Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 24/04/2025
Dear ad copywriters, if it's the "first" guide of its kind then it's meaningless to call it the "most trustworthy," right?
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