"Win + ." for the 😊

 Quick tip: "Win + ." brings up an emoji menu on Windows. https://www.howtogeek.com/351344/how-to-use-windows-10%e2%80%99s-new-emoji-picker-in-any-app/

ClickLock Gives Extra Utility for Reading and Dragging

Windows allows us to change a little setting that locks the mouse click after holding it for a bit. I use it all the time for dragging windows and files across my multiple monitors and to use the scroll bar while I'm reading something. I recently got a new computer, and the default setting is "off." This highlighted just how useful ClickLock is. It is especially useful when I'm on the go and don't have a mouse or trackball with a scroll wheel.

I have mine set to a few ticks shorter than the default, or four from the left. Experiment with it. You want the hold to come naturally. Clicking on something to select it shouldn't trigger the lock. But you don't want to wait too long for it to kick in, either.

Here are directions for turning it on and setting the amount of time needed to click for it to lock.

https://www.makeuseof.com/mouse-clicklock-windows-guide/

It's “Daylight Saving Time”

 This week we (OK, most of us) in the United States moved our clocks forward one hour. And then the U.S. Senate advanced legislation to stop doing that. This brought to mind a commonly heard mistake: adding an s at the end of the second word in “Daylight Saving Time.” If you find yourself wondering about that or other time-related grammar questions, check out Grammar Girl’ post and episode here.

Happy Grammar Day!

 

Happy National Grammar Day! (Get it? March Fourth is a homophone for March Fourth!) Instead of sharing with you every grammatical tick that annoys me as it happens, I pledged to limit myself to sharing that no more than once a year. Here are my four grammar pet peeves for 2022:

• When you introduce a list, only use a colon if a complete sentence precedes the list. (“Here’s what you should bring on the campout: a sleeping bag, a tent, and a flashlight.” OR “You should bring a sleeping bag, a tent, and a flashlight.” NOT “You should bring: a sleeping bag, a tent, and a flashlight.”)
• Don't introduce a range that uses an en dash with “from” (“The meeting is 1:00–2:00 p.m. Thursday.” NOT “The meeting is from 1:00–2:00 p.m. Thursday.”)
• A full date requires a comma after the year unless it falls at the end of the sentence. (“They met on October 1, 2021, to discuss whether to sell the company.” NOT They met on October 1, 2021 to discuss whether to sell the company.”)
• Italicize only foreign-derived words that have not yet become common. When in doubt, check a dictionary like Merriam–Webster’s. (You lawyers can use Black’s Law Dictionary as your go-to.) (Italicize expressio unius est exclusio alterius, ipse dixit, and persona miserabilis, but not amicus curiae, chutzpah, de facto, de novo, ex officio, per se, or persona non grata.)
• BONUS TYPOGRAPHIC TIP: Choose between vertical space between paragraphs and indenting each paragraph’s first line. You don't need both.
• SECOND BONUS TYPOGRAPHIC TIP: NEVER use underline, especially for emphasis. God gave us italics for a reason. (There are a few exceptions for using underlines, mostly what lawyers refer to as “redlining” to indicate altered text in exchanging draft documents.)

"How to start a sentence: Consider all your alternatives, and sprinkle in some conjunctions, too"

"How to start a sentence: Consider all your alternatives, and sprinkle in some conjunctions, too" Bryan Garner has a great article here.

Chicago Manual of Style's 17th edition

The Seventeenth Edition of The Chicago Manual of Style arrived in the mail yesterday. There are many changes to update this edition from 2010’s sixteenth edition. Some noteworthy changes:

• guidance on using they as a gender-neutral way to refer to a specific person (5.48)
• removed the hyphen from email (7.89)
  
• internet, no capital I (7.80)
• guidance on PDF annotations  (2.119)
• guidance on nonbreaking and other types of spaces (6.119)
• new examples of currency showing Chinese currency and bitcoin (9.23)
• sanctions US as a noun (10.32)
• coverage of metadata and keywords (throughout, see 1.75, 1.93, 1.111, 1.120)
• added guidance for self-published authors and how they can benefit from following procedures once only followed by traditional publishers (throughout, especially chs. 1–4)

"Massive new searchable database of federal court opinions, including ones that haven’t been formally published"

"Massive new searchable database of federal court opinions, including ones that haven’t been formally published" The database is maintained by Free Law Project and is available here. Eugene Volokh explains here.