Erin McKean
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Erin McKean | |
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Born | 1971 (age 52–53) Charlotte, North Carolina, U.S. |
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | University of Chicago |
Occupation | Lexicographer |
Erin McKean (born 1971) is an American lexicographer, based in the San Francisco Bay Area.[1]
Early life and education
McKean was born in Charlotte, North Carolina.[2] She graduated from the University of Chicago with a BA/MA in Linguistics. As an undergraduate, she worked in a junior capacity on the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary.[3] McKean has also served on the Visiting Committee to the University of Chicago's Regenstein Library and helped organize a dictionary-themed exhibit, The Meaning of Dictionaries, there in 2007.[4][5]
Career
McKean is a founder of Reverb, which makes the online dictionary Wordnik.[6] She was previously the editor in chief of US Dictionaries for Oxford University Press and Principal Editor of The New Oxford American Dictionary, second edition.[7] [8] McKean is the author of seven books:
- Weird and Wonderful Words (illustrated by Roz Chast, with an introduction by Simon Winchester, Oxford, 2002)[9]
- More Weird and Wonderful Words (illustrated by Danny Shanahan), Oxford, 2003)
- Totally Weird and Wonderful Words (Oxford, 2006)
- That’s Amore (Walker & Company, 2007)
- The Secret Lives of Dresses (Grand Central, 2011)[10]
- Aftercrimes, Geoslavery, and Thermogeddon: Plus 157 More Words From a Lexicographer's Notebook (TED Books, 2011)
- The Hundred Dresses (illustrated by Donna Mehalko, Bloomsbury, 2013)
McKean is also the editor of VERBATIM: The Language Quarterly, and edited a collection of work from that publication, Verbatim: From the bawdy to the sublime, the best writing on language for word lovers, grammar mavens, and armchair linguists (Mariner Books, 2001). McKean's novel The Secret Lives of Dresses was a best-seller in Australia, and has been optioned for film.[11][12] She writes about dresses in her blog, A Dress A Day.
She wrote frequently for the "The Word" column in The Boston Globe.[13] from 2008 through 2011 and wrote "The Week in Words" for the Wall Street Journal from 2011 through mid-2013.[14] She has also written for the New York Times On Language column.[15]
She was previously a member of the advisory board of the Wikimedia Foundation[16] and is an advisor to Credo Reference.[17]
McKean's 2007 TED talk, "Redefining the Dictionary", was the genesis for the founding of Wordnik.com.[18] She has also spoken at Pop!Tech, Gel conference, and Thinking Digital, and gave a Wordnik demo at the All Things Digital D8 conference in 2010.[19][20][21][22] McKean sews her own clothes and often makes "stunt dresses" for speeches, including the Tetris-themed dress she wore to speak at the Web 2.0 Summit in 2009.[23]
In 2010, McKean was named an honorary fellow of the Society for Technical Communication.[24]
McKean has formulated 'McKean's law', also known as Muphry's law: "Any correction of the speech or writing of others will contain at least one grammatical, spelling or typographical error."[25]
"Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked ‘female'.", a quote from McKean's blog, A Dress A Day, has been widely shared on social media.[26] Since the original post features a large picture of Diana Vreeland, the quote has occasionally been misattributed to her.[27]
References
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- ↑ Chillax – If it works like a word, just use it. Boston Globe 2008-08-03
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- ↑ "A word to the wise". (12 August 2008). The Globe and Mail (Toronto, Canada), pp. A14.
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External links
- Media related to Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. at Wikimedia Commons
- McKean’s biography as member of the Wikimedia Advisory Board
- Erin McKean at TED
- Articles with hCards
- Use mdy dates from November 2014
- 1971 births
- American bloggers
- American book editors
- American lexicographers
- American people of Scottish descent
- Living people
- People from Chicago, Illinois
- University of Chicago alumni
- Wikimedia Foundation Advisory Board members
- Women linguists
- Women bloggers
- Women lexicographers