By Carol Hinz
Editorial Director, Millbrook Press

You might think that editors are all spelling experts. While I can brag that I won the sixth grade spelling bee at my (very small) elementary school, I’m not an exceptional speller. The truth is that good copyeditors and proofreaders catch spelling errors every day (not everyday) and make the rest of us look good. I’ve also learned that whenever I’m in doubt, I should turn to my trusty dictionary. Spell-check does help, but it doesn’t contain every single word or name, and it doesn’t always agree with our dictionary of choice—Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th edition.

Here is a brief list of words that I’ve learned how to spell correctly thanks to recent books I’ve worked on:

Artemisia Gentileschi
blue green (no hyphen—no matter how badly I’d like to add one!)
bloodred
chyme
ctenophore
Tenochtitlan (not to be confused with Teotihuacán)
license
life-form
Mid-Atlantic Ridge