Barbara Wallraff

Background

Barbara Wallraff was born on March 1, 1953, in Tucson, Arizona, United States. She is the daughter of Charles Frederick and Evelyn Pauline Wallraff.

Education

In 1972 Barbara Wallraff received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Antioch College.

Career

From 1982 to 1983 Barbara Wallraff was a lifestyle editor of Boston Phoenix. From 1983 to 1985 she worked as an associate editor at Atlantic and became a senior editor in 1985. In addition to her editorial work, since 1995 Wallraff has also written "Word Court," a bimonthly column on language for Atlantic Monthly, and judges the cases of broken grammatical rules and poor style that are sent to her by her readers. The column has been quite popular. From 2003 to 2011 Wallraff was a syndicated columnist at King Features Syndicate, Inc. Since 2011 she has been a freelance editor for the MIT Technology Review and for Blue Cross Blue Shield Foundation of Massachusetts since 2012.

She has published three trade books, Word Court, Your Own Words, and Word Fugitives. Barbara is a co-author of two college textbooks on English composition, Joining the Conversation (2014, 2017) and In Conversation (2018).

Achievements

• Barbara Wallraff is best known as the author of Word Court: Wherein Verbal Virtue Is Rewarded, Crimes against the Language Are Punished, and Poetic Justice Is Done. This book was a national bestseller.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Your Own Words: The Bestselling Author of Word Court Explains How to Decipher Decipher the Dictionary, Master the Usage Manual, and Be Your Own Language Expert

    (If you have a language question, where do you go for the ...)

    2004
  • Word Fugitives: In Pursuit of Wanted Words

    (Despite the many thousands of dictionary words at our dis...)

    2006
  • Joining the Conversation: A Guide and Handbook for Writers

    (Don't let writer's block win. Joining the Conversation: A...)

    2017
  • Word Court: Wherein Verbal Virtue Is Rewarded, Crimes against the Language Are Punished, and Poetic Justice Is Done 2000

Views

When Barbara Wallraff worked at Atlantic Monthly, she has copyedited nearly every word that has appeared in that publication. In that position, she became notorious for her firm adherence to proper usage - according to the editors of Atlantic Monthly.

Membership

Barbara Wallraff is a member of the American Copy Editors Society, the American Dialect Society, Modern Language Association.

Connections

On April 25, 1992, Barbara Wallraff married Julian Hart Fisher.

Father:

Charles Frederick Wallraff

Mother:

Evelyn Pauline Wallraff

Spouse:

Julian Hart Fisher

References

• Contemporary Authors
  2010
• The Page of Barbara Wallraff on Linkedin