But one of the magazine’s October features really blew me away. “What’s Lurking in Your DNA?” details one reporter’s experience with a mail-order company that promises to reveal your particular health risks, based on a saliva sample you provide. I think this is one of the most interesting issues in health today: We now have the opportunity to peek into our future—but is that a good thing? Often technology evolves faster than we can create morals and guidelines for it. Writer Gretchen Voss does a great job capturing the complexities of the issue. I’m pretty convinced that I prefer blissful ignorance.

On a side note, I’d like to point out that this was actually my second-favorite women’s magazine feature this month. The first was a fantastic take on the typical breast cancer awareness story in Glamour. But since they don’t put all their print content online (the kind of shortsighted old-school thinking that many of the major magazines still cling to), I can’t really recommend it. Bummer.

Read my longer love letter to NaNoWriMo from last year, and then go sign up!

A more advanced tip, which I’ve touched on before: Since the house belongs to Khloe and Lamar as a unit, “Khloe and Lamar’s” is preferred over “Khloe’s and Lamar’s.”

I’ve written before about the lessons I learned as a college paper opinion editor, but you can be sure this wouldn’t have run on my watch — or even that of my least enlightened male colleagues. Also, what’s up with the use of “bear” instead of “bare” in the headline? Stupid mistake or stupider joke?

ETA: Here’s the cached version.

Update: Ah, the old “satire” defense …

This is the kind of mistake that makes me judgmental, because I can’t fathom why people get it wrong. I sometimes see unnecessary apostrophes on a plural word ending in a vowel (like pajamas) or acronym (like CDs), because some people (wrongly) think you can’t pluralize those words without it. But what on earth would make you think the plural of “shot” needs an apostrophe?

There’s about a 1% chance the person who authored this sign meant “The flu shot’s here” and just dropped that initial “the.” But that would be oddly grandiose. Just ditch the apostrophe, dude.

p.s. I never get a flu shot. Am I tempting fate?

Can you spot the mistake? I’ve covered it before. And I even name-checked Project Runway in that post!

That astonishing anecdote came from Salon’s “The Making of Glenn Beck,” a three-part series that traces his rise in radio. It’s a year old, but I just found it recently, and it is a fantastic piece of journalism, rich in details and good old-fashioned dirt-digging. Besides the sometimes salacious stories — and an interesting explanation of how the “morning zoo” radio culture came to be — the piece gives context to Beck’s current career, and just how calculated his politics may be.

It left me with a weird combination of feelings. I couldn’t help but admire Beck’s work ethic, while at the same time being disgusted by his apparently bottomless mean streak. And what to make of the idea that he may not actually believe the philosophy he peddles? Is that worse than if he lives and dies by it? I’m not sure, but I like the way the story gave some dimensions, good and bad, to someone I’ve thus far viewed as a cartoon villain.

It makes sense if you think about it. I reviewed 30 Rock actress Jane Krakowski’s album, and you better believe I double-checked her last name before turning it in. But when Sara Bareilles mentioned her first producer, Eric Rosse, during our recent interview, it didn’t occur to me until my last read-through to verify his spelling. I heard “Ross,” so I wrote that without a second thought. (Meanwhile, every time my eyes scanned over “Bareilles,” I was making sure I hadn’t transposed the e and the i.)

I find more last names misspelled, but oddly enough they’re often ones also used as first names: Elliott/Elliot, Philip/Phillip, Stacy/Stacey, Damon/Damen, and of course, my personal peeve, Neal/Neil. Since “creative” spellings are becoming a trend in baby naming, I predict even more headaches for copy editors in the years to come.

So, the takeaway: Check every name during proofing, no matter how obvious. And give those deceptively simple names a little extra attention.

It’s easy, then, to mix up expressions that use these words. “Free reign” makes sense to me, but the correct use of the phrase according to Webster’s (and AP) is “free rein.” Likewise, if someone is exerting control, or holding back, they’re “reining it in,” and someone seizing control is “taking the reins.”

“Reign” tends to be used less often, but you need it when referencing the time someone was in power or highly influential (i.e. the reigning champion). It can also denote a prevailing emotion: “Fear reigned in the aftermath of 9/11.”