Merrill Perlman has a national reputation as an effective and entertaining teacher and collaborator. She has consulted with or developed workshops for journalism organizations, law firms, private companies and educational groups from grammar through graduate school. Her advice on tricky language problems is often sought by media outlets. She has edited for major authors, publications and outlets.
She spent 25 years at The New York Times in jobs including business copy editor, manager of staff editor recruiting, managing editor of The New York Times News Service and director of copy desks. She is an adjunct assistant professor at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and wrote the Language Corner column for The Columbia Journalism Review for 13 years.
As a freelance editor, Merrill has edited works by John Sculley, Stephen King, Paul Alexander, Armistead Maupin, Eliot Spitzer, Mara Altman, Joe Eszterhas, Stephan Talty, Stuart Diamond, Kurt Vonnegut, (posthumously, for him), Mishka Shubaly, Sloane Crosley, Frank Gilroy, Jonathan Biss, Jeremiah Tower, Christina Lewis Halpern, Rick Marin and Jeff Jarvis, among others.
Merrill is a 2015 recipient of the Missouri Honor Medal in Journalism. a recipient of the Glamann Award from ACES: The Society for Editing, and a recipient of the Charles R. O’Malley Award for Excellence in Teaching from the Columbia Scholastic Press Association.
She is a member of the executive committee of ACES: The Society for Editing and a member and former president of the ACES Education Fund. She was a member of the (inactive) American Heritage Dictionary Usage Panel.
In The Media
Columbia Journalism Review
Language Corner
Cnn.com Opinion
“Why Amercia Needs Copy Editors”
(300,000 page views; 11,000 Facebook “likes”)
National Public Radio
On the Media: Punctuation Infatuation
The New York Times
“Talk to the Newsroom” 2008 and 2007
American Journalism Review
“Will Automated Copy Editors Replace Human Ones?”
Minnesota Public Radio, Midmorning
The Language Corner and Grammar Geeks
American Public Media
Belt-Tightening With Actual Belts
University of Missouri
Profiles in Success
Poynter Institute
Copy Editing Pro Merrill Perlman Spots Story Problems