News

More Than Commas

By Scott Kaniewski

Summer 2026

Yes, we editors at Massage & Bodywork magazine are grammar nerds. And no, we don’t apologize for it. Our job is to notice when there’s a misspelling or a missing period—that kind of editing innately permeates our brains (and we’ve had more than a few hotly contested debates on serial commas or dependent clauses). But our job as editors goes deeper than that—we crave to be better and to learn more.

Recently, Jen Anderson (one of the contributing editors of this magazine and the editor of our award-winning sister magazines, ASCP Skin Deep and AHP Indie Stylist) and I traveled to Atlanta for an editorial conference. Talk about nerding out! The purpose of the conference was simple: to continue mastering the craft of editing. (A few of the seminars were “Caution: Copy May Contain Trace Amounts of Unintentional Innuendo,” “Don’t Panic: How to Edit Corporate Communications During External Crises,” and “Polishing the Bot: Editing AI-Assisted Text for Clarity and Flow.”)

At ABMP, ASCP, AHP, and ANP, the editors don’t only edit magazines. We also review emails, social media posts, government relations updates, website content, courses and curricula, marketing, and so much more. And we create content too. If you’ve read something from one of our associations, chances are we had a hand in it. Our editorial team is used to being called the “Grammar Police” or having others think all we do is check commas. But we’re here to (hopefully) make things better and easier for you to read, to vet the experts we put before you, and to make sure we’re not wasting our readers’ precious time.

Massage & Bodywork is the best magazine in the profession. You know that. We know that. Our competitors know that. And we want to keep it that way. That’s why we go to conferences and why we spend so much time arguing over the placement of a paragraph, what the key point of an article is, and, (sigh) yes, where that comma should go.

We know you want to be the best you can be in your work too. Being a lifelong learner is so important in the information age, and it’s part of why you’re reading this magazine, isn’t it? We will work to continue excelling in our role, so you can continue excelling in yours.