Meredith Conrow just bought a new Hyundai Elantra. More important is what she traded in: a well-worn Honda Odyssey minivan, showing more than 150,000 miles on the odometer.

Make no mistake, those miles did not accumulate solely from Conrow and her husband ferrying their four kids to school, sports, and social activities, though there has been plenty of that. No, this family likes to road trip.

"All of my kids have been to all of the 48 lower states," says Conrow. "The fun is in the journey."

Conrow's professional journey to becoming one of C/D's coterie of language wranglers—part of the team who read our articles before they're published to ensure they are concise and, importantly, grammatically correct—was as long and winding as one of the family's cross-country forays. She earned a bachelor's degree in music with an emphasis on voice (she's a trained opera singer) and followed that with a graduate degree in church history.

It was in grad school that she earned some extra scratch by fixing the grammar, spelling, and punctuation of other students' thesis papers.

"That's where I learned the Chicago Manual of Style," says Conrow. For the less grammar-savvy, the Chicago Manual of Style happens to be the copyediting bible for many publications, including C/D. It's the tool we use to ensure that our staff of scriveners is deploying the English language both properly and consistently. Conrow liked working with words so much that she copyedited on a freelance basis for 15 years.

Besides putting heaps of miles on the family Odyssey, Conrow's also piled up some impressive mileage on foot. She's competed in 14 half marathons and one full marathon.

The calm, disciplined mentality required of the long-distance runner is probably good practice for dealing with the torrent of words constantly coming her way that need to be scrutinized and processed against tight deadlines. Now, we just need to get her to belt out a chorus from La Traviata between manuscripts.