Make Your Editor Cry: Addition vs. Edition
Addition and edition may occasionally come dangerously close together in meaning. Which is the correct word in the following sentence?
On this special bonus [addition or edition?] of Unsolved Mysteries, we look into the cornfield vanishings.
Addition relates to adding and things that are added. Its main definitions are the act or process of adding, and something added. In this sense, a bonus show could very well be an addition.
The noun edition mostly relates to publishing and broadcasting. Its main definitions are the entire number of copies of a publication, a version of a publication, a radio or television news program, and the release of any number of like or identical items produced as a set. In this sense, a special show could still be an edition of the primary catalog of programs.
Just remember that addition is often (though not always) followed by the preposition to, and edition is almost always followed by of. Using this rule of thumb, the proper word for the above example, is edition.
Examples:
On this special bonus edition of Unsolved Mysteries, we look into the cornfield vanishings.
We will be talking to witnesses in addition to the actual investigators who first looked into this mystery.
Gregg Bridgeman is the Editor-in-Chief at Olivia Kimbrell Press. He is husband to best-selling Christian author Hallee Bridgeman and parent to three. He continues to proudly serve in the US Armed Forces and has done so in either an active or reserve capacity for more than twenty years as an airborne and air assault qualified paratrooper, earning a Bronze Star for his service. Most importantly, he was ordained in October of 2001 after surrendering his life to Christ decades earlier.