Erin McKean is the founder of the not-for-profit Wordnik.com, the world’s biggest online dictionary. Before founding Wordnik, she was the editor-in-chief of American Dictionaries for Oxford University Press, and before Javascript, she dabbled in HyperCard, Perl, and Omnimark (if you have ever written anything in Omnimark, she will buy you a drink).

In addition to writing code, blog posts, and documentation, she’s also the author of the Weird and Wonderful Words books, the best-selling novel The Secret Lives of Dresses, and The Hundred Dresses, a field guide to dresses, and is an honorary fellow of the Society for Technical Communication. She blogs at dressaday.com. When you meet her, please tell her your favorite word.