I recently was checking the website for the newspaper at which I used to work. I was a copy editor there, meaning I spell-checked, fact-checked and did insane amounts of design and layout.
Against my better judgment, I read a column by a woman who I could not stand while working there and found the intervening years have not softened my opinion of her. But that's beside the point.
In this dreadfully horrible and pointless column there were two errors that leapt out at me and really should have been corrected by copy staffers before going to print. Ironically, these errors occurred not in the midsection of the column, where copy editors eyes begin to glaze over and minds drift into numbness. These were at the very beginning and the very end, places where even the lamest excuse for a copy editor should be at least semi-alert, particularly to these two horribly obvious errors.
Error #1
The columnist refers to herself as a "died-in-the-wool liberal" as opposed to a dyed-in-the-wool liberal, which would be correct. This one stung, but the next one penetrated my soul.
Error #2
In the very last sentence the columnist calls for a consolidation of our current two party political system and asks the reader "Whose with me?" instead of Who's with me?
Ugh, I am sick all over again.
Thanks for reading this very bland and boring post.
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3 comments:
Obviously they are lost without your copy editing expertise.
Hmm...reading my comment again now it sounds ambiguously bitchy. Didn't mean it that way at all. Finding mistakes in a publication I used to work for would (and does) give me a distinct sense of satisfaction.
Don't feel bad, I am at times very non-ambiguously bitchy and this post was definitely one of those times.
But while finding errors in books and magazines makes me feel super-satisfied...errors in newspapers, especially dumb ones like that, totally make me sick. Like physically ill. That's probably why I made a great copy editor while in other areas of my life I'm a total basketcase.
A side note to this: I actually sent over copy for an article this morning, then CALLED my editor to tell him that I found a stupid typo in a quote. He LAUGHED at me and told me that he had already fixed that error.
BTW: The error was "their" instead of "they're". ARGH! I am GLAD that won't make print!
Dude, I am so seriously twisted.
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