"Some f***er"

One of my co-workers was typing in a middle school basketball story. A girl was named Candice Hunt. Unfortunately, he was thinking alliteratively and the "H" got replaced with a "C" in her last name (and, since he was his own editor and usually put the pages out 30 minutes after deadline, it never got caught).

He sent the girl a hand-written apology. She was probably too young to understand.

I always used "XXX" as my dummy type, so it would at least get caught by the spell-checker. Saved my @$$ a few times, too.

 

Exactly. I only put X's. Even if it gets in the paper, you'll just look stupid, but at least it won't be offensive. I've never understood why people would would be stupid enough to put the word "fuck" anywhere in the paper at anytime. You're just begging to get into trouble.

 

I used to use place holder words, never ones that could get me fired, until a copy editor turned me on to the xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxs. Latern's right, it's hard to go wrong with them, because, especially if you use a long line of them, they stand out. They're also less likely to get you canned, which is nice.

 

That one actually killed me once. I was helping out on a desk as a high school student and we were getting fairly close to deadline. My editor (who was just new to the paper) says, "Throw the daycare story on page 3, it's ready to go."

So, I plunk this daycare story down, and I wasn't really proofreading anything, just pouring it into a page. Anyway, that was his code, XXX. We had something about an XXX daycare looking for XXX participants to work with the children. Nice.

 

I'll raise you Bubba Dixon.....