The lowly copy editor

No, he's saying he thinks enforcing those rules is robotic. He wants to be a Reporter. I don't say that meanly. He's smarter and more open-minded than, well, one young poster who comes to mind.

Copy editing is not for everyone, but I think it's something that everyone should try, at least in college.

 

I was also unable to get through the piece the woman filed for Romenesko. She had a few valid points, but I hated most of what I got through. Wah wah wah ...

 

She lost me when she started the piece with the story about not taking typing in high school like this was some kind of avante garde point of pride. Lack of a very basic and useful job skill isn't something to brag about. The rest was made up of too much complaining about people calling her on genuine competence issues.

She might be a decent writer, but that doesn't qualify someone to be an editor or give them the skills to correct the work of others. They're related but different skill-sets.

 

Didn't read it. Please tell me she said "Never took one lesson!"

 

I just...I have no words. I don't understand how lacking professional training for a professional job is a reason to self-righteously complain about...not being good at your job.

 

Never had one lesson!

 

Let me just say that JUST SAY IT I am the child of an early feminist. When it came time to sign up for typing in high school, my mother DANGLING MODIFIER, UNLESS YOUR MOTHER WAS SIGNING UP FOR TYPING IN HIGH SCHOOL counseled me not to take the class, observing from her own experience that “men will hire you based on how fast you type.” MAKES NO SENSE; YOU DIDN'T WANT TO BE HIRED? What they would hire me for if I didn’t know how to type, neither of us apparently considered. But I happily took an extra art class or whatever at the time and eventually adopted a style using three fingers, COLON, UNLESS YOU'RE SAYING YOU USED SIX FINGERS left forefinger to do most of the typing, a thumb to space and right forefinger to hit the shift key. And I’ve written TYPED a couple of books using those three fingers, okay? So what the hell, right?

Except here at the newspaper I noticed right away that not only could all of my colleagues type at warp speed with BY USING, UNLESS THEY'RE ABLE TO TYPE AT "WARP SPEED" USING ONE FINGER AT A TIME WITH ANY OF THEIR EIGHT FINGERS all of their fingers, they also knew a billion keyboard shortcuts, like apple-shift-control-6 (but the 6 on the side of the keyboard IT'S CALLED A FUCKING NUMERIC KEYPAD, not the top).

Thanks for playing.

 

She comes off like every English teacher who reads the morning paper, spots a typo or two, and says, "Goshdarnit, I could do that so much better!"

No. No, you can't.

 

That pissed me off too, among other things. I want to punch this fucking guy in the throat. What a piece of condescending garbage. Don't recall reading something that has pissed me off more than this in a loooooong time.

 

Just dismiss it all.

It's just whining and complaining, and something like this could be written about just about any job on any given day, if you tried, and were making a point of doing so.

No job is perfect, and this article just just paints with a broad brush even though it only uses specific and sometimes single anecdotal incidents.

We could all come up with some from our own careers/lives, and compile them in one story, and, I'm sure it'd be a pretty devastating-sounding example of a day or series of days...if we were inclined to do it.

What she describes is simply part and parcel of what makes up life, and experiences in it. It's the kind of stuff the rest of us might just bitch about, verbally, in the course of letting off steam after hours, or something like that. With us, though, that'd probably be the end of it.

The reason this is so bad is because, with her, it's not the end of it. Instead, with help from this guy, it's all written down and posted -- a public and unprofessional attack, recorded permanently and for posterity.

 

My experience has been that anyone in newspapers who wants to be a Reporter, or aspires to be a Writer, has a condescending attitude toward anyone who is strong at editing copy: "Those who can't do bring up minor technical points."

A former colleague, who I think regarded me as just a sports-obsessed troglodyte, couldn't believe that I might be correct when I told him he was using an incorrect book title by a Victorian-era novelist that he referred to in one of his stories. He went and asked the "literature" editor to try to get an opinion differing from mine.

 

I hope if someone was responsible for copy editing the piece, he or she just slapped a hed on and moved it along, the way she'd surely want it.

And...giggle!....her first name is Yoni.