"Wins" and "victories"

MileHigh · Aug 20, 2006

Frank_Ridgeway said:

I went through the anal phase like many copy editors, but I started liberalizing when I learned there are more important things to focus on during the finite time we have on a given night. Guardian of the language? In a perfect world, that would be OK, I guess, but I would rather have the story be flawless factually, and that takes a great deal of time and effort. I would rather have copy editors focus on checking facts, tightening loose writing, improving the clarity and finding buried leads than spending their time changing things that only "a member of the club" is going to recognize. When I was slotting every night, the banes of my existence were A.) copy editors who relied on their own "expertise" instead of looking things up, and B.) copy editors who corrected every style error and missed everything else. Readers are not going to notice that we've called it "victories," they are going to notice that the college basketball roundup has three scores wrong and six team records wrong or missing. If you are slotting 40-70 files a night you are going to let the wins and hosts go through and try to fix the more serious glitches.
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I couldn't have said it any better. This should be required reading for all copy editors everywhere. Alas, some get it, many more don't.

sirvaliantbrown · Aug 20, 2006

A question for the "victory" advocates here: if the noun is "victory" and not "win", shouldn't it also be "defeat" instead of "loss"?

Football_Bat · Aug 21, 2006

No, if one's going to be a "win," the other should be called a "lose."

BTW, "struck" is the proper past tense of "strike."

Double J · Aug 26, 2006

VERB - PAST TENSE

hike - hiked
bike - biked
like - liked
strike - struck

Yep, English is one fascinating language, isn't it? Did you know that "ough" can be correctly pronounced at least 10 different ways?

AWW - as in "thought"
OCK - as in "lough," a lake in Ireland
OFF - as in "cough"
OHH - as in "though"
OOO - as in "through"
OU - as in "drought"
OWW - as in "plough"
UFF - as in "rough"
UHH - as in "Poughkeepsie"
UPP - as in "hiccough"

Nathan Scott Phillips · Aug 26, 2006

sirvaliantbrown said:

A question for the "victory" advocates here: if the noun is "victory" and not "win", shouldn't it also be "defeat" instead of "loss"?
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Then pitchers would have V-D records. Not that a lot of ballplayers don't already...

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"Wins" and "victories"

MileHigh Moderator Staff Member

sirvaliantbrown Member

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"Wins" and "victories"

MileHigh Moderator Staff Member

sirvaliantbrown Member

Football_Bat Well-Known Member

Double J Active Member

Nathan Scott Phillips Member

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