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Copy Editors: The Untold Story (1/26/06)
Tuesday, January 24, 2006 @ 2:09 PM
NOTE: Because of a misunderstanding (read: screw-up) with Monday's paper, my column will be running a day late this week. Thank you.
I became a copy editor at the Daily Vidette in the fall of 2004. Fortunately, I had worked as a stage manager, so I was used to only being noticed when something went wrong.
I equate being a copy editor with being a janitor – no one usually says, "Wow, this place is clean!" But if there's a mess, you know who to blame.
Don't misunderstand me. Being a copy editor has some perks. $6.80 an hour and the occasional free pizza is nothing to scoff at. My only complaint is that for the most part, the students reading the paper don't really know what it is that we do.
Everyone knows what a reporter does. A photographer? Pretty self-explanatory. But when you say you work on the "Night Production" staff, all anyone knows about you is that you go to work when everyone else is leaving.
We don't really design the newspaper pages. We don't exactly create them, either. And we don't go anywhere near the printing press where the Vidette is actually produced. No one really knows what the middle step is, and yet, if we weren't there every night doing it, there would be no Vidette.
So I'd like to take this opportunity to introduce you to my department and the work we do.
A page in the Vidette is designed by the News Editors, Features Editors, or Sports Editors. They draw their design on paper, these papers are called dummies. The copy editors open up the newspaper page files in Quark. When we open them up, the ads have already been placed, and the copy editor's job is to fill in articles, headlines, photos, cutlines, graphics, and fillers the way they are drawn in the dummies. We do all the pasting and formatting.
Copy editors write 90% of the headlines in the paper ourselves. There is a long list of very complicated rules concerning what a headline can and cannot include. It also has to fit in a very specific amount of space. If you think writing a headline is easy, think of it as an enormous multi-word crossword puzzle with an 8-paragraph clue. Reconsider your hypothesis.
But headlines are only one of the many challenges the copy editor faces.
Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, olny taht the frist and lsat ltteres are at the rghit pcleas. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by ilstef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
What does this mean? It means copy editors have to train themselves to see each letter individually in order to find and correct mistakes. For some, this comes naturally, and for others, it is an uphill battle. It doesn't help that practically no one under the age of thirty can spell.
Around 1997, the educational system stopped teaching kids how to diagram a sentence. Ever since, having language skills in this country has meant knowing how to hit "F7" for Spelling and Grammar check in Microsoft Word. My theory is that kids complained so much that junior high school teachers finally gave in and said, "Fine, I won't teach spelling or grammar, you can learn it in high school." In high school, teachers wanted to focus on literature and interpretation, not the mechanics of composition. Before long, we made it to college without knowing what a dangling participle was.
And then, we encountered the worst of all education's loopholes: Peer revision.
During the development of English 101, a bunch of otherwise competent educators failed to realize that if everyone is equally clueless, nothing gets fixed. The most skilled writers in the class spend all their time circling the wrong "their/there/they're," and receive no feedback on their own work. In the world, everyone has something to learn from everyone else. In a classroom, this is almost never true.
Long story short, our teachers said, "Teach yourselves!", and now we don't know the difference between "it's" and "its." Myself included. I have to look it up every time.
A recent study, which the Vidette printed on the page 2 News Briefs, found that 60% of college students about to graduate lack the complex language skills necessary to comprehend the arguments in a newspaper editorial. Which means that of the ten people reading this column, it's likely that six of you can't even understand what you're reading. Well, the gist of it is this: Being a good copy editor is hard.
And yet, a copy editor who does exceptional work has no way of receiving acknowledgment.
A reporter or photographer at the Vidette can gain the distinction of Senior Staff. An ad sales representative can become a Team Leader. There are no such distinctions or awards available to copy editors.
But there is one thing that makes up for all of these unfortunate oversights:
There's nothing sexier than good grammar.
Now, I would never claim to represent the average female, but personally, when a guy uses correct spelling and punctuation in an AIM conversation, I swoon. If he uses capital letters at the beginnings of his sentences, I'm pretty much his for life. Hair, eyes, body, these things can be overlooked if a guy has exceptional syntax. Size does matter: the size of a potential mate's vocabulary determines whether or not there's going to be a second date.
James Darnell, a senior theatre major remarked, "When I first heard the way my girlfriend conjugates verbs… it was love."
The coffeehouse poet with soulful eyes and a goatee. The songwriter with the tongue ring. The articulate professor with the social conscience. These people are made more attractive through their command of the English language.
And by that logic, copy editors should be among the sexiest people in the world.
So who are the sexiest people on campus you've never met? They are Night Editors Erin Guimon and Luke Dillifeld, and copy editors Elisabeth James, Amy , Mary Yurgil, Jackie , Joe Lorenzini, Colin Barrett, and Chris Guimon.
For your hard work behind the scenes: Thank you.
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