Here’s the deal:
Step 1: You (corporation, private firm, educational institution, nonprofit organization) invite me in for a little chat about the ways that your operation would benefit from the presence of an able and experienced editor/writer/teacher/trainer (me).
Step 2: Persuaded, you engage my services.
Step 3: In return, you pay me wages.
Really, nothing could be simpler.
Monday, August 24, 2009
How I can tell it's Monday
Item 1: The first eight words of a story on the front page of a major metropolitan newspaper delivered to my house: Anthony "Tony" Fein, a former Iraq War veteran. He used to be a veteran but is no longer?
Item 2: A private message asks what advice I could give to someone interested in newspaper copy editing. My reply:
Newspapers have been laying off copy editors in large numbers, partly for overall staff reductions to cut costs but also out of a mistaken belief that accuracy and precision are not worth the expense. [See Item 1.] Consequently, there are very few copy-editing jobs available at newspapers, and there is a large population of out-of-work editors, along with a few students emerging from journalism programs, competing for them. I could not advise anyone that going into editing is a shrewd career move.
Item 3: Last week ground toward its end with a post about a freelancer who sent out a prefabricated story, complete with quotes, so that a source’s name could be typed in the blank. That was bad enough, but Pam Robinson reports on a public relations firm that has its interns posting bogus reviews praising a client’s products.
Item 4: If you doubted that an online publication could rival newspapers for interminable, rambling, self-indulgent articles, I invite you to examine jjmoney62’s structural analysis at Testy Copy Editors of a Deadspin.com story about a Little League player.
Item 5: I am already seriously behind on four editing projects.
Item 2: A private message asks what advice I could give to someone interested in newspaper copy editing. My reply:
Newspapers have been laying off copy editors in large numbers, partly for overall staff reductions to cut costs but also out of a mistaken belief that accuracy and precision are not worth the expense. [See Item 1.] Consequently, there are very few copy-editing jobs available at newspapers, and there is a large population of out-of-work editors, along with a few students emerging from journalism programs, competing for them. I could not advise anyone that going into editing is a shrewd career move.
Item 3: Last week ground toward its end with a post about a freelancer who sent out a prefabricated story, complete with quotes, so that a source’s name could be typed in the blank. That was bad enough, but Pam Robinson reports on a public relations firm that has its interns posting bogus reviews praising a client’s products.
Item 4: If you doubted that an online publication could rival newspapers for interminable, rambling, self-indulgent articles, I invite you to examine jjmoney62’s structural analysis at Testy Copy Editors of a Deadspin.com story about a Little League player.
Item 5: I am already seriously behind on four editing projects.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
BFD
Get that smirk off your face, kid; this is serious etymology.
Jesse Sheidlower, the formidable Editor at Large of the Oxford English Dictionary, now favors us with a third, much expanded edition of The F Word (Oxford University Press, 270 pages, $16.95), a thoroughgoing exploration of the most celebrated verb/noun/adjective/adverb/interjection/infix* in English, with ample citations of its use over the past five and a half centuries.
Here we have a point of some delicacy. Anyone who has sat within earshot of me near deadline can stipulate that I am without reticence in employing this flexible word in various permutations. At the same time, while blogging at The Sun and here I have maintained a reasonably decorous tone. (I once published an article in The Sun on swearing — highly favorable toward the practice — without employing any term more unsavory than the damme of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Pinafore.) I can’t quite bring myself to cut loose here. Bear with me.
I can at least correct a common error. The word is not of Anglo-Saxon origin; it has not been discovered anywhere in Old English or, for that matter, Middle English. It appears to have emerged in English sometime in the 15th century, adapted from Low German, Flemish, or Dutch. One reason for the murkiness is that etymologists until quite recently had to rely on written sources; but words often emerge in speech before they appear in writing, and, beyond that, there are taboos against writing down objectionable words such as our subject. So what the lexicographer calls attestations may be sparse.
But Mr. Sheidlower has ferreted out many sources, from a manuscript poem of 1450-1475 attacking the Carmelite Friars of Ely to Jon Stewart on The Daily Show in February of this year. A man of stamina, he has evidently, in the course of his researches, read an astonishing amount of Victorian pornography. This revised edition goes well beyond his previous findings in American and British (English, Scottish, Welsh) profanity to include sources from Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, and beyond. I challenge you to find an expression that he has omitted. (If you do, send it to him.)
Serious students of the language will find this book invaluable, particularly in the citations, which amount to a social history of the English-speaking peoples from a limited but intense perspective.
*An infix is a syllable (affix) or word (tmesis) inserted in the middle of another word or phrase, such as Homer Simpson’s saxamaphone. Often as an expletive, e.g., guaran-damn-tee.
Jesse Sheidlower, the formidable Editor at Large of the Oxford English Dictionary, now favors us with a third, much expanded edition of The F Word (Oxford University Press, 270 pages, $16.95), a thoroughgoing exploration of the most celebrated verb/noun/adjective/adverb/interjection/infix* in English, with ample citations of its use over the past five and a half centuries.
Here we have a point of some delicacy. Anyone who has sat within earshot of me near deadline can stipulate that I am without reticence in employing this flexible word in various permutations. At the same time, while blogging at The Sun and here I have maintained a reasonably decorous tone. (I once published an article in The Sun on swearing — highly favorable toward the practice — without employing any term more unsavory than the damme of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Pinafore.) I can’t quite bring myself to cut loose here. Bear with me.
I can at least correct a common error. The word is not of Anglo-Saxon origin; it has not been discovered anywhere in Old English or, for that matter, Middle English. It appears to have emerged in English sometime in the 15th century, adapted from Low German, Flemish, or Dutch. One reason for the murkiness is that etymologists until quite recently had to rely on written sources; but words often emerge in speech before they appear in writing, and, beyond that, there are taboos against writing down objectionable words such as our subject. So what the lexicographer calls attestations may be sparse.
But Mr. Sheidlower has ferreted out many sources, from a manuscript poem of 1450-1475 attacking the Carmelite Friars of Ely to Jon Stewart on The Daily Show in February of this year. A man of stamina, he has evidently, in the course of his researches, read an astonishing amount of Victorian pornography. This revised edition goes well beyond his previous findings in American and British (English, Scottish, Welsh) profanity to include sources from Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, and beyond. I challenge you to find an expression that he has omitted. (If you do, send it to him.)
Serious students of the language will find this book invaluable, particularly in the citations, which amount to a social history of the English-speaking peoples from a limited but intense perspective.
*An infix is a syllable (affix) or word (tmesis) inserted in the middle of another word or phrase, such as Homer Simpson’s saxamaphone. Often as an expletive, e.g., guaran-damn-tee.
Friday, August 21, 2009
May I quote you on that?
Thirty years in the business, you think you’ve seen it all, and then this:
Rebecca Maitland, a freelancer for an edition of the Houston Chronicle, has some quotes from volunteers about the problem of abandoned animals. She sends a form story to an official incorporating those quotes and invites the official to agree to being quoted thus. It’s a fill-in-the-blanks story.
Her editor, Karen Zurawski, has to be prodded to say that sending a story to a source with prefabricated quotations is maybe “not an acceptable practice.”
My Twitter colleague @dougfisher comments only, “Unreal.”
If this is a standard of practice that mainstream newspaper journalism can accept —doing coverage on the cheap, with untrained writers lacking adequate supervision by editors — then just turn out the lights and send everybody home.
Rebecca Maitland, a freelancer for an edition of the Houston Chronicle, has some quotes from volunteers about the problem of abandoned animals. She sends a form story to an official incorporating those quotes and invites the official to agree to being quoted thus. It’s a fill-in-the-blanks story.
Her editor, Karen Zurawski, has to be prodded to say that sending a story to a source with prefabricated quotations is maybe “not an acceptable practice.”
My Twitter colleague @dougfisher comments only, “Unreal.”
If this is a standard of practice that mainstream newspaper journalism can accept —doing coverage on the cheap, with untrained writers lacking adequate supervision by editors — then just turn out the lights and send everybody home.
Four words
After today’s earlier heaviosity, I offer a little contest for the weekend.
What is the funniest four-word message you can devise? A classic example is Robert Benchley’s cable to The New Yorker from Venice: “Streets flooded. Please advise.” (You can have a little leeway to establish a context.)
What is the funniest four-word message you can devise? A classic example is Robert Benchley’s cable to The New Yorker from Venice: “Streets flooded. Please advise.” (You can have a little leeway to establish a context.)
How to question authority
For my generation, now so slow to lumber off the stage, a rallying cry was “Question authority.”* It is still a sound principle, and I continue to advocate skepticism; but our current culture of credulity intermingled with skepticism has turned “question authority” into “there is no authority” or an equivalent, “every man his own authority.”
This troubling tangle was on my mind as I read this week Paul McHugh’s Try to Remember: Psychiatry’s Clash Over Meaning, Memory, and Mind (Dana Press, 276 pages, $25). Dr. McHugh, the formidable former head of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins, recounts the ugly “recovered memory” scandal of the 1980s and 1990s** and in the process explores some of the sources of authority in medicine, from which I would like draw some useful principles.
Doctors in particular are figures of authority, and we put our health and our lives in their hands.*** But some practitioners are less skillful, less well-trained, less competent. And there are quacks abroad. Dr. McHugh suggests that a prudent patient would be wise to ask appropriately skeptical questions in seeking a therapist:
What are the credentials? What training has the practitioner had?
Does the practitioner ask you questions and investigate your particular circumstances, or does he or she spring a ready-made theory on you?
What scientific research supports the practitioner’s approach?
What success has the practitioner had? (One of the most alarming elements of the “recovered memory” craze was that the longer patients were in treatment, the worse they got.)
It seems to me that these principles can be extrapolated beyond psychotherapy to larger realms of authority in politics and elsewhere. You should give no one unquestioning allegiance, but you should not disbelieve everything lest you fall into hysteria.**** So ask yourself when people make assertions about health care or other political issues:
What are the credentials? How is this person qualified to make these statements?
Do this person’s explanations fit the circumstances, or have the circumstances been made to fit a predetermined theory?
What evidence is there? What verifiable information is there to support this person’s assertions?
Has this person been right in the past on other issues? What credibility does he or she bring to the issue?
The grimmest and most pessimistic satire of the 18th century suggested that everyone is either a knave or a fool — either a con artist or someone ready to be gulled. If we are to avoid either trap, we have to learn how to sort out which sources of authority are more reliable than others. I apologize for imposing this rambling reflection on you as I try to think through these issues for myself. They are too important to ignore.
*There was once a sign at The Sun’s copy desk, adapted from a bumper sticker, that read, “Question authority. Ask us anything.”
**Some background here to keep from cluttering the main line of argument.
Memory is malleable. The brain is not a simple recording device; our memories are stories we tell ourselves, and the way we tell the stories shapes the memories. They become what we believe to be true. You probably know this from your own experience, say of a childhood memory that you have been harboring for years that turns out to be at variance with what other family members recall.
Some therapists in the 1980s and 1990s, following in the Freudian tradition that current mental difficulties rise from long-buried conflicts of early childhood, used hypnosis, sedation, and persuasion to probe for suppressed memories of trauma. In the course of treatment, they helped patients construct memories of childhood sexual abuse, sometimes including satanic rituals. The practice became a craze, not unlike the hysteria of the Salem witch trials; families were disrupted, and some people went to jail for crimes that were entirely imaginary.
Dr. McHugh was part of a campaign to debunk “recovered memory” therapy, and ultimately court testimony helped to bring it down — including demonstrations that a therapist could implant an entirely false memory in a susceptible patient, who would then be thoroughly convinced that the event had occurred.
His book is not only illuminating about the original scandal, but also refreshingly clear and forthright about the practice of psychiatry in particular and psychotherapy in general. Anyone whose life is troubled and who is seeking help would do well to consult this book.
***My daughter has a relatively mild form of cerebral palsy from a case of bacterial meningitis in the neonatal ward when she was two weeks old. She was two years old when we moved to Baltimore and my wife and I took her to see a specialist at Johns Hopkins. After a forty-five-minute examination, the specialist pronounced that she was intellectually disabled as well as physically disabled, and recommended treatment accordingly. Fortunately, her pediatrician subsequently cautioned us not to credit that diagnosis but to trust more in our own judgment.
Alice graduated from Swarthmore in 2006 with an honors degree in Latin and Greek.
****Hysteria in medical terms, Dr. McHugh explains, is “a mimicry of disability resting on self-deception and responsive to persuasion.” That is, patients with hysteria display symptoms for which there is no physical cause and believe fixedly that their maladies are real. They are persuaded, sometimes by association with people who are genuinely ill, that they are diseased. There is also a social form of hysteria, exemplified by the Salem witch hunts, in which the public was persuaded by the assent of authority — the clergy — that the spiritual and physical threats from harmless old women were real. It is not difficult these days to find figures of some authority who will give their assent to paranoid suspicion.
This troubling tangle was on my mind as I read this week Paul McHugh’s Try to Remember: Psychiatry’s Clash Over Meaning, Memory, and Mind (Dana Press, 276 pages, $25). Dr. McHugh, the formidable former head of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins, recounts the ugly “recovered memory” scandal of the 1980s and 1990s** and in the process explores some of the sources of authority in medicine, from which I would like draw some useful principles.
Doctors in particular are figures of authority, and we put our health and our lives in their hands.*** But some practitioners are less skillful, less well-trained, less competent. And there are quacks abroad. Dr. McHugh suggests that a prudent patient would be wise to ask appropriately skeptical questions in seeking a therapist:
What are the credentials? What training has the practitioner had?
Does the practitioner ask you questions and investigate your particular circumstances, or does he or she spring a ready-made theory on you?
What scientific research supports the practitioner’s approach?
What success has the practitioner had? (One of the most alarming elements of the “recovered memory” craze was that the longer patients were in treatment, the worse they got.)
It seems to me that these principles can be extrapolated beyond psychotherapy to larger realms of authority in politics and elsewhere. You should give no one unquestioning allegiance, but you should not disbelieve everything lest you fall into hysteria.**** So ask yourself when people make assertions about health care or other political issues:
What are the credentials? How is this person qualified to make these statements?
Do this person’s explanations fit the circumstances, or have the circumstances been made to fit a predetermined theory?
What evidence is there? What verifiable information is there to support this person’s assertions?
Has this person been right in the past on other issues? What credibility does he or she bring to the issue?
The grimmest and most pessimistic satire of the 18th century suggested that everyone is either a knave or a fool — either a con artist or someone ready to be gulled. If we are to avoid either trap, we have to learn how to sort out which sources of authority are more reliable than others. I apologize for imposing this rambling reflection on you as I try to think through these issues for myself. They are too important to ignore.
*There was once a sign at The Sun’s copy desk, adapted from a bumper sticker, that read, “Question authority. Ask us anything.”
**Some background here to keep from cluttering the main line of argument.
Memory is malleable. The brain is not a simple recording device; our memories are stories we tell ourselves, and the way we tell the stories shapes the memories. They become what we believe to be true. You probably know this from your own experience, say of a childhood memory that you have been harboring for years that turns out to be at variance with what other family members recall.
Some therapists in the 1980s and 1990s, following in the Freudian tradition that current mental difficulties rise from long-buried conflicts of early childhood, used hypnosis, sedation, and persuasion to probe for suppressed memories of trauma. In the course of treatment, they helped patients construct memories of childhood sexual abuse, sometimes including satanic rituals. The practice became a craze, not unlike the hysteria of the Salem witch trials; families were disrupted, and some people went to jail for crimes that were entirely imaginary.
Dr. McHugh was part of a campaign to debunk “recovered memory” therapy, and ultimately court testimony helped to bring it down — including demonstrations that a therapist could implant an entirely false memory in a susceptible patient, who would then be thoroughly convinced that the event had occurred.
His book is not only illuminating about the original scandal, but also refreshingly clear and forthright about the practice of psychiatry in particular and psychotherapy in general. Anyone whose life is troubled and who is seeking help would do well to consult this book.
***My daughter has a relatively mild form of cerebral palsy from a case of bacterial meningitis in the neonatal ward when she was two weeks old. She was two years old when we moved to Baltimore and my wife and I took her to see a specialist at Johns Hopkins. After a forty-five-minute examination, the specialist pronounced that she was intellectually disabled as well as physically disabled, and recommended treatment accordingly. Fortunately, her pediatrician subsequently cautioned us not to credit that diagnosis but to trust more in our own judgment.
Alice graduated from Swarthmore in 2006 with an honors degree in Latin and Greek.
****Hysteria in medical terms, Dr. McHugh explains, is “a mimicry of disability resting on self-deception and responsive to persuasion.” That is, patients with hysteria display symptoms for which there is no physical cause and believe fixedly that their maladies are real. They are persuaded, sometimes by association with people who are genuinely ill, that they are diseased. There is also a social form of hysteria, exemplified by the Salem witch hunts, in which the public was persuaded by the assent of authority — the clergy — that the spiritual and physical threats from harmless old women were real. It is not difficult these days to find figures of some authority who will give their assent to paranoid suspicion.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Man vs. machine
There is excellent reason to suppose that the designer of the Bryant furnace/air conditioner in my basement suffered from demonic possession.
Removing the filter for periodic vacuuming of dust and cat hair is not difficult, but returning it means getting down on the knees, groping in the dark recess past a bundle of hanging electrical cords that probably shouldn't be pulled loose, trying to keep the wobbly aluminum frame of the filter from bending over itself instead of blocking the opening, trying to fit the little latch over the filter, repeating the process because the filter frame has come loose again, and — inevitably, every time — scraping the skin off the knuckles against some protruding edge of metal.
Such a struggle takes it out of a man.
And therefore, since I am at liberty today, if anyone else craves the benefit of a sustaining pint or two, I would find a little company to be salubrious. Fiveish or so? (Unless you’re pretending to work and won’t be sprung till later.) Hamilton Tavern, or some comparable Baltimore saloon? (Even if you’re paying, I’m not inclined to leave town. But send me your name, and I’ll drink to your health.) No reasonable offer refused.
Removing the filter for periodic vacuuming of dust and cat hair is not difficult, but returning it means getting down on the knees, groping in the dark recess past a bundle of hanging electrical cords that probably shouldn't be pulled loose, trying to keep the wobbly aluminum frame of the filter from bending over itself instead of blocking the opening, trying to fit the little latch over the filter, repeating the process because the filter frame has come loose again, and — inevitably, every time — scraping the skin off the knuckles against some protruding edge of metal.
Such a struggle takes it out of a man.
And therefore, since I am at liberty today, if anyone else craves the benefit of a sustaining pint or two, I would find a little company to be salubrious. Fiveish or so? (Unless you’re pretending to work and won’t be sprung till later.) Hamilton Tavern, or some comparable Baltimore saloon? (Even if you’re paying, I’m not inclined to leave town. But send me your name, and I’ll drink to your health.) No reasonable offer refused.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Our vanishing heritage
You asked for it: some terms — hardly an exhaustive list — retrieved from newspaper lingo before these endangered print artifacts vanish like the passenger pigeon and the copy editor.
above the fold (adj. or adv.) A broadsheet paper, like The Baltimore Sun, as distinguished from the tabloid New York Daily News, is folded in half for display. The top half of the page, above the fold, is held to be the most important real estate in the paper. A reporter’s ambition is to get an article on the front page; a reporter’s supreme ambition is to get that article above the fold.
bang out (v.) A composing room (cf.) ritual in which an employee leaving the premises for the last time is commemorating by the pounding of pica poles (cf.) against metal surfaces in a commemorative clamor.
breaking news (n.) Unanticipated events developing during the publication cycle, requiring updates and occasionally wholesale revision of pages. Breaking news is conventionally greeted by profane expressions on the news desk, city desk, or copy desk.
budget (n.) also BJT The daily budget, or list of pending articles, either completed or imagined, typically discussed at an afternoon news meeting at which preliminary decisions about what is to go on the front page are made.
bulldog (n.) An early edition. The Baltimore Sun continues to produce a bulldog edition of the Sunday paper that appears Saturday morning. In a 60 Minutes episode in the early 1980s, Andy Rooney, then merely a spry sexagenarian, displayed a copy of the Sunday Cincinnati Enquirer and proceeded to discard all the advertising inserts and classified sections (“I already have job”), leaving a thin set of news sections. But the buy of The Sun’s bulldog edition performs the Rooney Shuck in reverse, discarding the thin news sections to retrieve the advertising inserts, the comics, the TV book, etc.
buried lede (n.) The central element of an article mistakenly appearing deep in the text. It must be disinterred.
burn off (v.) to dispose of articles that have previously been rejected for the front page or section front by running them on a day of low circulation. Look at your Monday paper.
byline (n.) The reporter’s name at the tip of an article; the most important component of an article.
chaser (n.) A page or set of pages typeset after the formal edition close to attempt to get breaking news (cf.) into the paper.
cold type (n.) Headlines and text produced on photographic paper and pasted up (cf.) in a composing room. Increasingly supplanted by electronic transmission of pages directly to a printing plant, where the pages emerge as metal plates to go on the printing press.
composing room (n.) The place in which printers, now vanished, once assembled pages in hot type or cold type.
copy editor (n.) An anonymous drudge who attempts, against great odds, to correct the many faults of writers before publication. Extinction imminent. (Cf. slot editor.)
CQ (abbrev.) An indication that the name or term so noted has been checked and verified. Copy editors, whose suspicions are well founded, often suspect that reporters use CQ to indicate “better check this.”
1st-lede writethru (n.) The first update of a developing wire service (cf.) article. Subsequent updates will be labeled 2nd-lede, 3rd-lede, etc.
goat-choker (n.) An article of inordinate and suffocating length, produced to gratify the vanity of the author and the aspirations of the publication. (Cf. Pulitzer-Prize-winner.)
graf (n.) Paragraph.
grip-and-grin (n.) A photograph of no inherent interest in which a notable and an obscure person shake hands at an occasion of supposed significance.
hed (n.) A headline, giving rise to the abbreviation HTK, for head to come, an article transmitted in a take or takes before it is in final form.
hot type (n.) Metal type generated on a Linotype machine. Archaic. (Cf. cold type.)
house ad (n.) An unpaid advertisement put on a page to fill a gap left by an lack of paid advertising. Often a promotional ad for the publication.
jumpline (n.) A line indicating a continuation, or jump, of an article on a subsequent page. Though readership surveys for generations have indicated that readers despise jumps and generally do not follow them, it does not suit newspapers to do otherwise.
lede (n.) The phonetic spelling of lead, the beginning, usually the first paragraph, of an article, so spelled as to indicate the specialized meaning rather than the common meaning to a Linotype operator.
Linotype (n.) A machine for the mechanical setting of type, the brainchild of Ottmar Merganthaler of Baltimore, to whom all praise be given. The Linotype operator used hot metal, melted lead, to create slugs (cf.) of type by manipulating a keyboard.
lobster shift (n.) Also lobster trick. The third shift on a daily newspaper, between midnight and 8 a.m.
nut graf (n.) The paragraph — if it exists — that explains the central point of an article, typically following a labored and self-indulgent introductory sequence of paragraphs.
pica pole (n.) A metal ruler used by printers in the composing room to measure type by picas (12 points to the pica, six picas to the inch). The pica pole is pounded against a metal surface in the ritual of banging out (cf.) an employee leaving the premises for the last time.
Pulitzer Prize (n.) The annual prizes in journalism, established by Joseph Pulitzer and administrated by Columbia University, to celebrate excellence in journalism and other categories; the Valhalla of the newspaper reporter.
off the floor (adj.) When a page has been completed and removed from the composing room (cf.), it is said to be off the floor. When an entire edition is off the floor, it is said to have been put to bed.
pasteup (n.) The assemblage of pages by pasting type onto page mockups, which are then photographed to be made into metal plates for the printing press.
Pulitzer-Prize-winner (n.) An article of surpassing artistry or investigative virtuosity, usually of considerable length (Cf. goat-choker), written for Pulitzer jurors rather than the readership of the publication, despite the unlikelihood that the former group will have read it in its entirety before bestowing the laurels.
reader (n.) An article devoid of immediate news interest that will supposedly be of interest to the readership.
refer (not reefer) (n.) A short summary attached to an article indicated a related story elsewhere in the publication.
rim editor (n.) A copy editor, a nonentity.
slot editor (n.) On a copy desk, the copy editor who checks and corrects the copy of other copy editors before approving it for publication. The term arises from the obsolete furniture of the newsroom, where once a horseshoe-shaped desk enabled the slot editor to hand out paper copy to the copy editors on the rim, the outside of the horseshoe. To slot (v.) is to check an article that has been copy edited before approving it for typesetting.
slug (n.) A line of type set in metal on a Linotype machine (cf.). Also the one-word working title of an article as it moves through production. SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States) is a familiar slug for an article about a Supreme Court decision.
spadia (n.) An annoying flap of advertising copy that wraps around a portion of the front page of a section, preventing the reader from seeing the full page.
spike (n.) The spindle on which paper copy that was not to run was impaled, giving rise to the verb to spike, to kill a story.
stet (v., from the Latin) Let it stand; let the original copy go as written. The hardest word for a copy editor to use.
take (n.) A section of an article. An article that is transmitted to the copy desk or the composing room as it is being written is sent in takes.
telegraph section (n.) At The Baltimore Sun, the A section, in which national and foreign news was acquired by telegraph in the remote past. The copy was edited on the telegraph desk, a component of the copy desk.
thirty (-30-) A numeral indicating the conclusion of a take (cf.) of copy. Extended metaphorically to the verb form to write 30, i.e., to conclude a career.
tombstoning In page layout, to put articles side by side so that the headlines are adjacent. The phenomenon is also referred to as bumping heads.
tick-tock (n.) A step-by-step account of how a particular event or phenomenon developed.
wire service (also the wire) (n.) The Associated Press or other news service whose dispatches are transmitted electronically to the publication.
above the fold (adj. or adv.) A broadsheet paper, like The Baltimore Sun, as distinguished from the tabloid New York Daily News, is folded in half for display. The top half of the page, above the fold, is held to be the most important real estate in the paper. A reporter’s ambition is to get an article on the front page; a reporter’s supreme ambition is to get that article above the fold.
bang out (v.) A composing room (cf.) ritual in which an employee leaving the premises for the last time is commemorating by the pounding of pica poles (cf.) against metal surfaces in a commemorative clamor.
breaking news (n.) Unanticipated events developing during the publication cycle, requiring updates and occasionally wholesale revision of pages. Breaking news is conventionally greeted by profane expressions on the news desk, city desk, or copy desk.
budget (n.) also BJT The daily budget, or list of pending articles, either completed or imagined, typically discussed at an afternoon news meeting at which preliminary decisions about what is to go on the front page are made.
bulldog (n.) An early edition. The Baltimore Sun continues to produce a bulldog edition of the Sunday paper that appears Saturday morning. In a 60 Minutes episode in the early 1980s, Andy Rooney, then merely a spry sexagenarian, displayed a copy of the Sunday Cincinnati Enquirer and proceeded to discard all the advertising inserts and classified sections (“I already have job”), leaving a thin set of news sections. But the buy of The Sun’s bulldog edition performs the Rooney Shuck in reverse, discarding the thin news sections to retrieve the advertising inserts, the comics, the TV book, etc.
buried lede (n.) The central element of an article mistakenly appearing deep in the text. It must be disinterred.
burn off (v.) to dispose of articles that have previously been rejected for the front page or section front by running them on a day of low circulation. Look at your Monday paper.
byline (n.) The reporter’s name at the tip of an article; the most important component of an article.
chaser (n.) A page or set of pages typeset after the formal edition close to attempt to get breaking news (cf.) into the paper.
cold type (n.) Headlines and text produced on photographic paper and pasted up (cf.) in a composing room. Increasingly supplanted by electronic transmission of pages directly to a printing plant, where the pages emerge as metal plates to go on the printing press.
composing room (n.) The place in which printers, now vanished, once assembled pages in hot type or cold type.
copy editor (n.) An anonymous drudge who attempts, against great odds, to correct the many faults of writers before publication. Extinction imminent. (Cf. slot editor.)
CQ (abbrev.) An indication that the name or term so noted has been checked and verified. Copy editors, whose suspicions are well founded, often suspect that reporters use CQ to indicate “better check this.”
1st-lede writethru (n.) The first update of a developing wire service (cf.) article. Subsequent updates will be labeled 2nd-lede, 3rd-lede, etc.
goat-choker (n.) An article of inordinate and suffocating length, produced to gratify the vanity of the author and the aspirations of the publication. (Cf. Pulitzer-Prize-winner.)
graf (n.) Paragraph.
grip-and-grin (n.) A photograph of no inherent interest in which a notable and an obscure person shake hands at an occasion of supposed significance.
hed (n.) A headline, giving rise to the abbreviation HTK, for head to come, an article transmitted in a take or takes before it is in final form.
hot type (n.) Metal type generated on a Linotype machine. Archaic. (Cf. cold type.)
house ad (n.) An unpaid advertisement put on a page to fill a gap left by an lack of paid advertising. Often a promotional ad for the publication.
jumpline (n.) A line indicating a continuation, or jump, of an article on a subsequent page. Though readership surveys for generations have indicated that readers despise jumps and generally do not follow them, it does not suit newspapers to do otherwise.
lede (n.) The phonetic spelling of lead, the beginning, usually the first paragraph, of an article, so spelled as to indicate the specialized meaning rather than the common meaning to a Linotype operator.
Linotype (n.) A machine for the mechanical setting of type, the brainchild of Ottmar Merganthaler of Baltimore, to whom all praise be given. The Linotype operator used hot metal, melted lead, to create slugs (cf.) of type by manipulating a keyboard.
lobster shift (n.) Also lobster trick. The third shift on a daily newspaper, between midnight and 8 a.m.
nut graf (n.) The paragraph — if it exists — that explains the central point of an article, typically following a labored and self-indulgent introductory sequence of paragraphs.
pica pole (n.) A metal ruler used by printers in the composing room to measure type by picas (12 points to the pica, six picas to the inch). The pica pole is pounded against a metal surface in the ritual of banging out (cf.) an employee leaving the premises for the last time.
Pulitzer Prize (n.) The annual prizes in journalism, established by Joseph Pulitzer and administrated by Columbia University, to celebrate excellence in journalism and other categories; the Valhalla of the newspaper reporter.
off the floor (adj.) When a page has been completed and removed from the composing room (cf.), it is said to be off the floor. When an entire edition is off the floor, it is said to have been put to bed.
pasteup (n.) The assemblage of pages by pasting type onto page mockups, which are then photographed to be made into metal plates for the printing press.
Pulitzer-Prize-winner (n.) An article of surpassing artistry or investigative virtuosity, usually of considerable length (Cf. goat-choker), written for Pulitzer jurors rather than the readership of the publication, despite the unlikelihood that the former group will have read it in its entirety before bestowing the laurels.
reader (n.) An article devoid of immediate news interest that will supposedly be of interest to the readership.
refer (not reefer) (n.) A short summary attached to an article indicated a related story elsewhere in the publication.
rim editor (n.) A copy editor, a nonentity.
slot editor (n.) On a copy desk, the copy editor who checks and corrects the copy of other copy editors before approving it for publication. The term arises from the obsolete furniture of the newsroom, where once a horseshoe-shaped desk enabled the slot editor to hand out paper copy to the copy editors on the rim, the outside of the horseshoe. To slot (v.) is to check an article that has been copy edited before approving it for typesetting.
slug (n.) A line of type set in metal on a Linotype machine (cf.). Also the one-word working title of an article as it moves through production. SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States) is a familiar slug for an article about a Supreme Court decision.
spadia (n.) An annoying flap of advertising copy that wraps around a portion of the front page of a section, preventing the reader from seeing the full page.
spike (n.) The spindle on which paper copy that was not to run was impaled, giving rise to the verb to spike, to kill a story.
stet (v., from the Latin) Let it stand; let the original copy go as written. The hardest word for a copy editor to use.
take (n.) A section of an article. An article that is transmitted to the copy desk or the composing room as it is being written is sent in takes.
telegraph section (n.) At The Baltimore Sun, the A section, in which national and foreign news was acquired by telegraph in the remote past. The copy was edited on the telegraph desk, a component of the copy desk.
thirty (-30-) A numeral indicating the conclusion of a take (cf.) of copy. Extended metaphorically to the verb form to write 30, i.e., to conclude a career.
tombstoning In page layout, to put articles side by side so that the headlines are adjacent. The phenomenon is also referred to as bumping heads.
tick-tock (n.) A step-by-step account of how a particular event or phenomenon developed.
wire service (also the wire) (n.) The Associated Press or other news service whose dispatches are transmitted electronically to the publication.
Now the treatment begins
Calm yourself. Help is at hand.
Earlier today this tweet went out from APStylebook on Twitter:
RT @emilynichols: there is little more beautiful than a freshly minted AP Stylebook. 2009! Is it wrong that I want to curl up and read it?
My re-tweet, one of a number of similar responses, simply began: God how sad.
Jason Wilson followed up to inquire:
Is this another sign that it's time to start organizing AP Stylebook interventions? This could be a new career for you.
Indeed it could. The doctor is IN.
The first thing to establish — you civilians can listen in to the session — is that The Associated Press Stylebook is not part of the Pentateuch. It is a handbook on certain conventions of writing, such as capitalization and abbreviation, along with advice on English usage and names of agencies and companies, and other miscellaneous information useful to journalists. It is not of divine origin or inspiration.
As such, it is one handbook among many: The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage; which chooses the opposite of AP usage in nearly every instance; the far more comprehensive Chicago Manual of Style, widely used in book publishing; the manual of the Government Printing Office for the manual productions of the federal government; and specialized handbooks for scientific and medical publications — none of which appear to induce ecstatic states when they publish new editions.
The point of such a stylebook is to establish consistency in practice to spare the reader distraction. So when there are two or more ways to write something — capitalized or lowercased, abbreviated or spelled out, a number written as a numeral or a word — a stylebook arbitrarily chooses one form. The AP Stylebook does not say that other choices are wrong, and some of the things it does say are not even right.
Now that APStylebook is on Twitter, it gleefully spreads such bursts of gush as the one above, to my mystification. The World Almanac is also on Twitter, but its readers don’t tweet that they stayed up all night reading this year’s edition. Perhaps it’s a copy editor phenomenon. Who else, after all, look into the AP Stylebook? (There’s precious little evidence that Associated Press reporters do.) Perhaps only a copy editor could quiver in delight at the prospect of discovering that rip off is preferred as a verb, rip-off as a noun; that heroes is the plural of hero (This is new?); that Pledge of Allegiance is capitalized — all part of the feast spread before the reader of the 2009 edition.
A further part of the excitement on the copy desk is the scope a new edition will give exegetes to convert guidelines into Rules. One example: When I was first at The Sun, my work was checked by a copy editor who was adamant that half a mile had to be changed in all instances to a half-mile, because AP said so. It was years later that Bill Walsh confirmed my suspicion of this dictum by writing in Lapsing into a Comma that no, both expressions are correct, and AP merely means that you have to use a hyphen if you pick the latter.
Now you have the pathology. Here is the treatment. You do not have to surrender your beloved AP Stylebook, which, for good or ill, is embedded as the house style of numerous publications. But the road to health lies in growing beyond it. Buy Brother Walsh’s book. There’s a new edition out of Garner on Usage, which you should find particularly well-informed and helpful. Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage will fill many gaps in your education, particularly if your degree is in journalism.
Take a deep, cleansing breath. Get up from the computer and walk to the nearest window. Look out. There is a wider world there than is circumscribed by the AP Stylebook. Try to keep a little perspective.
Earlier today this tweet went out from APStylebook on Twitter:
RT @emilynichols: there is little more beautiful than a freshly minted AP Stylebook. 2009! Is it wrong that I want to curl up and read it?
My re-tweet, one of a number of similar responses, simply began: God how sad.
Jason Wilson followed up to inquire:
Is this another sign that it's time to start organizing AP Stylebook interventions? This could be a new career for you.
Indeed it could. The doctor is IN.
The first thing to establish — you civilians can listen in to the session — is that The Associated Press Stylebook is not part of the Pentateuch. It is a handbook on certain conventions of writing, such as capitalization and abbreviation, along with advice on English usage and names of agencies and companies, and other miscellaneous information useful to journalists. It is not of divine origin or inspiration.
As such, it is one handbook among many: The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage; which chooses the opposite of AP usage in nearly every instance; the far more comprehensive Chicago Manual of Style, widely used in book publishing; the manual of the Government Printing Office for the manual productions of the federal government; and specialized handbooks for scientific and medical publications — none of which appear to induce ecstatic states when they publish new editions.
The point of such a stylebook is to establish consistency in practice to spare the reader distraction. So when there are two or more ways to write something — capitalized or lowercased, abbreviated or spelled out, a number written as a numeral or a word — a stylebook arbitrarily chooses one form. The AP Stylebook does not say that other choices are wrong, and some of the things it does say are not even right.
Now that APStylebook is on Twitter, it gleefully spreads such bursts of gush as the one above, to my mystification. The World Almanac is also on Twitter, but its readers don’t tweet that they stayed up all night reading this year’s edition. Perhaps it’s a copy editor phenomenon. Who else, after all, look into the AP Stylebook? (There’s precious little evidence that Associated Press reporters do.) Perhaps only a copy editor could quiver in delight at the prospect of discovering that rip off is preferred as a verb, rip-off as a noun; that heroes is the plural of hero (This is new?); that Pledge of Allegiance is capitalized — all part of the feast spread before the reader of the 2009 edition.
A further part of the excitement on the copy desk is the scope a new edition will give exegetes to convert guidelines into Rules. One example: When I was first at The Sun, my work was checked by a copy editor who was adamant that half a mile had to be changed in all instances to a half-mile, because AP said so. It was years later that Bill Walsh confirmed my suspicion of this dictum by writing in Lapsing into a Comma that no, both expressions are correct, and AP merely means that you have to use a hyphen if you pick the latter.
Now you have the pathology. Here is the treatment. You do not have to surrender your beloved AP Stylebook, which, for good or ill, is embedded as the house style of numerous publications. But the road to health lies in growing beyond it. Buy Brother Walsh’s book. There’s a new edition out of Garner on Usage, which you should find particularly well-informed and helpful. Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage will fill many gaps in your education, particularly if your degree is in journalism.
Take a deep, cleansing breath. Get up from the computer and walk to the nearest window. Look out. There is a wider world there than is circumscribed by the AP Stylebook. Try to keep a little perspective.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
An editor's haiku
The coffee is hot,
my hands poised above the text,
its vitals exposed
Regard the comma,
apt with the compound sentence,
not with compound verbs
An expanse of white,
regular ranks of black type,
and slashes of red
The patient labor
of the lexicographer
embiggens our tongue
So sweeping the claims,
so erratic the result —
Wikipedia
The writer who knows
how to use “comprise” rightly
will rise to heaven
Give up explaining
suspensive hyphenation;
insert as needed
A reporter’s hand
reaches for a thesaurus;
screams die in my throat
Too many “touches”
in processing the copy —
layoffs now impend
This writer’s in luck:
I have been turned down to serve
on a death panel
Too many hours
on a chair in the basement
perusing the Web
Previous efforts
emphasize the feebleness
of the work today
my hands poised above the text,
its vitals exposed
Regard the comma,
apt with the compound sentence,
not with compound verbs
An expanse of white,
regular ranks of black type,
and slashes of red
The patient labor
of the lexicographer
embiggens our tongue
So sweeping the claims,
so erratic the result —
Wikipedia
The writer who knows
how to use “comprise” rightly
will rise to heaven
Give up explaining
suspensive hyphenation;
insert as needed
A reporter’s hand
reaches for a thesaurus;
screams die in my throat
Too many “touches”
in processing the copy —
layoffs now impend
This writer’s in luck:
I have been turned down to serve
on a death panel
Too many hours
on a chair in the basement
perusing the Web
Previous efforts
emphasize the feebleness
of the work today
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