Some of the people who commented on this week’s posts “Keeping up with the Joneses” and “English, the slut language” acted as if they were apprehensive that I had gone off my medication. To reassure them, some responses.
It’s only spelling: Yes, I know that using it’s for its is just a spelling error and not a capital offense. It’s just a spelling error when people make nouns plural by adding ’s. Seeing that does not raise my blood pressure. The people who are sacking three-fifths of the copy desk at the Star Tribune in Minneapolis — there you’ve got a felony offense. It wouldn’t be disproportionate for the people responsible to spend a day or two in the stocks, subject to verbal and physical abuse from passers-by.
But there are people who will think less of you if your writing is littered with spelling errors and typos, and those people will begin to think more about your trivial errors than they do about what you are saying. (Public speaking in analogous; the same people will notice that you have spinach between your incisors and that your fly is open.) I am not saying that these people are right to be so distracted, only that you should be aware of the likelihood.
That damn apostrophe: Yeah, yeah, we didn’t always use it to show possession, and we might not have to, and why not let it go away altogether except to make plurals at the produce section of the supermarket, where it will be found forever. You know, I don’t legislate for the language; I’m just explaining the conventions of formal written English as they exist today. The apostrophe may go by the time the state has withered away, and take whom with it, but this is today.
Chill, bro’: (There’s that damn apostrophe again.) I am not a peevologist. I do not maintain a kennel of pet peeves. I try to express an informed prescriptivism and give my reasons rather than resort to mere dogmatism.
I also teach editing, a complex and subtle craft that takes a great deal of time to master. That is why I begrudge the necessity of spending the first few weeks of every semester TEACHING UPPER-CLASS UNDERGRADUATES THE MECHANICS OF GRAMMAR AND PUNCTUATION THAT I LEARNED IN THE SIXTH AND SEVENTH GRADES IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN — OF ALL PLACES — EASTERN KENTUCKY* NEARLY HALF A CENTURY AGO.
Sorry. Sorry. Perhaps it is time for me to take my medication.
The Hamilton Tavern opens in half an hour.
*A region not famed, then or now, for book-learning.
Friday, January 29, 2010
Grammarpalooza
As you make your own plans to celebrate National Grammar Day on March 4, this account from the archives, published the day after the first National Grammar Day in 2008, may guide you.
One day past, the exhilaration of National Grammar Day has yet to fade. The cheers of the crowds lining the streets at the parade still echo in one’s ears. It was a swirl of events, the hourly cannon fire salute from the Citadel, the Te Deum sung at the Cathedral, the torchlight procession and laying of a wreath at the Cenotaph of the Unknown Copy Editor*, the fireworks display, the Semicolon Ball at the Ducal Palace, the governor’s generous clemency in releasing the detainees from the stockade at midnight. A glorious day.
*Hell, pretty much all copy editors are unknown.
One day past, the exhilaration of National Grammar Day has yet to fade. The cheers of the crowds lining the streets at the parade still echo in one’s ears. It was a swirl of events, the hourly cannon fire salute from the Citadel, the Te Deum sung at the Cathedral, the torchlight procession and laying of a wreath at the Cenotaph of the Unknown Copy Editor*, the fireworks display, the Semicolon Ball at the Ducal Palace, the governor’s generous clemency in releasing the detainees from the stockade at midnight. A glorious day.
*Hell, pretty much all copy editors are unknown.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
English, the slut language
Yesterday’s post on plurals and possessives stirred up some comments worth addressing.
This one, from The Ridger:
You know you can't tell them apart when you say them. Dogs, dog's, dogs' Is it any wonder people make spelling errors? Lighten up on them.
And please don't attack me; I did say they were errors. I just don't think they're harbingers of doom. Show a person who confuses "it is" with "its" (not "it's", "it is") and I will concede that he "doesn't know the difference" as opposed to "can't spell well".
And these two, from mike:
I would argue (and have) that it's a melancholy state of orthographical protocol that seems to require repeated tutorials to master these rules. The fact is, the system we have for when and when not to use the apostrophe is ridiculously complicated, and gets in the way every single day of what the ultimate purpose of writing is: to get information down on paper, real or virtual. If it seems that a majority (let's assume) of people who write English cannot seem to master these rules, where's the problem, with the people or with the rules? In my business (computers), if people can't seem to figure out how to use a program, you blame poor program design, not ill-educated users.
FWIW, apostrophes have been used "incorrectly" throughout the history of English to mark plurals. Dryden did it consistently, for example.* (Have a look at handwritten manuscripts from days of yore. You might be surprised at what you find for spelling and punctation.) As I say, it's just too confusing. More and earlier education is _not the answer_. A more logical system is the real answer. Writing ordinary English should not require a decade of study.
The root of the matter is that writing is not natural. Speech is. A child who is not impaired or kept in isolation will learn language ⎯ vocabulary and grammar both ⎯ in just a few years because the capacity for that feat is evolutionarily hard-wired into the species.
But writing has been among us for a comparatively short time, and it must be learned laboriously through schooling.
That is why, as The Ridger points out, that we generally know exactly what a speaker means, because we mastered spoken English in infancy and early childhood. But our grasp of written English, even after much schooling, is tenuous.
Add to that the kind of language that English is. For all its richness and flexibility, and its grand literature, it is just a slut, picking up vocabulary and grammar promiscuously from other languages. It started out as Anglo-Saxon, a Germanic language, and then slept with Norman French and Latin.
This is part of the reason that English orthography is a nightmare, some of it from Anglo-Saxon patterns and some of it from the classical languages that English shamelessly plundered. Standardization of spelling dates pretty much from the nineteenth century, so we haven’t even been at that for very long.
The hope for “a more logical system,” is, I fear, a chimera. Noah Webster wanted to reform the spelling of American English, and he had a limited degree of success (color and honor instead of colour and honour, for example. Big whoop). George Bernard Shaw campaigned tirelessly for a simplified spelling. He failed. And even the formidable Col. Robert Rutherford McCormick of the Chicago Tribune must see with chagrin from his celestial tower that the World’s Greatest Newspaper has long since abandoned his pet spellings.
No, English is, as she always has been, a wayward wanton, and we have to accept her as we find her, not as we would wish her to be.
Maddening and irregular as they are, the conventions of spelling, the conventions of punctuation, and the inconsistencies of plurals and possessives remain there to be learned by anyone who has any pretension to mastering the craft of writing.
*Be careful, mike. You will probably want to use Dryden as a bad example for his insistence that English sentences should not end with prepositions. In any event, persons writing before the publication of reliable English dictionaries or standardized orthography are not the best examples to cite in this connection.
This one, from The Ridger:
You know you can't tell them apart when you say them. Dogs, dog's, dogs' Is it any wonder people make spelling errors? Lighten up on them.
And please don't attack me; I did say they were errors. I just don't think they're harbingers of doom. Show a person who confuses "it is" with "its" (not "it's", "it is") and I will concede that he "doesn't know the difference" as opposed to "can't spell well".
And these two, from mike:
I would argue (and have) that it's a melancholy state of orthographical protocol that seems to require repeated tutorials to master these rules. The fact is, the system we have for when and when not to use the apostrophe is ridiculously complicated, and gets in the way every single day of what the ultimate purpose of writing is: to get information down on paper, real or virtual. If it seems that a majority (let's assume) of people who write English cannot seem to master these rules, where's the problem, with the people or with the rules? In my business (computers), if people can't seem to figure out how to use a program, you blame poor program design, not ill-educated users.
FWIW, apostrophes have been used "incorrectly" throughout the history of English to mark plurals. Dryden did it consistently, for example.* (Have a look at handwritten manuscripts from days of yore. You might be surprised at what you find for spelling and punctation.) As I say, it's just too confusing. More and earlier education is _not the answer_. A more logical system is the real answer. Writing ordinary English should not require a decade of study.
The root of the matter is that writing is not natural. Speech is. A child who is not impaired or kept in isolation will learn language ⎯ vocabulary and grammar both ⎯ in just a few years because the capacity for that feat is evolutionarily hard-wired into the species.
But writing has been among us for a comparatively short time, and it must be learned laboriously through schooling.
That is why, as The Ridger points out, that we generally know exactly what a speaker means, because we mastered spoken English in infancy and early childhood. But our grasp of written English, even after much schooling, is tenuous.
Add to that the kind of language that English is. For all its richness and flexibility, and its grand literature, it is just a slut, picking up vocabulary and grammar promiscuously from other languages. It started out as Anglo-Saxon, a Germanic language, and then slept with Norman French and Latin.
This is part of the reason that English orthography is a nightmare, some of it from Anglo-Saxon patterns and some of it from the classical languages that English shamelessly plundered. Standardization of spelling dates pretty much from the nineteenth century, so we haven’t even been at that for very long.
The hope for “a more logical system,” is, I fear, a chimera. Noah Webster wanted to reform the spelling of American English, and he had a limited degree of success (color and honor instead of colour and honour, for example. Big whoop). George Bernard Shaw campaigned tirelessly for a simplified spelling. He failed. And even the formidable Col. Robert Rutherford McCormick of the Chicago Tribune must see with chagrin from his celestial tower that the World’s Greatest Newspaper has long since abandoned his pet spellings.
No, English is, as she always has been, a wayward wanton, and we have to accept her as we find her, not as we would wish her to be.
Maddening and irregular as they are, the conventions of spelling, the conventions of punctuation, and the inconsistencies of plurals and possessives remain there to be learned by anyone who has any pretension to mastering the craft of writing.
*Be careful, mike. You will probably want to use Dryden as a bad example for his insistence that English sentences should not end with prepositions. In any event, persons writing before the publication of reliable English dictionaries or standardized orthography are not the best examples to cite in this connection.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Coming attractions
Where to Turn: Resources for Editors
I will be conducting another audio conference for McMurry, publisher of Copyediting, on Thursday, February 18. Details at the link.
National Grammar Day
For the run-up to National Grammar Day on March 4, I am in the middle of writing another grammarnoir serial, “Pulp Diction,” which will appear at this blog.
ACES national conference
The fourteenth national conference of the American Copy Editors Society will take place April 15-17 in Philadelphia. If you have not signed up, there is still time to register.
Annie
The Memorial Players production of the musical Annie will be presented on the evenings of April 23-24 and April 30-May 1, and on the afternoons of April 25 and May 2, at Memorial Episcopal Church, Bolton Street and Lafayette Avenue in Baltimore’s Bolton Hill Neighborhood.
Details are at the link, but one detail not mentioned there is that I have been cast as Franklin Roosevelt in this production.
I will be conducting another audio conference for McMurry, publisher of Copyediting, on Thursday, February 18. Details at the link.
National Grammar Day
For the run-up to National Grammar Day on March 4, I am in the middle of writing another grammarnoir serial, “Pulp Diction,” which will appear at this blog.
ACES national conference
The fourteenth national conference of the American Copy Editors Society will take place April 15-17 in Philadelphia. If you have not signed up, there is still time to register.
Annie
The Memorial Players production of the musical Annie will be presented on the evenings of April 23-24 and April 30-May 1, and on the afternoons of April 25 and May 2, at Memorial Episcopal Church, Bolton Street and Lafayette Avenue in Baltimore’s Bolton Hill Neighborhood.
Details are at the link, but one detail not mentioned there is that I have been cast as Franklin Roosevelt in this production.
Keeping up with the Joneses
Yes, Joneses. That’s how it’s done. Today we’re going to have a little refresher tutorial on plurals and possessives. If you’ve already got that down, or think you do, you may go to the library and find a book to read until the next post.
Singular
mule
man
Compson
Snopes
Singular possessive
mule’s
man’s
Compson’s
Snopes’s or Snopes’
Plural
mules
men
Compsons
Snopeses
Plural possessive
mules’
men’s
Compsons’
Snopeses’
Be careful
No matter how many times you have seen it done, do not make nouns plural by adding ’s. The Smith’s is not a proper plural. Neither is the Jones'. The apostrophe can, however, be used to make individual letters — all A’s in the editing class — or numerals — aces and 8’s — plural.
Either Jones’s or Jones’ may be used for the singular possessive. Both usages are current; which one you choose will depend on the style your publication prefers.
Watch out for words that form plurals without adding s or es. If you write childrens’ — and people do — your literacy will be called into question.
Such is the melancholy state of education in this proud republic that I must conduct this elementary review every semester for juniors and seniors at a private university. It would therefore not come as a great shock if some of you would benefit from it, too.
Singular
mule
man
Compson
Snopes
Singular possessive
mule’s
man’s
Compson’s
Snopes’s or Snopes’
Plural
mules
men
Compsons
Snopeses
Plural possessive
mules’
men’s
Compsons’
Snopeses’
Be careful
No matter how many times you have seen it done, do not make nouns plural by adding ’s. The Smith’s is not a proper plural. Neither is the Jones'. The apostrophe can, however, be used to make individual letters — all A’s in the editing class — or numerals — aces and 8’s — plural.
Either Jones’s or Jones’ may be used for the singular possessive. Both usages are current; which one you choose will depend on the style your publication prefers.
Watch out for words that form plurals without adding s or es. If you write childrens’ — and people do — your literacy will be called into question.
Such is the melancholy state of education in this proud republic that I must conduct this elementary review every semester for juniors and seniors at a private university. It would therefore not come as a great shock if some of you would benefit from it, too.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Mumpsimus redux
Mumpsimus is an obstinate determination to hold on to a belief or practice even after it has been demonstrated to be faulty ⎯ a mulish resistance to being informed.
Michael B. Quinion described the origin of the word at World Wide Words in 2001. A medieval priest, either out of deficient literacy or reading from a corrupt text, garbled a phrase in the Latin Mass. Instead of saying quod in ore sumpsimus, “we have taken,” he said quod in ore mumpsimus, which is nonsense.
Corrected by a younger priest, the elder got his back up and, pointing out that he had been saying Mass that way for forty years, declared, “I will not change my old ‘mumpsimus’ for your new ‘sumpsimus.’”
This story, which may have been a scholarly joke of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, came to mind as I read the comments on yesterday’s post about the bogus doctrine of the split infinitive in English. These whippersnapper linguists, the outrage goes, are trying to upset all the rules of grammar that have been in place since God handed them down to an eighth-grade schoolteacher. You know, the “new sumpsimus” that says that the split infinitive is perfectly natural in English. They are not going to give up their “old mumpsimus” until it is pried from their cold, dead hands.
But the plain fact, as anyone who troubles to read the entry in Merriam Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage or Garner’s Modern American Usage or any other reputable source, for Fowler’s sake, will find that the split infinitive has always been used in English, including by the best writers, and that the prohibition against it was instituted by eighteenth-century grammarians who thought that English ought to resemble Latin. It is not a rule but a superstition, a dogma without foundation.
Significantly, instead of addressing the scholarship, which is upheld by descriptivists and prescriptivists alike, the defenders of this faux rule merely state, over and over, that it is a rule and that anyone who questions it is undermining the standards and purity of the language and opening the gates to the barbarian hordes.
Here is a sample of that line from a comment on yesterday’s post:
I will also recognize that I have been too dependent upon my trust in my teachers and professors who required me to adhere to the aforementioned canon. (Even when I completed my doctorate I received a written form which listed unacceptable language variations, including the split infinitive) in my dissertation.
It is regrettable, deeply regrettable, that the standards of teaching, in elementary schools, secondary schools, colleges and universities, have been so deficient that it falls to me to break the news that possession of a doctorate, or the authority to approve a dissertation, does not convey infallibility in questions of faith, morals, and grammar.
Henry David Thoreau said, “Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.” Somewhat more elegantly, H.W. Fowler deplored “the havoc that is wrought by unintelligent applications of an unintelligent dogma.”
Some of those people up on the battlements braced for the barbarian blitzkrieg are defending the wrong side.
Michael B. Quinion described the origin of the word at World Wide Words in 2001. A medieval priest, either out of deficient literacy or reading from a corrupt text, garbled a phrase in the Latin Mass. Instead of saying quod in ore sumpsimus, “we have taken,” he said quod in ore mumpsimus, which is nonsense.
Corrected by a younger priest, the elder got his back up and, pointing out that he had been saying Mass that way for forty years, declared, “I will not change my old ‘mumpsimus’ for your new ‘sumpsimus.’”
This story, which may have been a scholarly joke of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, came to mind as I read the comments on yesterday’s post about the bogus doctrine of the split infinitive in English. These whippersnapper linguists, the outrage goes, are trying to upset all the rules of grammar that have been in place since God handed them down to an eighth-grade schoolteacher. You know, the “new sumpsimus” that says that the split infinitive is perfectly natural in English. They are not going to give up their “old mumpsimus” until it is pried from their cold, dead hands.
But the plain fact, as anyone who troubles to read the entry in Merriam Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage or Garner’s Modern American Usage or any other reputable source, for Fowler’s sake, will find that the split infinitive has always been used in English, including by the best writers, and that the prohibition against it was instituted by eighteenth-century grammarians who thought that English ought to resemble Latin. It is not a rule but a superstition, a dogma without foundation.
Significantly, instead of addressing the scholarship, which is upheld by descriptivists and prescriptivists alike, the defenders of this faux rule merely state, over and over, that it is a rule and that anyone who questions it is undermining the standards and purity of the language and opening the gates to the barbarian hordes.
Here is a sample of that line from a comment on yesterday’s post:
I will also recognize that I have been too dependent upon my trust in my teachers and professors who required me to adhere to the aforementioned canon. (Even when I completed my doctorate I received a written form which listed unacceptable language variations, including the split infinitive) in my dissertation.
It is regrettable, deeply regrettable, that the standards of teaching, in elementary schools, secondary schools, colleges and universities, have been so deficient that it falls to me to break the news that possession of a doctorate, or the authority to approve a dissertation, does not convey infallibility in questions of faith, morals, and grammar.
Henry David Thoreau said, “Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.” Somewhat more elegantly, H.W. Fowler deplored “the havoc that is wrought by unintelligent applications of an unintelligent dogma.”
Some of those people up on the battlements braced for the barbarian blitzkrieg are defending the wrong side.
Monday, January 25, 2010
The battle rejoined
I understand that there was some kind of football extravaganza over the weekend, which may have distracted some of you from the back-and-forth in Facebook over that exploded doctrine, the split infinitive.
Mignon Fogarty drew fire on her Grammar Girl page on Facebook for pointing out, yet again, that there is no legitimate foundation for the bogus rule against splitting infinitives, A couple of those comments:
A good writer/speaker does not use them. Man, no wonder my students find professional writing so hard!
I respectfully disagree with Grammar Girl on the issue of split infinitives. There is indeed a 'rule' or 'convention' which 'prohibits' them. It is certainly no myth.
You can see more of the same in her 2006 post on the same subject at her Web site, Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing:
I have been studying (American) English since 1956, Latin since 1965, and Spanish since 1969.
I agree with those who have said that infinitives should never be split. Sorry, Grammar Girl, but your laxness on this matter is surprising and disappointing. Please change your mind, thus correcting yourself. [Contrary to what our modern world mistakenly thinks, there really are "right" and "wrong" actions in life.]
And this:
Most grammar texts still consider split infinitives incorrect. The English language has been butchered enough without resorting to putting everything into the vernacular. You might as well teach Ebonics or Sponics or whatever.
Either stick to the rules or shut up is my answer.
Some constructions that split infinitives can indeed be ungainly, but that does not mean that all such constructions are wrong. Many writers come up with maladroit metaphors, but no one concludes that all metaphors should therefore be banned. (Except maybe for Plato, who wants to have no truck with poetry in his nasty little Republic.)
What is on display in the comments — and it is profoundly discouraging that some appear to come from teachers — is an uninformed and dogmatic attitude toward language: “I don’t care about the history of the language or what linguists say or even what informed prescriptivists say. I was taught a rule, and that is the law, and anyone who disagrees with me is a barbarian who is tearing down all the standards of civilization. Shut up.”
It is rather the attachment to the split-infinitive superstition that stands in opposition to learning.
Écrasez l’infâme.
Mignon Fogarty drew fire on her Grammar Girl page on Facebook for pointing out, yet again, that there is no legitimate foundation for the bogus rule against splitting infinitives, A couple of those comments:
A good writer/speaker does not use them. Man, no wonder my students find professional writing so hard!
I respectfully disagree with Grammar Girl on the issue of split infinitives. There is indeed a 'rule' or 'convention' which 'prohibits' them. It is certainly no myth.
You can see more of the same in her 2006 post on the same subject at her Web site, Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing:
I have been studying (American) English since 1956, Latin since 1965, and Spanish since 1969.
I agree with those who have said that infinitives should never be split. Sorry, Grammar Girl, but your laxness on this matter is surprising and disappointing. Please change your mind, thus correcting yourself. [Contrary to what our modern world mistakenly thinks, there really are "right" and "wrong" actions in life.]
And this:
Most grammar texts still consider split infinitives incorrect. The English language has been butchered enough without resorting to putting everything into the vernacular. You might as well teach Ebonics or Sponics or whatever.
Either stick to the rules or shut up is my answer.
Some constructions that split infinitives can indeed be ungainly, but that does not mean that all such constructions are wrong. Many writers come up with maladroit metaphors, but no one concludes that all metaphors should therefore be banned. (Except maybe for Plato, who wants to have no truck with poetry in his nasty little Republic.)
What is on display in the comments — and it is profoundly discouraging that some appear to come from teachers — is an uninformed and dogmatic attitude toward language: “I don’t care about the history of the language or what linguists say or even what informed prescriptivists say. I was taught a rule, and that is the law, and anyone who disagrees with me is a barbarian who is tearing down all the standards of civilization. Shut up.”
It is rather the attachment to the split-infinitive superstition that stands in opposition to learning.
Écrasez l’infâme.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
We'll always have Paris
As regular readers know, one of the enduring pleasures of my twilight years is slapping around the Associated Press Stylebook at any opportunity. A couple of days ago I posted this snark on Facebook:
AP Stylebook pronounces Port-au-Prince, port-oh-PRIHNS', for monoglots who think it effeminate to pronounce French words as the French do.
Almost immediately, one Elizabeth Herrington posted this comment:
How do you pronounce Paris?
I pronounce it after the manner of the inhabitants of Paris, Kentucky.
We’ve covered this ground before. When the Olympics went to Turin, there was agitation in the sports department over whether to use Turin, the traditional anglicized version of the name, or the Italian Torino, which the Olympics Committee was using. I asked if they intended to use Roma and Firenze or refer to the Shroud of Torino.
English has many foreign place names that have been anglicized, and which are pronounced as English words. We say Munich, not München, and that’s fine. Other languages do the same thing, and we don’t object when the French refer to us as les États-Unis.
But if a less-familiar foreign place name has not been anglicized, there is no objection to pronouncing it as it sounds in the original language, provided one avoids the finicky hyperpronunciation beloved of announcers on classical music stations.
It seems to me that
1. If you order café-au-lait as cafay-oh-lay and not cafay-oh-late, then you might want to pronounce the Prince in Port-au-Prince to rhyme (roughly) with prance.
2. If you are running the AP Stylebook, to the degree that its apparently random directives have any guidance, then you might indicate that both the French and anglicized pronunciations are acceptable. It’s not as if any hearers are likely to be confused.
AP Stylebook pronounces Port-au-Prince, port-oh-PRIHNS', for monoglots who think it effeminate to pronounce French words as the French do.
Almost immediately, one Elizabeth Herrington posted this comment:
How do you pronounce Paris?
I pronounce it after the manner of the inhabitants of Paris, Kentucky.
We’ve covered this ground before. When the Olympics went to Turin, there was agitation in the sports department over whether to use Turin, the traditional anglicized version of the name, or the Italian Torino, which the Olympics Committee was using. I asked if they intended to use Roma and Firenze or refer to the Shroud of Torino.
English has many foreign place names that have been anglicized, and which are pronounced as English words. We say Munich, not München, and that’s fine. Other languages do the same thing, and we don’t object when the French refer to us as les États-Unis.
But if a less-familiar foreign place name has not been anglicized, there is no objection to pronouncing it as it sounds in the original language, provided one avoids the finicky hyperpronunciation beloved of announcers on classical music stations.
It seems to me that
1. If you order café-au-lait as cafay-oh-lay and not cafay-oh-late, then you might want to pronounce the Prince in Port-au-Prince to rhyme (roughly) with prance.
2. If you are running the AP Stylebook, to the degree that its apparently random directives have any guidance, then you might indicate that both the French and anglicized pronunciations are acceptable. It’s not as if any hearers are likely to be confused.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Out of the archives, endlessly mocking
I feel a little embarrassed to be repurposing material from past posts, but a crowd of new readers has arrived this week, some of them drawn by David Hobby’s kind remarks at the Strobist blog. And there is a wealth of material from the older You Don’t Say at Baltimoresun.com that is now inaccessible.
So, with no further apology, I present Linnaean classifications of copy editors, writers, and managers. These are three previous posts strung together; if you’ve seen them before, you’re under no obligation to look at them again.
LINNAEUS ON THE COPY DESK
A partial catalogue of the denizens of the copy desk.
The Pouncer
The Pouncer takes his motto from Gore Vidal: “It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.” When the Pouncer discovers an error in a story, he brandishes it aloft and proclaims it. The error is like the dead bird your cat deposits on your doorstep to show how hunting is done.
Because the Pouncer is smart, he is usually right. Unfortunately, he has to establish his own worth every night by showing the defects of others. So if nothing substantial presents itself, he will take a story and worry it like a terrier with a rat until he can make an issue of something.
He is beloved by reporters and assigning editors alike.
By the Book
You can predict all the changes By the Book makes in copy. Since always becomes because, half an acre becomes a half-acre, and attorney becomes lawyer (or maybe the reverse). No sentence ends with a preposition, and neither does any line of a headline. Everything for By the Book is a 1 or a 0, right or wrong; there is always a correct way to do everything, and everything must be made correct. By the Book’s copy of the AP Stylebook (copyright 1982) has been annotated more comprehensively than the Talmud.
Thanks for Sharing
“Hey, this obituary has a funny line in it.”
“Did you see what Wall Street said about the company stock on Romenesko today?”
“Here’s a real cute picture of a cat wearing a bonnet.” (Why, on edition deadline, is she looking at Internet images of cats?)
The big-hearted Thanks for Sharing can’t keep anything to herself. If it’s unusual, or amusing, or heart-wrenching, she has to let you know about it because you might otherwise miss it. Never mind that you are — what do we call it? — working.
Mote Man
The devil is in the details, and Mote Man is on the lookout for the devil. He, like Gilbert’s Major-General Stanley “knows the kings of England, and he quotes the fights historical, from Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical.” If the story says that the Emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, Mote Man knows that Constantine established a toleration of Christianity. If the story says that John F. Kennedy was the youngest man to become president of the United States, he knows that Theodore Roosevelt was younger when McKinley was assassinated. Kennedy was the youngest man to be elected president.
But since Mote Man’s attention is devoted entirely to recondite distinctions, he is capable of sending through a story about Iran bearing a 48-point headline that says Iraq.
Speed Demon
Speed Demon can turn a story around faster than anyone else on the desk. If you hand Speed Demon a page proof, it will be returned to you marked “OK” before you have been able to sit down again. Speed Demon handles twice as much copy as any other editor on the desk, and is quite proud of that.
Speed Demon also lets through twice as many errors as anyone else on the desk.
Stuck in First
Sitting near Speed Demon is Stuck in First. As one colleague once said of another, “He only has one gear.” (And don’t write in to tell me that that should read “has only one gear.” Sometimes it doesn’t matter all that much, and besides, IT’S A DIRECT QUOTE.) Every story that passes through Stuck in First’s hands is meticulously edited, clean and correct. And if you can pry two or three stories out of those slow-moving fingers by edition close, it is a good night.
The Correspondent
If you sit near the Correspondent, you hear her busy fingers on the keyboard, tappity-tappity-tappity-TAP. And you think, that’s good. Busy at work. Should be able to close the edition early tonight. Then you notice that the Correspondent has been working for 45 minutes on a routine 12-column-inch wire service article on the discovery that it gets hot in the Midwest in the summertime. That’s when you realize that all that music of the keyboard has been Instant Messaging to friends, some of them probably also on the copy desk.
Team Player
Team Player designs dynamic pages, writes crisp headlines, and sets priorities under deadline pressure. A self-starter, Team Player acts proactively to take action, communicates effectively with stakeholders, and displays a positive attitude. Team Player has broad editing experience, excellent news judgment and leadership skills and a desire to innovate. Team Player understands and embraces the company’s core mission, values and goals.
Mythical.
DISCLOSURE
I am Pouncer, Speed Demon, Mote Man, Thanks for Sharing, Correspondent, By the Book and, sometimes, Stuck in First. I have at one time or another displayed all these behaviors. Learning humility is easy on a copy desk, because in identifying the faults and failings of others, one holds up a mirror to oneself.
OUR AMAZING WORDSMITHS
A short guide to the zoology of newspaper writers.
The Crown Prince and/or The Princess Royal
The prize bull and prize heifer of the sacred cattle have typically won prizes — real prizes, sometimes with money attached, not the stuff that state press associations hand out like candy corn at Halloween. Consequently, they have been exempted from routine work. Production of a story, once or twice a year, is an event in the newsroom.
Mute Inglorious Milton
Mute Inglorious Milton has the misfortune to work on a beat or a section largely ignored by the rest of the paper. He/she may be diligent and accurate, may even be able to write clearly, but there is no chance that he/she will ever be summoned from the suburbs to work downtown, much less ever become The Crown Prince or The Princess Royal.
The Supreme Pontificator
As a writer of analyses or reviews and a master of the Authoritative Tone, The Supreme Pontificator has no peer. He/she has never been wrong. Or at least has never acknowledged a misjudgment. Moreover, he/she speaks ex cathedra on any subject in any article. Read his/her articles to learn what God would think if God had the inside information.
The Supreme Pontificator is destined to become a distinguished member of the Columntern (See below).
Who Touched My Story
Who Touched My Story will demand an accounting of every keystroke during the editing of his/her story, often calling the copy desk on edition deadline with this inquiry. Who Touched will contest every attempt to untangle syntax or regularize a mixed metaphor. Corrections of errors of fact will not be met with gratitude.
Who Touched has become such a nuisance that assigning editors have given up the struggle. His/her copy is subjected to peristalsis rather than editing, and when a copy editor has the temerity to raise a question, Who Touched will answer, “My editor thought that this story was fine. Why are you questioning it?”
Mirror, Mirror
“Did you read my story? What did you think of my story? Did you like it better than yesterday’s story? What was your favorite passage? What’s the headline on my story going to say? Is it on Page One? Why isn’t it on Page One?”
Mirror, Mirror is apparently unaware that anyone else is writing or that the paper and its editors have any concerns apart from the burnishing of his/her article.
By the Word
By the Word believes that a 1,500-word story is, by definition, twice as good as a 750-word story. Accordingly, an article on some continuing story with three paragraphs of incremental developments will be padded out with a couple of dozen paragraphs taken from the archive. By the Word is particularly deadly when covering crime and courts, because a story on the third day of jury selection will require a recapitulation of the complete circumstances of the original crime, with context taking the reader back to the time Cain smacked Abel.
The Duckbilled Platitude
The Duckbilled Platitude never met a cliche he/she didn’t like. But he/she is as busy as a one-armed paperhanger. At the end of the day, racing against the clock, he gives 110 percent trying to find the smoking gun. And the next day he is back in the saddle again. Trying to get Duckbilled to give up cliches is like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall.
Columnist Party Apparatchik
The members of the Columntern write about their children, their pets, their interminable waits queuing up with the rabble at the motor vehicle bureau. When whimsical, they write columns that Dave Barry might have been able to make funny. When channeling Walter Winchell, they produce little apercus and apothegms about life, held together with ellipses and spit.
When one Apparatchik achieves the status of Supreme Pontificator and takes one of his/her extended vacations, the paper reprints past columns.
The Columntern is not subject to editing, because, as Anthony Trollope said, “One cannot pour out of a jug more than is in it.” Or more simply, as Don Hebb put it, “What’s not worth doing is not worth doing well.”
High Camp
High Camp has learned from colleagues, taking the Authoritative Tone from The Supreme Pontificator, adopting the self-absorption of Mirror, Mirror, appropriating the gift of unoriginality from The Duckbilled Platitude, and experimenting with the risible pretensions of Goodbye English Prose (See below), he/she confects a rococo prose unlike anything else on land or sea. Many writers talk about developing a voice; High Camp has Voice. The effect is very much like what P.G. Wodehouse or S.J. Perlman might have accomplished if they had taken no account of the actual meanings of words.
High Camp flowers in features sections.
Plain But Earnest
Plain But Earnest is diligent, so diligent that if he/she were any more productive it would sink the whole operation. Plain But files every day, sometimes more than once. Everything in Plain But’s notes goes into the story — stray details of no particular moment, meaningless quotes (“But he said it”). Plain But has no literary aspirations. In fact, the only structural principle Plain But has mastered in constructing an article is randomness.
Goodbye English Prose
Goodbye English Prose is all literary, all flair, all the time, operating under the misapprehension that he/she is creating for the newspaper what H.L. Mencken called “beautiful letters.” Goodbye English loves metaphors, no matter how strained or grotesquely inappropriate to the subject. Goodbye English will drag in the most obvious allusions or quotations from English literature to demonstrate that he/she is an educated/cultivated/sophisticated/sensitive artist.
An editor who questions Goodbye English’s fulsome effects will witness an instant metamorphosis into Who Touched My Story.
Disclosures and disclaimers
“Duckbilled platitude” is borrowed from a poem by E.E. Cummings (NOT e.e. cummings, dammit). “Goodbye English prose” was the headline suggested by an Australian journalist during a workshop featuring a particularly overripe specimen. And “mute inglorious Milton” is, of course, taken from Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” a poem once familiar to just about anyone who had made it all the way through high school, but now, sadly, no longer so.
Reporters/writers reading this posting should be aware that the archetypes described here were developed out of more than a quarter-century’s experience as a newspaper copy editor and should not necessarily be identified with any specific person working within striking distance of my office.
AND NOW THE BOSSES
The reader should understand that most of these types are male. And white. Despite more than three decades of affirmative action, most newspapers are still run by white guys. I regret that I cannot recall the name of the writer who, being told some years ago of a proposed support group for white males, said that there is already a support group for white men: it’s called the United States of America.
The Fonctionnaire
The French understand the nature of the inevitable gray civil servant who will endure until the universe winds down in entropy. Stars burst into novas and burn out, corporate owners come and go, and management fads succeed fads, but The Fonctionnaire endures. Cunningly, The Functionnaire, unobserved, occupies some obscure office with a nebulous title and obscure duties, biding his time until the more talented colleagues flame out, and then occupies the chair of authority because no one else is left. To sit in a meeting with him is to perceive the processes of a wasting disease.
Great Is Caesar
Great Is is an empire builder. He knows exactly the splendid things he wants to accomplish, and he is ruthless in their pursuit, though not openly so. Superficially magnanimous and agreeable to those who can be useful to accomplish his aims, he sets his face against those who obstruct him — and they wither and perish. He does, in fact, accomplish great things, and his empire expands. But, like Julius and Augustus, he leaves no worthy successor. He will be followed in time by The Fonctionnaire.
Pharaoh
Pharaoh, like Great Is Caesar, has grand designs. Unlike Great Is, he is clueless about how to accomplish them. So instead he is dictatorial. He hardens his heart. His voice is the only voice that booms out in meetings, and lesser folk are misguided if they imagine that his invitations to discussion are open invitations; they are opportunities to agree with him. When the plagues rain down, he will not know what to do about them, except to bluster.
The Regular Guy
He’d like to drink a beer with you (domestic, light). He might bestow a nickname on you. He wants to be your pal. He won’t ask that much of you. He has, like Richard Nixon, read the manual on how to be a Regular Fellow, and he follows its specifications to the letter. Anything you do is fine with him, just fine. Keep in mind that when your interests get in the way of his, you will find yourself out at the curb.
I Know Better
I Know exists to demonstrate his superiority over his subordinates. (He therefore prefers and promotes subordinates over whom superiority can easily be demonstrated.) When any story or proposal is put before him, he instantly identifies its defects, and he orders it to be worked over again. I Know’s criticisms are typically delivered before an audience, the better for the common people to experience a proper awe of his acuity. I Know’s advantage over Pharaoh is that he actually has some judgment, not that that will endear him to his frazzled subordinates.
Out Of His Depth
Out Of got promoted because there is no possibility in the known universe that he would ever be a threat to anyone above him. Understanding at some dim, reptilian level that the job is beyond his limited abilities, he is fiercely loyal to his protector, his only hope. Out Of would inspire pathos if it were not for his unaccountable vanity about his position; his feeble pronouncements, like Pharaoh’s and I Know’s, are not to be challenged.*
Eager Beaver
Eager, out to prove himself to the High Command, will put in fourteen-hour days. Sixteen-hour days. Eager will take on any assignment, absorb any feckless twit into the staff, meet any deadline, bear any burden. Eager will produce the story dictated to him at ten o’clock in the morning, learn three o’clock that it is not what was wanted, reassign it as the shadows of evening gather, and edit and rewrite it himself to meet the most recent diktat. He will show up early the next morning to repeat the process.
Tee Time
Tee Time doesn’t really have any interest in the operation. He would rather be on the golf course, or playing darts in a saloon, or intriguing for a position higher up in the corporation than overseeing the paper. So he leaves Out Of His Depth in charge. When he has collected enough coupons, he will move on to a higher sphere of endeavor.
OCD
OCD cannot let go of anything. The story needs to have corrections and updates and refinements and tweeks — oh, and the photographs don’t match the story, and the graphics have to be redone. Maybe this should have been seen to a couple of weeks ago, but there was all this stuff in the story that had to be recast and reorganized and — no, it has to be taken back from the copy desk now because the writer wants to make some changes; you’ll have it back in five minutes. Maybe ten. And are those the headlines you put on it? They’re all wrong; here are some suggestions. How soon do you have to have it for tomorrow? There are fixes and changes in it that you have to make? Can I have it back for just a minute?
The Graduate
Ever so smarter than you, he has read more books than you, uses bigger words than you, and loses no opportunity to parade his learning before you. You will be expected to nod in silent assent as he unfolds his endless anecdotes and observations, all of which you have heard at least twice, as you beg for merciful death to overtake you. But once you have acceded to his superior learning and sophistication, and endured his endless anecdotes, he is generally content to leave you alone. Because learning is not held in any particular regard in journalism, his prospects for advancement are extremely limited.**
*Out Of is one of the many managing editors under whom I have served. At one prolonged hearing on legal issues, I observed Out Of at a table with a little folder containing a miniature legal pad. For the entire afternoon he wrote nothing in it. Then, as the hearing officer brought the proceedings to a close, I watched with intent interest as he opened the portfolio and tore off a sheet of paper.
He spat out a wad of chewing gum into the paper and crumpled it up, then left the hearing room.
**The copy desk is the logical repository for this one.
So, with no further apology, I present Linnaean classifications of copy editors, writers, and managers. These are three previous posts strung together; if you’ve seen them before, you’re under no obligation to look at them again.
LINNAEUS ON THE COPY DESK
A partial catalogue of the denizens of the copy desk.
The Pouncer
The Pouncer takes his motto from Gore Vidal: “It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.” When the Pouncer discovers an error in a story, he brandishes it aloft and proclaims it. The error is like the dead bird your cat deposits on your doorstep to show how hunting is done.
Because the Pouncer is smart, he is usually right. Unfortunately, he has to establish his own worth every night by showing the defects of others. So if nothing substantial presents itself, he will take a story and worry it like a terrier with a rat until he can make an issue of something.
He is beloved by reporters and assigning editors alike.
By the Book
You can predict all the changes By the Book makes in copy. Since always becomes because, half an acre becomes a half-acre, and attorney becomes lawyer (or maybe the reverse). No sentence ends with a preposition, and neither does any line of a headline. Everything for By the Book is a 1 or a 0, right or wrong; there is always a correct way to do everything, and everything must be made correct. By the Book’s copy of the AP Stylebook (copyright 1982) has been annotated more comprehensively than the Talmud.
Thanks for Sharing
“Hey, this obituary has a funny line in it.”
“Did you see what Wall Street said about the company stock on Romenesko today?”
“Here’s a real cute picture of a cat wearing a bonnet.” (Why, on edition deadline, is she looking at Internet images of cats?)
The big-hearted Thanks for Sharing can’t keep anything to herself. If it’s unusual, or amusing, or heart-wrenching, she has to let you know about it because you might otherwise miss it. Never mind that you are — what do we call it? — working.
Mote Man
The devil is in the details, and Mote Man is on the lookout for the devil. He, like Gilbert’s Major-General Stanley “knows the kings of England, and he quotes the fights historical, from Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical.” If the story says that the Emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, Mote Man knows that Constantine established a toleration of Christianity. If the story says that John F. Kennedy was the youngest man to become president of the United States, he knows that Theodore Roosevelt was younger when McKinley was assassinated. Kennedy was the youngest man to be elected president.
But since Mote Man’s attention is devoted entirely to recondite distinctions, he is capable of sending through a story about Iran bearing a 48-point headline that says Iraq.
Speed Demon
Speed Demon can turn a story around faster than anyone else on the desk. If you hand Speed Demon a page proof, it will be returned to you marked “OK” before you have been able to sit down again. Speed Demon handles twice as much copy as any other editor on the desk, and is quite proud of that.
Speed Demon also lets through twice as many errors as anyone else on the desk.
Stuck in First
Sitting near Speed Demon is Stuck in First. As one colleague once said of another, “He only has one gear.” (And don’t write in to tell me that that should read “has only one gear.” Sometimes it doesn’t matter all that much, and besides, IT’S A DIRECT QUOTE.) Every story that passes through Stuck in First’s hands is meticulously edited, clean and correct. And if you can pry two or three stories out of those slow-moving fingers by edition close, it is a good night.
The Correspondent
If you sit near the Correspondent, you hear her busy fingers on the keyboard, tappity-tappity-tappity-TAP. And you think, that’s good. Busy at work. Should be able to close the edition early tonight. Then you notice that the Correspondent has been working for 45 minutes on a routine 12-column-inch wire service article on the discovery that it gets hot in the Midwest in the summertime. That’s when you realize that all that music of the keyboard has been Instant Messaging to friends, some of them probably also on the copy desk.
Team Player
Team Player designs dynamic pages, writes crisp headlines, and sets priorities under deadline pressure. A self-starter, Team Player acts proactively to take action, communicates effectively with stakeholders, and displays a positive attitude. Team Player has broad editing experience, excellent news judgment and leadership skills and a desire to innovate. Team Player understands and embraces the company’s core mission, values and goals.
Mythical.
DISCLOSURE
I am Pouncer, Speed Demon, Mote Man, Thanks for Sharing, Correspondent, By the Book and, sometimes, Stuck in First. I have at one time or another displayed all these behaviors. Learning humility is easy on a copy desk, because in identifying the faults and failings of others, one holds up a mirror to oneself.
OUR AMAZING WORDSMITHS
A short guide to the zoology of newspaper writers.
The Crown Prince and/or The Princess Royal
The prize bull and prize heifer of the sacred cattle have typically won prizes — real prizes, sometimes with money attached, not the stuff that state press associations hand out like candy corn at Halloween. Consequently, they have been exempted from routine work. Production of a story, once or twice a year, is an event in the newsroom.
Mute Inglorious Milton
Mute Inglorious Milton has the misfortune to work on a beat or a section largely ignored by the rest of the paper. He/she may be diligent and accurate, may even be able to write clearly, but there is no chance that he/she will ever be summoned from the suburbs to work downtown, much less ever become The Crown Prince or The Princess Royal.
The Supreme Pontificator
As a writer of analyses or reviews and a master of the Authoritative Tone, The Supreme Pontificator has no peer. He/she has never been wrong. Or at least has never acknowledged a misjudgment. Moreover, he/she speaks ex cathedra on any subject in any article. Read his/her articles to learn what God would think if God had the inside information.
The Supreme Pontificator is destined to become a distinguished member of the Columntern (See below).
Who Touched My Story
Who Touched My Story will demand an accounting of every keystroke during the editing of his/her story, often calling the copy desk on edition deadline with this inquiry. Who Touched will contest every attempt to untangle syntax or regularize a mixed metaphor. Corrections of errors of fact will not be met with gratitude.
Who Touched has become such a nuisance that assigning editors have given up the struggle. His/her copy is subjected to peristalsis rather than editing, and when a copy editor has the temerity to raise a question, Who Touched will answer, “My editor thought that this story was fine. Why are you questioning it?”
Mirror, Mirror
“Did you read my story? What did you think of my story? Did you like it better than yesterday’s story? What was your favorite passage? What’s the headline on my story going to say? Is it on Page One? Why isn’t it on Page One?”
Mirror, Mirror is apparently unaware that anyone else is writing or that the paper and its editors have any concerns apart from the burnishing of his/her article.
By the Word
By the Word believes that a 1,500-word story is, by definition, twice as good as a 750-word story. Accordingly, an article on some continuing story with three paragraphs of incremental developments will be padded out with a couple of dozen paragraphs taken from the archive. By the Word is particularly deadly when covering crime and courts, because a story on the third day of jury selection will require a recapitulation of the complete circumstances of the original crime, with context taking the reader back to the time Cain smacked Abel.
The Duckbilled Platitude
The Duckbilled Platitude never met a cliche he/she didn’t like. But he/she is as busy as a one-armed paperhanger. At the end of the day, racing against the clock, he gives 110 percent trying to find the smoking gun. And the next day he is back in the saddle again. Trying to get Duckbilled to give up cliches is like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall.
Columnist Party Apparatchik
The members of the Columntern write about their children, their pets, their interminable waits queuing up with the rabble at the motor vehicle bureau. When whimsical, they write columns that Dave Barry might have been able to make funny. When channeling Walter Winchell, they produce little apercus and apothegms about life, held together with ellipses and spit.
When one Apparatchik achieves the status of Supreme Pontificator and takes one of his/her extended vacations, the paper reprints past columns.
The Columntern is not subject to editing, because, as Anthony Trollope said, “One cannot pour out of a jug more than is in it.” Or more simply, as Don Hebb put it, “What’s not worth doing is not worth doing well.”
High Camp
High Camp has learned from colleagues, taking the Authoritative Tone from The Supreme Pontificator, adopting the self-absorption of Mirror, Mirror, appropriating the gift of unoriginality from The Duckbilled Platitude, and experimenting with the risible pretensions of Goodbye English Prose (See below), he/she confects a rococo prose unlike anything else on land or sea. Many writers talk about developing a voice; High Camp has Voice. The effect is very much like what P.G. Wodehouse or S.J. Perlman might have accomplished if they had taken no account of the actual meanings of words.
High Camp flowers in features sections.
Plain But Earnest
Plain But Earnest is diligent, so diligent that if he/she were any more productive it would sink the whole operation. Plain But files every day, sometimes more than once. Everything in Plain But’s notes goes into the story — stray details of no particular moment, meaningless quotes (“But he said it”). Plain But has no literary aspirations. In fact, the only structural principle Plain But has mastered in constructing an article is randomness.
Goodbye English Prose
Goodbye English Prose is all literary, all flair, all the time, operating under the misapprehension that he/she is creating for the newspaper what H.L. Mencken called “beautiful letters.” Goodbye English loves metaphors, no matter how strained or grotesquely inappropriate to the subject. Goodbye English will drag in the most obvious allusions or quotations from English literature to demonstrate that he/she is an educated/cultivated/sophisticated/sensitive artist.
An editor who questions Goodbye English’s fulsome effects will witness an instant metamorphosis into Who Touched My Story.
Disclosures and disclaimers
“Duckbilled platitude” is borrowed from a poem by E.E. Cummings (NOT e.e. cummings, dammit). “Goodbye English prose” was the headline suggested by an Australian journalist during a workshop featuring a particularly overripe specimen. And “mute inglorious Milton” is, of course, taken from Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” a poem once familiar to just about anyone who had made it all the way through high school, but now, sadly, no longer so.
Reporters/writers reading this posting should be aware that the archetypes described here were developed out of more than a quarter-century’s experience as a newspaper copy editor and should not necessarily be identified with any specific person working within striking distance of my office.
AND NOW THE BOSSES
The reader should understand that most of these types are male. And white. Despite more than three decades of affirmative action, most newspapers are still run by white guys. I regret that I cannot recall the name of the writer who, being told some years ago of a proposed support group for white males, said that there is already a support group for white men: it’s called the United States of America.
The Fonctionnaire
The French understand the nature of the inevitable gray civil servant who will endure until the universe winds down in entropy. Stars burst into novas and burn out, corporate owners come and go, and management fads succeed fads, but The Fonctionnaire endures. Cunningly, The Functionnaire, unobserved, occupies some obscure office with a nebulous title and obscure duties, biding his time until the more talented colleagues flame out, and then occupies the chair of authority because no one else is left. To sit in a meeting with him is to perceive the processes of a wasting disease.
Great Is Caesar
Great Is is an empire builder. He knows exactly the splendid things he wants to accomplish, and he is ruthless in their pursuit, though not openly so. Superficially magnanimous and agreeable to those who can be useful to accomplish his aims, he sets his face against those who obstruct him — and they wither and perish. He does, in fact, accomplish great things, and his empire expands. But, like Julius and Augustus, he leaves no worthy successor. He will be followed in time by The Fonctionnaire.
Pharaoh
Pharaoh, like Great Is Caesar, has grand designs. Unlike Great Is, he is clueless about how to accomplish them. So instead he is dictatorial. He hardens his heart. His voice is the only voice that booms out in meetings, and lesser folk are misguided if they imagine that his invitations to discussion are open invitations; they are opportunities to agree with him. When the plagues rain down, he will not know what to do about them, except to bluster.
The Regular Guy
He’d like to drink a beer with you (domestic, light). He might bestow a nickname on you. He wants to be your pal. He won’t ask that much of you. He has, like Richard Nixon, read the manual on how to be a Regular Fellow, and he follows its specifications to the letter. Anything you do is fine with him, just fine. Keep in mind that when your interests get in the way of his, you will find yourself out at the curb.
I Know Better
I Know exists to demonstrate his superiority over his subordinates. (He therefore prefers and promotes subordinates over whom superiority can easily be demonstrated.) When any story or proposal is put before him, he instantly identifies its defects, and he orders it to be worked over again. I Know’s criticisms are typically delivered before an audience, the better for the common people to experience a proper awe of his acuity. I Know’s advantage over Pharaoh is that he actually has some judgment, not that that will endear him to his frazzled subordinates.
Out Of His Depth
Out Of got promoted because there is no possibility in the known universe that he would ever be a threat to anyone above him. Understanding at some dim, reptilian level that the job is beyond his limited abilities, he is fiercely loyal to his protector, his only hope. Out Of would inspire pathos if it were not for his unaccountable vanity about his position; his feeble pronouncements, like Pharaoh’s and I Know’s, are not to be challenged.*
Eager Beaver
Eager, out to prove himself to the High Command, will put in fourteen-hour days. Sixteen-hour days. Eager will take on any assignment, absorb any feckless twit into the staff, meet any deadline, bear any burden. Eager will produce the story dictated to him at ten o’clock in the morning, learn three o’clock that it is not what was wanted, reassign it as the shadows of evening gather, and edit and rewrite it himself to meet the most recent diktat. He will show up early the next morning to repeat the process.
Tee Time
Tee Time doesn’t really have any interest in the operation. He would rather be on the golf course, or playing darts in a saloon, or intriguing for a position higher up in the corporation than overseeing the paper. So he leaves Out Of His Depth in charge. When he has collected enough coupons, he will move on to a higher sphere of endeavor.
OCD
OCD cannot let go of anything. The story needs to have corrections and updates and refinements and tweeks — oh, and the photographs don’t match the story, and the graphics have to be redone. Maybe this should have been seen to a couple of weeks ago, but there was all this stuff in the story that had to be recast and reorganized and — no, it has to be taken back from the copy desk now because the writer wants to make some changes; you’ll have it back in five minutes. Maybe ten. And are those the headlines you put on it? They’re all wrong; here are some suggestions. How soon do you have to have it for tomorrow? There are fixes and changes in it that you have to make? Can I have it back for just a minute?
The Graduate
Ever so smarter than you, he has read more books than you, uses bigger words than you, and loses no opportunity to parade his learning before you. You will be expected to nod in silent assent as he unfolds his endless anecdotes and observations, all of which you have heard at least twice, as you beg for merciful death to overtake you. But once you have acceded to his superior learning and sophistication, and endured his endless anecdotes, he is generally content to leave you alone. Because learning is not held in any particular regard in journalism, his prospects for advancement are extremely limited.**
*Out Of is one of the many managing editors under whom I have served. At one prolonged hearing on legal issues, I observed Out Of at a table with a little folder containing a miniature legal pad. For the entire afternoon he wrote nothing in it. Then, as the hearing officer brought the proceedings to a close, I watched with intent interest as he opened the portfolio and tore off a sheet of paper.
He spat out a wad of chewing gum into the paper and crumpled it up, then left the hearing room.
**The copy desk is the logical repository for this one.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Someone had blunder'd
One night some years ago, as I was reviewing the stories for the front page of The Sun, I saw on edition deadline that the deck head — the secondary headline — on the lead story wasn’t quite right. But, experienced copy editor and headline writer as I was, I also saw instantly how it could be improved. And, fumbling typist that I am, I introduced a typo into the revised deck before typesetting it.
Such a mistake would have been embarrassing any day. It was particularly regrettable on that occasion, because the next morning the American Society of Newspaper Editors opened its national convention in Baltimore. The managing editor was, predictably, furious, but — here is the advantage of working nights — by the time I reported to work in late afternoon, she had already savaged several persons and was no longer interested in me.
That memory came flooding back this morning after I read the deck head on the lead story in this morning’s Sun. The main head was fine: Ethics / changes / outlined / for city. But the deck:
Rawlings-Blake says
her bill will seek to
heighte public trus’
It would be pleasant to boast that nothing like that would have happened on my watch — you see, Tribune Co., you shoulda kept me. But, as I just wrote, something very like that did happen on my watch, at my hand. Working as a copy editor stimulates humility. We come to see that all of us are prone to error and that the only way to keep errors to an irreducible minimum is to check and support one another.
This is what the corporate executives who blather about reducing the “touches” between writer and reader fail to grasp. But that is understandable, because most of the people making those decisions have never worked the hours when the product is actually produced, or troubled to find out how it is done.* They have instead hired consultants to arrive at previously decided conclusions.
I don’t know who wrote today’s defective headline, how it came about, or why it wasn’t caught before the presses rolled. I suspect that his or her chagrin is immense. But the responsibility is not limited to a single editor or even the bare-bones copy desk staff last evening. Responsibility for errors like this at The Sun and other publications must also be laid at the door of the people who decided that the work could be done just as well by a drastically diminished and demoralized corps of harried editors.**
Put it in the simplest terms: When you eliminate the quality control, you also eliminate the quality.
*Early in his tenure as editor of The Sun, John S. Carroll took the trouble to spend a few nights at the copy desk, observing how the work was done, and he returned to his normal working hours with an enhanced sense of the importance of maintaining a top-drawer copy desk. In nearly twenty-three years at the paper, I never saw another editor or managing editor make that effort.
**Think that this is special pleading from me? Look at what Tim McGuire, former editor of the Star Tribune in Minneapolis and now a professor at the Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State, wrote yesterday about the importance of copy editors. Here’s a taste:
I think just whacking a bunch of copy editing positions out of the system and expecting spell check to pick up the slack is a terribly ill-advised path. Copy editing is a subtle, nuanced art that goes way beyond spotting typos.
Such a mistake would have been embarrassing any day. It was particularly regrettable on that occasion, because the next morning the American Society of Newspaper Editors opened its national convention in Baltimore. The managing editor was, predictably, furious, but — here is the advantage of working nights — by the time I reported to work in late afternoon, she had already savaged several persons and was no longer interested in me.
That memory came flooding back this morning after I read the deck head on the lead story in this morning’s Sun. The main head was fine: Ethics / changes / outlined / for city. But the deck:
Rawlings-Blake says
her bill will seek to
heighte public trus’
It would be pleasant to boast that nothing like that would have happened on my watch — you see, Tribune Co., you shoulda kept me. But, as I just wrote, something very like that did happen on my watch, at my hand. Working as a copy editor stimulates humility. We come to see that all of us are prone to error and that the only way to keep errors to an irreducible minimum is to check and support one another.
This is what the corporate executives who blather about reducing the “touches” between writer and reader fail to grasp. But that is understandable, because most of the people making those decisions have never worked the hours when the product is actually produced, or troubled to find out how it is done.* They have instead hired consultants to arrive at previously decided conclusions.
I don’t know who wrote today’s defective headline, how it came about, or why it wasn’t caught before the presses rolled. I suspect that his or her chagrin is immense. But the responsibility is not limited to a single editor or even the bare-bones copy desk staff last evening. Responsibility for errors like this at The Sun and other publications must also be laid at the door of the people who decided that the work could be done just as well by a drastically diminished and demoralized corps of harried editors.**
Put it in the simplest terms: When you eliminate the quality control, you also eliminate the quality.
*Early in his tenure as editor of The Sun, John S. Carroll took the trouble to spend a few nights at the copy desk, observing how the work was done, and he returned to his normal working hours with an enhanced sense of the importance of maintaining a top-drawer copy desk. In nearly twenty-three years at the paper, I never saw another editor or managing editor make that effort.
**Think that this is special pleading from me? Look at what Tim McGuire, former editor of the Star Tribune in Minneapolis and now a professor at the Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State, wrote yesterday about the importance of copy editors. Here’s a taste:
I think just whacking a bunch of copy editing positions out of the system and expecting spell check to pick up the slack is a terribly ill-advised path. Copy editing is a subtle, nuanced art that goes way beyond spotting typos.
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