"to quote today's quote ... 034365" by Paloetic, courtesy of Creative Commons/Flickr.com.
They are the unsung heroes of any news organization. The ones who come up with those clever headlines and striking visual designs. They also catch those embarrassing typos before they get printed … most of the time.
They are copy editors.
If I didn’t teach at LBCC, I think I’d be a copy editor. Those who’ve known me a while know how much I’ve enjoyed various stints on the copy desk, mostly at the Corvallis Gazette-Times.
My students wonder how I managed to memorize the AP stylebook. Others wonder why anybody would do such a thing. But when you’re a copy editor at heart, AP style just becomes part of everyday life.
All this just serves as an intro to a funny and spot-on reflection on the life of a copy editor by Lori Fradkin at The Awl. It’s called “What It’s Really Like to Be a Copy Editor.”
Here’s an excerpt:
The job has its perks—an accumulation of random knowledge, for instance—but it also has its side effects when you unintentionally drink the copy Kool-Aid. Once you train yourself to spot errors, you can’t not spot them. You can’t simply shut off the careful reading when you leave the office. You notice typos in novels, missing words in other magazines, incorrect punctuation on billboards.
I can relate …
-rp-