When you meet a reporter out and about and reveal that you’re a sub-editor, you might just catch a flash of fury in their eye, quickly subdued under frosty politeness. (After all, you write their headlines, and there was ‘that one time’ when one of your kin saved them from widespread mockery.) But that flash of fury? It’s justified. Because once upon a time, a sub messed up and made them look bad.
Like this:
Further down in the article, the writer did spell it wrong, once. Or, possibly, they spelt it wrong three times and the sub corrected it twice and missed the third one. Either way, the sub then went on and wrote ‘hygeine’ in nice big letters in the caption… twice.
I nearly did this, fairly recently. In subbing my colleague’s article about prepositions, I added a sub-head that read: “So is it ever okay to end a sentence with a proposition?” Answers on a postcard. Luckily, we (okay, she) caught it before we published it.
Whenever I do something like that, I make myself go away and read that odious email by Giles Coren again. Because, over-the-top and petty though much of it is, it reminds me to be afraid, be very afraid. And when your job is striving for perfection, fear is a valuable tool.
Edit: a couple of people have said they hadn’t seen the Giles Coren thing before, so here’s the response from the Sunday Times sub-editors, too.
“So is it ever okay to end a sentence with a proposition?”
If I saw that in print I might assume it was a meta-joke. Not so hygeine, which is giving me Editor’s Twitch.
Comment by Stan — March 6, 2012 @ 3:50 pm |
Yes, but while a spellcheck would not have picked up ‘proposition’, it would surely have picked up ‘hygeine’. The culprit is not bad subbing but no subbing at all.
Comment by Alistair Dabbs — March 6, 2012 @ 4:03 pm |
Yes, good point. Although whether someone has run a spell-check isn’t necessarily an indication of whether they have subbed. I’m aware that I’m setting myself up for some kind of eat-my-words incident in the coming weeks here, but I very rarely use spell-check.
Comment by substuff — March 6, 2012 @ 4:15 pm |
that odious email is still pretty hilarious though
Comment by Tin Roof Press — March 6, 2012 @ 4:13 pm |
I think ‘mixed feelings’ sums it up for me!
Comment by substuff — March 6, 2012 @ 4:16 pm |
I print out copies of that email for my subbing students to read at the beginning of their first session, then ask them for their reaction.
Comment by Alistair Dabbs — March 6, 2012 @ 5:15 pm |
do they get points deducted or added for laughing?
Comment by Tin Roof Press — March 6, 2012 @ 5:26 pm |
The point about the Giles Coren “incident” is that he was trying to sneak a crude and unfunny “joke” into his copy, and the subs caught it and, quite correctly, took it out. His hissy fit was more to do with his being caught than anything else.
Comment by Martyn Cornell — March 18, 2012 @ 3:51 pm |
I don’t think that was it. I think they just missed the joke. But yeah his hissy fit and the response to it were pretty hilarious.
Comment by Tin Roof Press — March 18, 2012 @ 8:55 pm |
What amuses me is that someone took the hyphen out of sub-editors in the Times response headline. On purpose?
Comment by Katchooo — April 26, 2012 @ 10:20 am |
Yes, that’s the Guardian’s style: http://www.guardian.co.uk/styleguide/s
Comment by substuff — April 27, 2012 @ 12:20 pm |
Oh the inconsistency!
Comment by Katchooo — April 27, 2012 @ 2:20 pm |
I don’t know about the proposition, but it’s not OK to spell “OK” “okay”. “OK” began as a jokey abbreviation of “Orl Korrect” (“all correct”), and if for no other reason than journalistic fellowship, we should honour the writer on the Boston Morning Post in 1839 who first used the expression by continuing to write it, as he did, “OK”.
Comment by terrycollmann — April 27, 2012 @ 10:59 am |
On the contrary, it’s my blog and I’ll okay if I want to. I spend all week following various style guides meticulously – so when I get home, I indulge myself in a few small acts of defiance. Ker-azy!
Comment by substuff — April 27, 2012 @ 12:18 pm |