Editorial hue and cry
Many of you know I was formerly an editor for a paper of some size and significance. Long before that, I was the sports editor for a newspaper smaller than our local media outlet.
Throughout my journalism career I committed to paper, or its electronic equivalent, my share of typographical errors, but in almost every instance we caught it in editing. Once my senior editors came to trust my writing ability, much of what I wrote went through without much blue-penciling. That is, I was accountable for my own copy.
At the larger paper, there was a group of us who had an unerring eye for catching those embarrassing goofs and we often shared horror stories of misses and near-misses. That paper even once had a giant scrapbook of its own errors until the next generation took over the operation. Now that archive is lost to history.
The reporter/writer is the first bulwark against error, but a good editor can and must step in to fix the work of even the best writers. That's even more true in the age of computer composition and spell-checkers.
All of this is apropos of something I read this morning in The Tribune. Weekly columnist and government reporter Amany Ali inked an impassioned and cogent explanation of what to many would seem to be the inexplicable. The piece made clear what has seemed to be a well-developed...hmmm, I can't remember the counterpart to misogyny, but you get my drift.
But to my admittedly persnickety tastes, the entire piece was clouded by one glaring typo. Ali confessed that she and the man she married at 17 were not aquatinted enough to enter into a lifetime commitment.
Perhaps there is a cultural tradition of which I'm not aware. Maybe it's a Hoosier thing, even. But in neither of my marriages did I or my intended modify our skin tones before the ceremony. I will admit to getting a glowing red tint in the days before my first wedding, but the thought of making myself aqua tinted never crossed my mind.
And, used as an adjective form, shouldn't the word have been hyphenated as aqua-tinted? That's what the official dictionary of the Associated Press would dictate.
Throughout my journalism career I committed to paper, or its electronic equivalent, my share of typographical errors, but in almost every instance we caught it in editing. Once my senior editors came to trust my writing ability, much of what I wrote went through without much blue-penciling. That is, I was accountable for my own copy.
At the larger paper, there was a group of us who had an unerring eye for catching those embarrassing goofs and we often shared horror stories of misses and near-misses. That paper even once had a giant scrapbook of its own errors until the next generation took over the operation. Now that archive is lost to history.
The reporter/writer is the first bulwark against error, but a good editor can and must step in to fix the work of even the best writers. That's even more true in the age of computer composition and spell-checkers.
All of this is apropos of something I read this morning in The Tribune. Weekly columnist and government reporter Amany Ali inked an impassioned and cogent explanation of what to many would seem to be the inexplicable. The piece made clear what has seemed to be a well-developed...hmmm, I can't remember the counterpart to misogyny, but you get my drift.
But to my admittedly persnickety tastes, the entire piece was clouded by one glaring typo. Ali confessed that she and the man she married at 17 were not aquatinted enough to enter into a lifetime commitment.
Perhaps there is a cultural tradition of which I'm not aware. Maybe it's a Hoosier thing, even. But in neither of my marriages did I or my intended modify our skin tones before the ceremony. I will admit to getting a glowing red tint in the days before my first wedding, but the thought of making myself aqua tinted never crossed my mind.
And, used as an adjective form, shouldn't the word have been hyphenated as aqua-tinted? That's what the official dictionary of the Associated Press would dictate.
posted by All4Word at 2:30 PM
1 Comments:
I read the Sunday 'Bune over breakfast, and even after being tipped off later in the day to the marvelous "aquatinted" error, something continued to trouble me.
Looking a second time, my gaze fell upon the page 5 (I believe) "it happened on this date," which was the cause of my day-long dissonance. It listed and recounted the results of several past presidential elections (1996, 1968, 1940, 1912). Since when were previous presidential elections held in December?
Finally I looked at the top, and there was the answer: It was the "it happened on this date" from NOVEMBER 5, not December 5.
Dreadful newspaper. Glas no tinting was required ...
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