Well, it's not technically blogging ...
But I was asked to write a column for my newspaper's Web site on some copy-editing issues -- when readers complain about errors that aren't. I got to cover some of my favorite topics (including "just deserts" and "the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I will not put."
Check it out at The Morning News' Ask the Editor section.
posted by Nicole @ 12:22 AM
4 comments
4 Comments:
At a small Oregon paper where I worked as a copy editor and page designer a few years ago, I wrote a headline with "just deserts" in it. I looked it up to make sure I included the proper number of S's.
When some of our more senior reporters saw that the next morning, oh, what fun they had. They posted it in the break room and wrote all sorts of clever comments about what a fool whoever wrote that headline was.
When my boss clouded up and rained all over them, then pointed them to the dictionary, they got very quiet, and then a couple of them said, "Well, maybe the dictionary's wrong."
... Maybe the dictionary's wrong.
Yep, that's the only logical explanation.
Boy, Mark, you showed them. I bet you could set them straight about hairline rules, too.
I've long lived by the axiom that it is better to have "more desserts than deserts," and that is — no matter how one wants to cut the definition of "just deserts" — still true.
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