The good side of the mild obsessive-compulsive disorder that copy editors exhibit is concern for precision in the language. The bad side, which I reluctantly admit is more common than I like, is a tendency to insist on distinctions that aren’t worth making.

For example, many copy editors insist on the venerable Associated Press Stylebook principle that over should be limited to spatial relationships, with more than preferred with numbers. A statement that a tree is over a hundred years old will be reflexively changed to "more than a hundred years old." (And "a hundred" might well be altered to "100.")

An entry in Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage traces this "hoary American newspaper tradition" to William Cullen Bryant’s Index Expugatorius of 1877, points out that over in the sense of more than has been in common usage in English since 14th century, and says, "There is no reason why you should avoid this usage."

The distinction between attorney and lawyer has also eaten up an inordinate amount of time on copy desks. While an attorney, a person acting on behalf of another, need not be a lawyer, the distinction, according to Garner’s Modern American Usage, is not generally observed even within the legal profession. (Mr. Garner is also the author of A Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage and editor of Black’s Law Dictionary.) That this is, at best, a gossamer distinction can be demonstrated by the tendency of one copy editor to alter lawyer to attorney in copy, while the next alters attorney to lawyer on page proof. This pointless ballet is another waste of energy.

Another editing tic is that like must be used only to indicate resemblance and that such as must be used to introduce an example. An error like that would likely be changed to an error such as that, to little purpose. Several standard works on usage do not even mention such a distinction; those that do are not in agreement on its importance. This suggests that editors might have better things to do with their time than to make these substitutions.

The central judgment an editor must make is the distinction between what is important and what is not. These examples point to the hazard of removing the mote while overlooking the beam.