John McIntyre, mild-mannered editor for a great metropolitan newspaper, has fussed over writers’ work, to sporadic expressions of gratitude, for thirty years. He is The Sun’s night content production manager and former head of its copy desk. He also teaches editing at Loyola University Maryland. A former president of the American Copy Editors Society, a native of Kentucky, a graduate of Michigan State and Syracuse, and a moderate prescriptivist, he writes about language, journalism, and arbitrarily chosen topics. If you are inspired by a spirit of contradiction, comment on the posts or write to him at
john.mcintyre@baltsun.com.
Comments
How about the "fued" between brothers on the front page of the website?
Fued between Baltimore brothers now a public issue
Oy!
Posted by: Charles | November 16, 2007 2:04 PM
But it doesn't count when you have another adjective in between the terms!
Right?
Posted by: steegness | November 16, 2007 2:20 PM
Just keep fighting the good fight and try not to focus on the items that manage to slip through your tenacious grip. After all, you're only human (no matter what your staff or fellow copy editors around the world might think) and tomorrow is another day to do it all over again. And again. And again.
Posted by: Michael | November 16, 2007 5:43 PM
I blame the old show "Batman" for this. Bruce Wayne's house was always referred to as "Stately Wayne Manor". Of course, they were saying it with some sense of irony.
Posted by: Claude | November 17, 2007 6:22 PM
Better than:
F.u.'ed between Baltimore brothers now a pubic issue.
Yeah, we non-copy editors who all collectively edit copy at the Really Small County Weekly still manage to extract an accidental "pubic" from the occasional meeting notice or police blotter item. There really needs to be a special Newspaper Spell Flagger for Microsoft Word....
Posted by: c o'donnell | November 20, 2007 2:59 PM