Hubba-hubba
Not at the height of my powers in the early morning, I was brought up short by the word curvaceous describing a woman mentioned in an article. I checked the top of the page, but the folio said 2008, not 1958.
One of the minor vexatious issues in editing is how much and what kind of physical description to include in articles.
One of the minor vexatious issues in editing is how much and what kind of physical description to include in articles.The more serious end of the spectrum involves reporting about crime and race, previously addressed here. (Don’t omit to check out the nuggets of abuse in the comments.)
The less serious end of the spectrum includes such rote pieces as the interview of the author/playwright/actor/singer, which apparently has to begin with a description of the subject’s clothing and meal. If Celebrity Author came down to the hotel restaurant in a plaid caftan to demand a breakfast of gin, neat, and curried goat, that might be worth including. That he instead wore a blue shirt and sat down to a plate of scrambled eggs seems unlikely to leave the reader panting for more. (Such an account does, however, indicate that the reporter does not come from a paper with enough prestige to warrant a lunch interview.)
Right in the middle comes the physical description of women, which is treacherous. Before silicone gel became plentiful, busty women were typically described as pneumatic, as our older readers may recall. Today, I’m painfully conscious that it’s risky for a gray-haired, paunchy, middle-aged white guy even to write busty. (Female writers would be well advised to be just as careful.) The Associated Press Stylebook permits blonde as a noun, but we aren’t going to go there, either. No one wants to look as if he writes descriptive material for Playboy on the side.
Some copy editors address the problem by stripping out all physical description from stories, but that goes to the other extreme. The trick is to determine whether description adds something useful to the story and whether the tone is appropriate to the subject and the publication. In short, judgment.
Comments
A photograph sometimes makes descriptions unnecessary. For example, in Steve Coll's recent New Yorker article about Pakistan, he describes Javed Ibrahim Paracha: "He is a rotund man in late middle age, with coffee-colored skin, bushy black eyebrows, and an undisciplined, graying beard. He wore a gown and a sweater, and had a bright gold watch."
Accompanying the article is a picture of Paracha, which clearly shows that he is a rotund man in late middle age, with coffee-colored skin, bushy black eyebrows, and an undisciplined, graying beard, wearing a gown, a sweater and a bright gold watch.
Posted by: Phillip Blanchard | February 4, 2008 5:34 PM
>Some copy editors address the problem by stripping out...
We all know that Copy Editors reign over all except the publisher at a newspaper, but does a poor reporter ever have recourse to say, "Keep your %$& hands off my wording and stick to your spellchecker."?
If he wants to talk about the plaid caftan, who should (or can) stop him?
Bob Kirk
Posted by: Bob | February 4, 2008 6:26 PM
>If he wants to talk about the plaid caftan, who should (or can) stop him?
Someone whose job it is to maintain journalistic and linguistic standards across the whole of the newspaper?
Posted by: steegness | February 5, 2008 12:50 PM
One thing I do is turn the description into an opposite and see whether we would still run it. A few months ago we had a story that featured a "petite, youthful 50-year-old with long blond hair" or something kind of like that (yes, there was a picture of her with the story, and yes, she was petite, blond and did not look 50). But I thought, would we describe someone as a "chubby, aging 50-year-old with frizzy gray hair," even if she was? Likely not. Chop.
Posted by: Lisa | February 6, 2008 6:29 PM
I can recall when a/an (over)zealous copy butcher stripped out a description of the Queen's elegant gown at a London opening.
And from Vietnam, an equally zealous copy butcher deleted toilet paper from the list of items included in GI field ration boxes.
This led me to believe that in The Sun's eyes, American soldiers could eat but they could not s--t.
A good copy editor can make a story sing. Then there are the others.
Posted by: boberl | February 15, 2008 7:41 PM