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Copy Editors: The Untold Story (1/26/06)
Tuesday, January 24, 2006 @ 2:09 PM
NOTE: Because of a misunderstanding (read: screw-up) with Monday's paper, my column will be running a day late this week. Thank you.
I became a copy editor at the Daily Vidette in the fall of 2004. Fortunately, I had worked as a stage manager, so I was used to only being noticed when something went wrong.
I equate being a copy editor with being a janitor – no one usually says, "Wow, this place is clean!" But if there's a mess, you know who to blame.
Don't misunderstand me. Being a copy editor has some perks. $6.80 an hour and the occasional free pizza is nothing to scoff at. My only complaint is that for the most part, the students reading the paper don't really know what it is that we do.
Everyone knows what a reporter does. A photographer? Pretty self-explanatory. But when you say you work on the "Night Production" staff, all anyone knows about you is that you go to work when everyone else is leaving.
We don't really design the newspaper pages. We don't exactly create them, either. And we don't go anywhere near the printing press where the Vidette is actually produced. No one really knows what the middle step is, and yet, if we weren't there every night doing it, there would be no Vidette.
So I'd like to take this opportunity to introduce you to my department and the work we do.
A page in the Vidette is designed by the News Editors, Features Editors, or Sports Editors. They draw their design on paper, these papers are called dummies. The copy editors open up the newspaper page files in Quark. When we open them up, the ads have already been placed, and the copy editor's job is to fill in articles, headlines, photos, cutlines, graphics, and fillers the way they are drawn in the dummies. We do all the pasting and formatting.
Copy editors write 90% of the headlines in the paper ourselves. There is a long list of very complicated rules concerning what a headline can and cannot include. It also has to fit in a very specific amount of space. If you think writing a headline is easy, think of it as an enormous multi-word crossword puzzle with an 8-paragraph clue. Reconsider your hypothesis.
But headlines are only one of the many challenges the copy editor faces.
Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, olny taht the frist and lsat ltteres are at the rghit pcleas. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by ilstef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
What does this mean? It means copy editors have to train themselves to see each letter individually in order to find and correct mistakes. For some, this comes naturally, and for others, it is an uphill battle. It doesn't help that practically no one under the age of thirty can spell.
Around 1997, the educational system stopped teaching kids how to diagram a sentence. Ever since, having language skills in this country has meant knowing how to hit "F7" for Spelling and Grammar check in Microsoft Word. My theory is that kids complained so much that junior high school teachers finally gave in and said, "Fine, I won't teach spelling or grammar, you can learn it in high school." In high school, teachers wanted to focus on literature and interpretation, not the mechanics of composition. Before long, we made it to college without knowing what a dangling participle was.
And then, we encountered the worst of all education's loopholes: Peer revision.
During the development of English 101, a bunch of otherwise competent educators failed to realize that if everyone is equally clueless, nothing gets fixed. The most skilled writers in the class spend all their time circling the wrong "their/there/they're," and receive no feedback on their own work. In the world, everyone has something to learn from everyone else. In a classroom, this is almost never true.
Long story short, our teachers said, "Teach yourselves!", and now we don't know the difference between "it's" and "its." Myself included. I have to look it up every time.
A recent study, which the Vidette printed on the page 2 News Briefs, found that 60% of college students about to graduate lack the complex language skills necessary to comprehend the arguments in a newspaper editorial. Which means that of the ten people reading this column, it's likely that six of you can't even understand what you're reading. Well, the gist of it is this: Being a good copy editor is hard.
And yet, a copy editor who does exceptional work has no way of receiving acknowledgment.
A reporter or photographer at the Vidette can gain the distinction of Senior Staff. An ad sales representative can become a Team Leader. There are no such distinctions or awards available to copy editors.
But there is one thing that makes up for all of these unfortunate oversights:
There's nothing sexier than good grammar.
Now, I would never claim to represent the average female, but personally, when a guy uses correct spelling and punctuation in an AIM conversation, I swoon. If he uses capital letters at the beginnings of his sentences, I'm pretty much his for life. Hair, eyes, body, these things can be overlooked if a guy has exceptional syntax. Size does matter: the size of a potential mate's vocabulary determines whether or not there's going to be a second date.
James Darnell, a senior theatre major remarked, "When I first heard the way my girlfriend conjugates verbs… it was love."
The coffeehouse poet with soulful eyes and a goatee. The songwriter with the tongue ring. The articulate professor with the social conscience. These people are made more attractive through their command of the English language.
And by that logic, copy editors should be among the sexiest people in the world.
So who are the sexiest people on campus you've never met? They are Night Editors Erin Guimon and Luke Dillifeld, and copy editors Elisabeth James, Amy , Mary Yurgil, Jackie , Joe Lorenzini, Colin Barrett, and Chris Guimon.
For your hard work behind the scenes: Thank you.
Is It Graduation Yet? (1/18/06)
Tuesday, January 17, 2006 @ 5:09 PM
Green Day had the right idea. Except, I’d like to be woken up when my senior year ends.
And I don’t think I’m the only one. My roommate has the following in her AIM profile: “Senioritis - we’d fight for a cure, if we weren’t so lazy...”
And lazy we are. An odd mix of euphoria and panic about finally getting into “the real world” seems to have convinced us, as it convinces soon-to-be-college-graduates every semester, that our classes are not worth our best efforts.
Sure, there are a few graduating seniors who are trying to maintain 4.0 averages, and a few who are desperately trying to raise their GPA by a quarter of a percentage before they graduate, but for the most part, we’ve moved on to bigger things.
Like beating the final castle in Super Mario Brothers.
I mean looking for a job... (which I promise I’ll start doing any day now)... creating a resume... (I keep getting distracted by Mine Sweeper)... and figuring out where we’re going to live when our leases expire during finals week... (either New York or Chicago... but I can’t figure out which).
Besides, as my friend Eric always said, “In sixty years, we’ll all be dead anyway. No one will care what your chemistry grade was.”
And it only took Eric one extra semester to finish college!
In our defense, we seniors have worked hard to get to this point. We bought textbooks every semester and sometimes, we even read from them.
We showed up for class, even when we’d been out late drinking the night before. We even sat in class when we were still drunk from the night before. That’s dedication.
Some of our professors respond to senioritis by working harder to inspire and motivate us, despite our resistance. And those professors deserve our credit and thanks.
Others respond by postponing deadlines, offering extra credit, and canceling our lowest three quiz scores. These are our favorite professors, but they are also the most dangerous.
Because the fact is, as the bar keeps getting lowered, we keep finding a way to limbo under it.
Some of our professors are responding to our laziness by giving us the grades we’ve earned. These are the professors we don’t like. We curse them and we resent them, when we should be thanking them.
We should thank the people who stand firm in their belief that a little effort is not too much to ask. Their demands, as unreasonable as they may seem right now, are based on the demands we will face in life.
We should applaud those educators who are not willing to bow to the lowest common denominator. There are too few educators with standards, and the evidence is everywhere. On our campus, and in the world at large, there are far too many ignorant and incompetent people. And it takes courage to stand up to someone and tell them to work harder.
Earning a college degree should signify that one has the ability to self-motivate and has met an established set of reasonable challenges.
But as more and more students flood into universities, the lowest common denominator just gets lower and lower. And soon, a college diploma represents little more than a very expensive piece of paper.
I’d like to convince the class of 2006 to reconsider our collective outlook. I’d like to encourage my peers to get all the education they can out of their final courses. Every course is an opportunity to learn something.
If you think the classes you’re taking aren’t going to challenge you, consider adding another course. If this is your last semester, you might enjoy taking a challenging elective. (Personally, I reccommend philosophy or politics.) If you’ve got a full courseload already, ask yourself if there’s an organization you’d like to help out with or a project you’ve been putting off.
Sure, it’ll be hard to keep yourself motivated - especially when the weather gets nice. But you have to ask yourself - when will you have another chance like this?
Some of us are going to be in debt up to our eyeballs paying for that opportunity, and unfortunately, some of us are going to have very little to show for it.
I’d like to impress upon the graduating class the value of what we are discarding, but it would be too hypocritical. Truth is, I know myself well enough to know that I’ll continue to coast where I can, and work only as hard as I absolutely have to. And I know that if I fail in the real world, I’ll have no one but myself (and Super Mario Brothers) to blame.
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