Copy Editor Says It Again
This past April, after 14 years as head of the copy desk at The Baltimore Sun, John E. McIntyre was abruptly "released." That's when I began to take those rumors about the death of newspapers a little more seriously.
In the word-nerdy world of copy editing, McIntyre was one of the best. He had served two terms as president of the American Copy Editors Society, taught copy editing at Loyola College in Maryland, and hosted a popular language blog, You Don't Say.
Along the way, he'd formulated five good rules for writers:
- Write the way a literate, informed adult would talk.
- Shun jargon and journalese.
- Grammar, syntax and usage are the tools of your craft. Master them.
- There are a few real rules in English and a host of bogus rules. Learn the difference.
- And, most of all, get to the point. Take this sentence: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” The creation of the universe has a 10-word lead. Why does this story need more?
Fortunately, I can stop using the past tense. McIntyre now delivers "observations on language and the craft of editing" in a column for the media website Regret the Error. And a Sun-less version of his blog lives on at You Don't Say.
If you care about language, visit McIntyre's blog. He's smart, fussy, and impatient. ("The crowd doesn’t care about the windup," he once said. "The crowd wants to see the pitch.") In short, he's a copy editor.
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Great Post! Most of the professional writing services apply McIntyre’s rules in helping individuals and organizations present their best face to the world.
In Relate Articles, how did “Web Design Software: A Questionairre” slip by?
I dearly wish I had some control over those “Related Articles”–which are only rarely related to anything else on the page. I’ve been told that the list is “automatically generated”–though obviously not automatically proofread.
Richard