Edit, schmedit

OK. So it's been a little while since I've posted my first blog. Here I am again, a sucker for learning new technology a beat behind the masses. Let it be noted that I didn't buy my first CD player (and thus my first CD) until a full 10 years after the technology was available b/c I thought for SURE that a newer, smaller form of music capture would make the shiny CD obsolete. I was wrong. Anyway, here I am taking another shot at the blogger thing, several years after blogging hit the Internet mother lode.

So I think I'll ramble about ... editing. That's what I do for a living, here in blustery Wichita, Kan. I work at a smallish but quite groovy ad agency as a copywriter and editor. The editor thing, while secondary on my biz card, is actually my main dealio. I've always had a knack for reading/writing/editing, so when I finally got my master's in English and was looking for a job ("they" say that you can do SO many things with an English degree, but really, who are they fooling?), I landed a proofing job. Not the most glamorous title, let's be brutally honest. I even campaigned to have my title changed. But it paid the proverbial and literal bills and taught me the art of proofreading. Since that first job, I've had a few other gigs that resembled proofing in some fashion. Then I got away from editing for about two months. And now I'm back at it. You know, writing — creating good work — is damned hard work unless you have that special spark. I'd like to think I have that spark, but I'd also like to think I can beautifully decorate a bookshelf (sounds easy enough) and I can't. My point is that writing well takes inspiration as well as perspiration. Editing, though a related animal to writing, is its own beast in my mind. I can look at something and know if it's crap or custard. I can do so because I have plenty of training and experience and find it infinitely easier to edit someone else's creativity than it is to create some of my own. Er, to create something good of my own.

Having this editing thing in my blood, then, makes life a different experience than what the average Joe or Joejette goes through. Take eating out: I would challenge just about any editor to go to a restaurant and read the menu without proofing the blasted thing. Asian restaurants tend to be leading offenders. One local favorite spells "shrimp" this way in several places on the menu: "shirmp." Broccoli often is all cattywompus ("brocolli"). You get the gist. And the local newspaper is a major offender, too. I guess the tight deadlines allow them space for mistakes. Whatever.

But what I think is pretty bad stuff is when magazines goof with misspellings, grammar blips or other issues. And a local mag here just printed a headline with a gross mispelling. A HEADLINE. And the subhead had issues, too. Good grief, folks. Check you work, then get someone else to check your work before it goes to print.

A professor once told me (in the days of Wite-Out — though it still applies) that, when applying for a job, never, ever hand over a resume with a mistake on it. Lots of employers (the ones worth working for) would see a mistake and immediately trash any resume with a goof, no matter how impressive the credentials or experience. I try to take this advice to heart in my work every day. Clients are paying for good creative that is pulled off flawlessly. Not flawlesly. Get it?

Mistakes happen every day across all mediums. But when a goof is in print, it's there for a very long time and is usually impossible to correct or at least quite expensive to correct. And it's my job to catch those mistakes. Now, I'm not claiming to be mistake-free, but I save anyone I work for a lot of embarrassment by catching errors that an underused spell-checking tool would catch and also those "mistakes" that even a computer wouldn't catch.

Gripe, gripe. Moan, moan. I'm done with that for today.

One word thing I suck eggs at is word jumbles. I just took an informal IQ test that had two jumbles, and one I'm pretty sure I botched well up. So don't take me for a word expert. No such thing as an expert, in my book. That's what another professor told me once. But that's for another blog, another day.