Newspaper copy editors are perfectly normal people with good interpersonal skills. They are not weird or scary in any way. Their impressive expertise regarding the minutiae of grammar, word usage, and style in no way short-circuits the portions of their brains required for relating to other human beings. Copy editors never, ever remind me of the people whose neighbors will one day say of them things like, “Very quiet. Kept to himself mostly. Who knew he was capable of something like this?”
But while copy editors’ language expertise does not detract from their warmth and charm, their wisdom does render this chapter utterly useless to them. You see, there’s nothing in here that copy editors don’t know already. With their already impressive mastery of this topic, they’re certain to find nothing in here of any use. In fact, this is the chapter they’ll find less interesting than any other in this book. No doubt their time could be better spent scouring the dictionary for typos or doctoring images of the local librarian in Photoshop.
They should all stop reading this chapter right now. Come to think of it, isn’t there a Star Trek marathon on the Sci-Fi Channel right now?
There. That should’ve gotten rid of them.
They’re gone now, right? Are you sure? Good. Thank God. Those guys give me the willies.
In fairness I should say, some of my best friends are newspaper copy editors. I should also probably note that the girl copy editors often seem more socially skilled than the boy copy editors. But that doesn’t mean they all shouldn’t be required to undergo a battery of psychological tests, if you know what I’m saying.
I don’t know what makes many of them so very, very special. Ironically, it’s not grammar snobbery. On the contrary, these men and women know enough about language to know that nobody knows “enough” about language.
In fact, when I made the move from working at a press-release distribution service into a real newspaper’s newsroom, I was floored to see how these pros handle questions from reporters and colleagues—questions such as, “Is ‘website’ one word or two?” Unlike many of us at the press-release service who would quickly volunteer our genius by speculating and debating such questions, real newspaper copy editors reach for a book. They have no desire to flaunt their knowledge. They have nothing to prove. They’d rather give you the correct answer than impress you with pulling one out of their own brains. And for that, my hat’s off to them.
But in other ways, they’re just . . . just . . . well, here’s an example.
A reporter at the newspaper where I worked wanted to know why someone kept changing her semicolons to colons. This reporter had always been rather proud of her mastery of the semicolon, so one day she noticed a change to one of her sentences that had read something like, “Parking is the main concern; Rutter favored an alternative with 375 spaces.” This sentence showed up in the paper with a colon in place of that semicolon. My friend decided that perhaps her grasp of the semicolon wasn’t as hot as she’d always thought; she let the colon-switch slide. Then it happened again. Then again. Baffled, she launched an officewide e-mail that in turn launched an officewide debate. Eventually, one of us looked it up in the AP Stylebook:
In general, use the semicolon to indicate a greater separation of thought and information than a comma can convey, but less than the separation that a period implies.
That’s what she had been doing.
Still, the copy editor in question (who was the subject of much speculation in our office because he was the only person there who carried a briefcase and no one ever, ever saw him open it) didn’t see it her way.
Colons, according to the AP, “often can be effective in giving emphasis. ‘He had only one hobby: eating.’ ”
And that’s what our scary, briefcase-toting friend believed that the reporter wanted to say.
Carefully conducting the discussion in the safe public forum of intra-office e-mail, she explained to the copy editor that the semicolon better reflected the intention of her sentence. And, call me crazy, but it seems to me that the writer is in a better position to determine the intent of her own work.
Mr. Mystery Briefcase acquiesced. In the e-mails, he agreed that questions of whether to use a colon, semicolon, or dash are often just judgment calls. He conceded that her interpretation of her own words was at least as valid as his.
So you can imagine our surprise when, not long after, her semicolons again began to be mysteriously replaced by colons.
She let it slide, which may be why she’s alive and well today.
Besides separating thoughts, colons and semicolons also play an important role in lists. One of the most common uses for colons is to introduce lists. “The felony charges against the killer known as Mr. Mystery Briefcase are as follows: assault, battery, and semicolonicide.”
In lists and elsewhere, semicolons are basically über-commas. They help separate things that are really long and cumbersome or that are already bogged down with commas: “His home contained a collection of shrunken heads, which were thought to have been obtained legally; a collection of normal-sized heads, which police think were probably obtained illegally; and copies of numerous magazines considered to be evidence, including The Recluse, Shack and Garden, and Bon Appétit.”
As you can see from the example above, semicolons can sometimes be a clue that you should be breaking things up into shorter sentences. But other times, they’re the way to go.
Dashes are equally flexible. They can signal an abrupt change in thought or tempo of speech. But in this way, they’re at times interchangeable with the colon, as in the example above. “He had only one hobby—eating.”
Dashes are also good for setting off ideas or lists or groups within a sentence. And this, of course, makes them a lot like commas. “The expert witness listed the qualities—reclusiveness, social awkwardness, and irrational outbursts—common in more violent copy editors.”
The only other time I dared to tangle with a newspaper copy editor, it was also over colons. The rules say that, if what follows a colon is a complete sentence, it should begin with a capital letter. “He showed me his shrunken head collection: It scared me.” Otherwise, no capital. In this particular instance I had written something like, “Friends told the reporter what to do: Get a gun.” The copy editor changed the “G” to lowercase, saying that “get a gun” wasn’t a complete sentence because it did not contain a subject. Here’s what I did not say: “Get a gun” is a complete sentence because in imperative sentences (commands) the subject is implied. In the above example, it’s “you,” as in, “You get a gun.”
In my disagreement with the copy editor, I knew I was holding a winning hand. But I folded anyway. Survival instinct had told me to keep my mouth shut, and perhaps that’s why I lived to tell.