In June 2008, the American Copy Editors Society launched WhyEditingMatters.org, a microsite aimed at gathering comments as to why editing mattered. At the time, we wrote, “Copy editing at America’s newspapers, a cornerstone of fair and honest journalism, is threatened now more than ever.” We solicited more than 250 responses in six months. Here are a few of our favorites.

• Because there are sentences like: “Now 90 and the owner of an appliance company in Atlanta, Gunter’s glider was towed in by airplane and released over the German lines where it came to earth inside France.” –Anonymous
• Because 50,290 is not the same as 502,900, and because bad math chips away at our credibility. –LisaMc
• Editing isn’t threatened; quality is threatened, and thus the trust that the reader has in the product, be it electronic or dead-tree. A newspaper that would not save money by printing press releases verbatim on the back of used wallpaper nevertheless might think it can clip off a few pennies by eliminating that extra set of eyes, that extra level of judgment, experience, and common sense. Like the farmer feeding his horse on sawdust, that’ll save a fortune — till the horse starves to death. –J Kaufman
• Because it’s helpful to all sides — readers, writers, publishers even — to have someone who will say to a reporter “is this what you really mean? Because I understand it this way and it’s” — pick one — libelous, mean-spirited, incorrect, not strong enough or even “too good to be at the end of the story.” –Anonymous
• Because there’s a difference between there, their and they’re. –Anonymous
• Because I just graduated from college and I need a job. –Anonymous
• Because somewhere in the world, someone is writing something like “I was on the way to the doctor with rear end trouble when my universal joint gave way causing me to have an accident.” –Anonymous
• I won’t write any essays about the profession here … instead I’ll write about specific differences I make in my work. Today, I edited the phrase “she refused to say” in two separate instances. As a wise old editor once told me: “If she refuses to talk to us, the reporter thinks she’s a jerk. If she declines to talk to us, the reporter likes her.” Either way, what the reporter thinks of the source has no place in copy. –Jim Thomsen
• Because it’s “furniture,” not “furnature,” and everybody else knows it. –Anonymous
• Editing matters to me because it’s what I do, like breathing. And it’s also important for others because to them it’s a little more difficult than breathing. –Anonymous
• Because we don’t want to send people to 1211 E. 21st when they really want to go to 12111 E. 21st. –LisaMc
• The NY Times has had some good copy on this topic, most especially by Lawrence Downes (“In a Changing World of News, an Elegy for Copy Editors” (Editorial Observer, June 16). That piece elicited some thoughtful responses in last Sunday’s Times from readers in California, New Jersey, Texas and Maryland. Worth a look. –Bill
• Because we do more than just spell check. Because we care. Because we want to be able to say what we do and be proud of it. Because as we get more and more into the online arena where things must be done faster, the need for editing grows. Because, no matter what some people think, not all readers are idiots. –Anonymous
• … because I can stomp out redundancies in the blink of an eye: “A number of area police and fire departments will be joining together Thursday” DIE! DIE! DIE! –Jim Thomsen
• Because of this statement: You have only one chance to make a good first impression. Credibility is important if your publication, materials or Web site are to be taken seriously. I feel that I am an important part of making this happen at my workplace. I feel great satisfaction as a result of being part of a team that produces stellar copy and receives kudos from customers. It makes my job worthwhile, even when there are downer days. –Anonymous
• No lie: I prevented a paragraph without verbs from being published. –Anonymous
• Because Super Bowl is two words, both capped. Duh. –Anonymous
• Because good (or even great) reporters don’t have to be great (or even good) writers. No slam there. It’s just basic truth. –jeff rubin
• Copy editors are cheaper than lawyers. –Anonymous
• Because now, more than ever, readers need somebody who is consistently on their side. Someone who asks the questions they would ask, rejects the false conclusions they would reject, strives for the clarity they seek and defends their interests at every turn. –Anonymous
• Because credible information is what separates us from the rest of the media. –Anonymous
• Because we’re a story’s first readers. –Anonymous
• Because when reporters write down quotes, everyone knows that people do not talk in run-on sentences one after another. Editing is essential because communication needs to be concise, clear and understandable. –Lizzie
• Because somebody has to know the difference between peak, peek and pique. –Anonymous
• Although we’re not perfect, copy editors (not to mention everyone from reporters and designers to pressmen and paperboys, and all the people in between) strive to give you the best paper we can every day. –Anonymous
• Because in the rush to get it first, some get it wrong. –Anonymous
• Because everyone needs an editor, including copy editors. Because writing is difficult and language is difficult, even if it comes easy to us, so we need an outside eye to set us straight when we’ve gone awry. And writing headlines and other display type is difficult, too; that’s why copy editors edit copy editors, too. –Neil Holdway
• this country was founded on propaganda, i.e. the federalist papers, and as such it needs to be reviewed by editors for not only grammar but facts as well. –Anonymous
• Because I still take calls every day from readers upset about mistakes, often upset enough to cancel their paper. Those calls would be multiplied by 10 if the copy desk wasn’t on duty. And, contrary to current thoughts about what people expect off the Web, those callers notice mistakes there as well. –Anonymous
• Because without editors, we as reporters would not be able to disseminate information in a concise readable way. Because when that goes wrong, my credibility is the one that gets sullied because my name is at the top. –Anonymous
• Because our readers are human beings who deserve respect and quality. –Anonymous
• Never forget that it was a copy editor who caught that Mitch Albom fabricated a column. Nikki Overfelt questioned something as simple as problematic verb tenses, which revealed the fabrication. Copy editors are guardians of a newspaper’s credibility against errors both big and small. –Teresa Schmedding
• Because we are often the only ones standing between ignorance and print (or Web). –Anonymous
• Editning dont matter to me cause i just wanna get my msg across klearly and editers get in the way of me style. Seriously, no writer is above the pencil. I can’t tell you how many times an editor has saved my credibility. –R Thomas Berner
• Because the interjection is “Voila!” — not “Walla” — and the trademarked portable toilet is Porta Potti, not Port-A-Potty, Port O Potty or (and yes, this isn’t made up) porter poddy. –JudyB
• Because behind every great writer, there’s a great editor. And because “information” and “communication” are just meaningless buzzwords if there’s no accuracy. –Karen
• Because grammatical usages within a publication or company need to be consistent for it to seem like a cohesive entity. –Anonymous
• The English language is something to be learned, mastered and respected. Knowing how to read, write, edit — these are signs of intelligence. And when compared with other countries, this is a quality, I’m sorry to say, that is not one of America’s strongest. How many more illiterate high school grads are we going to send to college? We must learn to properly speak, read, write and edit. Our culture and our reputation depend on it. –Anonymous
• Being a copy editor is like being a theater tech. If I do my job well, I am invisible, but my work provides structure and smooth transitions for an audience whose opinion, in the end, is all that matters. With no techs, the show will collapse. –Anonymous
• Unless consumers of media want an increasing number of news stories to leave us with the feeling that something key is missing, we ought to demand good copy editors in every media organization! –JE
• I spent 17 years as a newspaper reporter and copy editor, but now work for a health care organization. Editing matters, and now that I’m outside the newspaper industry I find editing matters even more than I thought it did when I worked in journalism. I work with a lot of people who hold advanced degrees, and it’s amazing how many MDs, PhDs and MPHs can’t spell or even construct a simple sentence. You also have MDs, PhDs and MPHs who fall into the jargon/technobabble trap. In health care we don’t serve our patients well if we can’t communicate with them, and most patients can’t understand jargon/technobabble. A good copy editor can simplify the message so a patient understands why you can’t drink grapefruit juice if you take certain cholesterol drugs (the combination can cause muscle pain, fatigue and fever, and sometimes can be fatal). –Anonymous
• This what the reporter should have written: The fact that Miguel Gomez’s wife admitted having an affair – and then blamed it on the size of his penis, he claims – still was not enough to help him beat a murder rap yesterday. While this is what the story originally said: The fact that Miguel Gomez’s wife admitted having an affair — and then blamed it on her husband’s small penis — still was not enough to help him beat a murder rap yesterday. Unless the reporter had established size as fact (in which case, I don’t want to know how), the original structure is wrong. Subject’s name changed to protect the guilty. All of them. –Zellified
• The Okinawa battle, which lasted 11 weeks, was the largest amphibious assault in the Pacific Theater with more than 12,000 U.S. soldiers killed. This story originally said 50,000 American soldiers died at Okinawa, which would have put the death toll at Gettysburg levels. The cost was, in fact, 50,000 U.S., casualties, meaning killed, wounded, injured, otherwise incapacitated, combined. Embarrassing. –Zellified
• Because wetting one’s appetite and piercing the corporate veal makes me want to hurl. –Anonymous
• Because some of us still love words and care about them enough to take care of them. –Michael
• Because of sentences like this: The Dow Jones industrial average lost more than 300 points Thursday, falling two its lowest level in nearly two years. –Anonymous
• Because a cover letter and a resume is your first chance to make a good impression, and if that impression is full of errors, there won’t be a second chance. –Anonymous
• Because without great copy editors, my infographics would not sing. –Anonymous
• Because if we can’t get this right, what can readers believe we ARE getting right?: The driver involved in the accident the killed five people Sunday has now been charged in their deaths. –Anonymous
• Because I was the new reporter on staff. Because the very talkative man who spoke at the board meeting was passionate and quotable. Because the copy editor who vetted my story had worked in that newsroom for more than 20 years. Because the talkative man had already said all the same things at every board meeting for 20 years. Because the talkative man had alleged libel and sued every reporter who ever quoted him in the past. Because the newspaper I worked for had gone to court to have the talkative man declared a “vexatious litigant.” Because that copy editor saved my ass. –TJ Sullivan
• I am just curious… Is there any way to get the people who can save our jobs to read this site? Of course, first we must figure out who those people are. –Anonymous
• Because every day I prevent the paper from publishing something that made me shudder when I caught it. Today: a completely mangled list of Web sites. –Anonymous
• Because the news isn’t fit to print (or post online) without us! –Anonymous
• Because there’s no such thing as “anabolic stewards,” but spell check wouldn’t have caught that. –Anonymous
• Because without us, there would need to be significantly more space dedicated to corrections. Spell check can’t catch fact errors. –Anonymous
• Because I need a job and can’t figure out what else to do with my life. –Anonymous
• Because someone needs to be passionate about dangling modifiers and witty headlines. –Sarah
• Because by preserving structure and consistency of style in stories, we are preserving our newspapers’ integrity and credibility. Because by making clear and concise editing choices and by writing clear and concise headlines – and even fun ones – we give our readers the information they want and need, we help them start their day, we tug at their emotions, we make them smile and we make them shake their fists at officialdom. Because what we do every day helps preserve the language that we love. Because putting words together just so can make all the difference. –Anonymous
• b/c right now, as we speak, a discussion is going on on Romenesko, under a story about the OC Register experimenting with outsourcing copy desk functions to India. And there are people there actually suggesting this is a smart idea. –jeff rubin
• Because of the first lesson I learned in Journalism 101: “Accuracy. Accuracy. Accuracy.” –Anonymous
• Because of this dialogue from the movie Clue: Mrs. White: He even threatened to kill me! In public! Miss Scarlet: Why would he want to kill you in public? The Butler: I think she means he threatened, in public, to kill her. –Anonymous
• Because this op/ed headline, written by the author, makes no sense: “Child rape ruling went/too far, but it was right” — That’s no opinion at all! –Anonymous
• Because editing is not a frill. –Anonymous
• Because the reporter meant to write “lawsuit,” not “lawshit.” –Anonymous
• Editing matters because we want people to think about the content of stories and not their construction; we want them to consider sense and not spelling; we want them to feel informed, not infuriated. –Anonymous
• Because every gaffe, large or small, detracts from a newspaper’s credibility, and a newspaper lacking credibility is a waste of ink and paper. –Anonymous
• Copyediting matters because it: has the public’s true interests at heart–and inserts the “l” in “public” when a reporter’s head is still wrapped around the other word from the night before — works magic with submissions clearly written under the journalists’ age-old “go with what you’ve got” motto (i.e., makes those press releases look like real stories) — provides subject matter expertise related to a particular story–for a fraction of expert witness fees — allows a publication all the conveniences of its PR “quote sanitizer” nemesis and none of the hassle of admitting it — keeps passionate staff op-ed writers from looking like complete reactionaries (left-wing or right-wing) — frees page and section editors to plan articles and op-ed pieces (although astute copyeditors will suggest them as well) — above all, accounts for the CONTEXT and CULTURE of the employing publication’s core readership/subscriber base (as well as the region or nation in which the employing publication is headquartered BECAUSE THE COPY EDITORS ACTUALLY LIVE THERE)! –MizKitty007
• Because I’ve yet to see a baby’s head crow. “They comforted her and the baby’s head started crowing,” Lopez said. “It came quick.” –Anonymous
• Because spell check doesn’t know the difference between two, to and too or there, their and they’re. –Anonymous
• Because the reader needs a surrogate, and anyone else is likely to be either too close to the story or too far removed from it. –jeff rubin
• Because our reporters post directly to the Web: “A man accused of punching a whole in the wall of duplex was arrested on suspicion of third-degree malicious mischief after midnight on Tuesday.” –Anonymous
• Because the reporters think of me as their safety net, and I don’t want to let them down. –Anonymous
• Because news happens any and everywhere and the editors are those ones who always know when and where. –Anonymous
• Because anything that inspires people to read the news — including a clean story and a catchy, honest headline — is a blow for democracy. And anything that inspires cynicism and boredom about the news — including dull, vague prose and avoidable mistakes — is a blow against democracy. –Anonymous
• Because today’s news ends up in tomorrow’s history book, and if today’s news has errors, they’ll be perpetuated. –Anonymous
• Because (these are catches) Mexican-Americans aren’t “foreigners,” and “homeless” isn’t a synonym for hostile street thug, and even if the suspect really, really, really looks guilty on Day 1, the story can take a complete U-turn by the end of the week. Because people look at stuff that makes it into print as a model for clear thinking — and when we sell them muddy, biased, anemic prose, we take away one more chance for them to grow into strong people and good citizens. –Anonymous
• Editing matters because authors often don’t know how to convey what is clear in their minds based on personal and professional experiences and worldviews, nor even recognize that their language choices may afford a myriad of opportunities for individual audience members to misinterpret messages. –Dora Rollins
• Because one of these days, we’ll find out that copy editing is the hot new thing, and we’ll all have groupies, roadies and elaborate world tours. –Anonymous
• Because after months of hard work, a special publication at my newspaper published “because of the efforts of Martin Luther” in a piece about the Civil Rights movement. –Anonymous
• Newspapers aren’t the only medium for news. Editing doesn’t matter just in print. Editing matters just as much on the Web, and these many reasons noted are proof. I know in my newsroom, editing matters as much to the reporters, and it matters when their stories go online as well as in print. No one wants their raw copy posted unread — they see the danger there. –Anonymous
• Because I spoke in front of a local community college mass media class last April. About half actually said they read newspapers. I asked what bothered them the most about newspapers, and the answer was the errors. Then one piped up with “I wish there was more editing on the Internet. The misspellings drive me crazy!” –Anonymous
• Because the Washington Post just claimed, in a story about a domesticated chimpanzee who escaped his cage and is loose in the wild, that the San Bernardino foothills are west of Los Angeles. They are, of course, east of Los Angeles. –Anonymous
• Because readers write letters to the editor asking why your paper mixed up “ravage” and “ravish,” and follow up by asking: Why would you lay off copy editors? –Andy
• Because English has nuances, not understood by people whose first language is something else. As in, when you call the help desk in India to report that the AP wire isn’t working and the response is, “Did you unplug it?” –Anonymous
• Because you really want to have someone take notice when a vice presidential candidate can’t quite spell potatoe (an oldie but a goodie). –Anonymous
• Because someone needs to be paying enough attention to notice that we ran that same story in the paper two weeks ago. –LisaMc
• Because an ellipsis isn’t a machine at the gym. Because a colon isn’t something you dab behind each ear so you can smell nice on a date. Because a nut graph isn’t something you use to calculate whether squirrels have enough food for the winter. Because a jump head is not a defensive move in kung fu. –jeff rubin
• Because a sextet and a sextuplet are not the same thing. –Anonymous
• Because a copy editor does not just use language to write a story. A copy editor loves language enough to respect it, preserve it and fight for it in the face of those who, in the name of convenience, would see it undone. –Emily
• Because transposed digits in a toll-free phone number can lead readers to call and hear this: “Hello. I’ve been waiting for you to call. I’m soooo horny.” –Anonymous
• Because half the names on the roster we almost printed were people who weren’t playing, and some of those who were had their names spelled wrong. –Anonymous
• Because a copy editor found a discrepancy between Death Row facts listed in big, red type on page 8A and small, black type on the Editorial page. Both pages cited the Department of Corrections. Desk editors verified the statistics and corrected the Editorial page. Because a copy editor knew that the state prison is in Town A, not Town B, as most of the media like to report. Because a copy editor noticed the paper’s Web site got the convict’s name wrong on a bulletin about an execution. Because a copy editor saw that the text of the story listed the convict’s initial release month incorrectly. –Anonymous
• A baseball team needs infielders and outfielders as well as pitchers, catchers and hitters. Editors protect the reader from the distraction and annoyance of typos — the routine flies. Imagine an infield that couldn’t field even the easiest rollers — that team would be the laughing stock of the league. But editors also protect the readers from bad information, and in so doing protect the publication as well. Those are the to-the-wall catches that make for great baseball, and great journalism. Meaning absolutely no disrespect to reporters and others involved in the process, but everyone needs an editor — and those who don’t think they do are doomed to embarrassment and failure, not to mention a lesser reputation. –Anonymous
• Because the guy was a bond trader, not a bong trader. –Anonymous
• To carry on that baseball analogy, because a good team has one fielder go back up another fielder during a play, as sometimes fielders make mistakes or the ball bounces funny or the sun blinds the eyes. –Neil Holdway
• Because there are so many malaprops and typos [only tangentially an editing problem] weekly that Jay Leno could build his entire show around it every night. And it is so easy in cutting, pasting and trimming to end up with something that makes no sense – unless someone else sees it before the ink hits the paper. –Jim
• Because of Entry No. 101; we should still live in a society where language still matters. –Jasmine Garcia
• Because leaving one letter out of “public” can make an “L” of a difference. –Anonymous
• Because antique replicas of donkeys fornicating does not belong on a children’s book cover. –Anonymous
• Because ‘Everybody Hates Chris’— not ‘Everybody Hates Christ’ –Anonymous
• Call it a wild guess: I think we all agree that editing matters. Most of us, if not all of us, are editors. Probably copy editors. No surprise that we all agree on this point. Now, how do we get people who have never spent a day on a rim in their lives to consider editors as valuable to the process as those who write and photograph the news? How do we get them to agree with us? I’d wager that every newsroom in the country is aware of the fact that copy editors keep embarrassing stuff out of print. So you tell me: How do we get them to see that there is a real cost to putting holes in that safety net? How do we get them to see that that cost might be greater than any savings realized by outsourcing or eliminating numbers of reads? –Anonymous
• Copyediting/editing matters because it’s what writer is all about. Revising, getting to the core what the writer is trying to say. You can’t express yourself without editing and going through your writing. All good writing comes from editing multiple times. Why seems to be threatened, I don’t know. But it’s a shame. –Anonymous
• How do we get them to see that there is a real cost to putting holes in that safety net? That’s the $64,000 question, isn’t it? Part of how to do that involves the copy desk coming out of the corner, keeping track of what gets caught, and letting editors farther up the line know about it. –Anonymous
• Because it isn’t about us or the reporters. It’s about avoiding the cancellations owing to misspellings or worse. We’re losing ground as is, and handing out excuses to stop delivery is about the worst thing we can do at this point. –Anonymous
• Apparently, some editors have calculated that the circulation declines due to misspellings or worse won’t be significant. Or maybe they’ve reasoned that those losses will be outweighed by the gains that come from shrinking staff. Or maybe they figure that people will cut a paper some slack if there’s an uptick in typos and corrections. I know editing matters. But, rightly or wrongly, someone clearly believes that other things matter more. –Anonymous
• Because editing is about far more than just catching misspellings. It’s about finding holes and discrepencies, making sure that the lead is in fact the lead, endless fact checking to make sure we’re putting out a good product and writing an eye-catching headline that causes the reader to pick up the paper or click on the link. As one of my favorite copy editors told me, copy editors are the super heroes of the newsroom. –Melissa Morgan
• Effective communication is the cornerstone of any business. To paraphrase Strunk and White, most readers are lost most of the time anyway; don’t make their job any harder than it already is. –Andrew
• Because the president of an advertising agency once told me that mistakes in a six-figure proposal were no big deal…it just made the company appear more conversational. Huh??? Because the body of Chris is much different from the body of Christ. Because there are two different spellings for fluorescent/florescent. The package was a million-run print job and would have talked about clothes that flowered, not clothes that were brightly colored. Because I could go on for days with mistakes (not just misspellings) I have seen. –Anonymous
• I believe that there should not be a need for copy editors. With the level of education required to be taken seriously in today’s job market, and with the use of computer spelling and grammar checks, there is no reason why reporters and journalists themselves cannot edit their own copy. Technological advances and career specialization often put people out of jobs, and that is a sad fact, but it is true. If journalists are not skilled enough at their work to write copy and edit it themselves, chances are they are not qualified to be writing in the first place. Maybe they should be researchers instead, and let the copy editors, who are so good at correct grammar and composition, take over their jobs. –Meagan Roper
• A burro is an ass. A burrow is a hole in the ground. Editors know the difference. –Tim H
• To No. 124: Have YOU ever written something and had to edit yourself? Then did you have someone else read over it, just in case, who caught something so obvious you were embarrassed? That’s what copy editors do. Any reporter who sits in front of a computer to write a story, notes in hand and interviews running through their mind, will stare at the same words far too long to catch everything in the story. Managing editors are often so busy, they look for the holes in the story and make sure the important information in included – who, what, when, where, why, etc. – they don’t see the misused semicolon. But then, if you’d worked one day as a copy editor, you’d know that. –Anonymous
• Because there has to be someone who has to be brave enough, when a bunch of people get caught up in an idea, to ask, hey, should we really be doing this? –Neil Holdway
• It is impossible for a writer to adequately edit his or her own writing. Checks and balances exist in government, and likewise, must exist at any place professional writing is posted or published. –Lauren Riggs
• Attention to detail enhances credibilty once ran as a headline because it was written by someone who had no business being a copy editor. The same person also wrote a cutline stating, “Pope John Paul II addresses a huge crow in St. Peter’s Square.” Sure, a spell-checking program will flag the former, but there’s no substitute for a real copy editor with the latter. –Anonymous
• Because sometimes people write: “the 14 events — five Friday and 10 Saturday — …” –Anonymous
• The reeson editing makes a difference is vrry simple. If a noospaper prints a story without checking fax, grammer and spelling, it looks stoopid. In fact, reeders in state capitols from Philadelphia to Los Angeles will tell you that they quit byeing noospapers that make big, dumb mistakes or even little dumb mistakes, like misspelling a city involved in the Iran War. So to anyone seriously thinking about cutting copy editors or outsourcing copy editing halfway around the world to Canada or Mexico had better think again. –Ira Lacher
• Anyone who thinks writers can edit themselves has never tried to turn around a 17-inch breaking story on a tight deadline. Sure, I notice my own errors — but without copy-editors, that might not happen until the next day, when the story is already in the hands of a few hundred thousand readers. –Sara Steffens
• Because the writer who edits her own work is a fool. –Anonymous
• Because I’ve worked with a Spellcheck system that correctly flags “physican” as misspelled, but incorrectly suggests “foreskin” as a replacement. And most physicians in our readership don’t take kindly to being called foreskins … –Anonymous
• Because when I go to my bank to talk to someone about investment options and I can’t understand what the heck he’s saying, I decide to pass. Because when I go through the checkout and the machine (or the checker) accidentally rings up $10 for a $1 item, I get angry and I will think long and hard about shopping at a place that is math-challenged again. Because when my congressman says something that is simply flat-out wrong or untrue and then explains, “gee, it was just a typo in my newsletter/press release,” or just “a little thing that I’ve rethought,” he likely isn’t going to get my vote in November. Because when I read a book by one of my favorite authors but suddenly see that all that wonderful writing is marred by grammatical errors and misused words, I’m disillusioned, and I won’t buy her books again because she’s lost credibility with me. And because I trusted her, that makes me “mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore.” And because I have such an ownership feeling about “my” daily newspaper, these kinds of errors and credibility destroyers there are even more of a problem for me. When the trust I had there is gone, I can shrug my shoulders and go anywhere to get my news. So I’ll go for whatever is there, and whatever is free. I’ll know that I no longer get what I pay for…. So why pay at all? –Anonymous
• A copy editor is the last line of defense for a newspaper’s credibility, the most precious asset for a journalist. A copy editor: Should be an excellent fact checker. Should be a top-notch speller and grammarian. Should ensure articles and reporters adhere to the highest journalistic and ethical standards. And do all of the above while adhering to strict deadlines. And that’s why copy editors are indispensable. –Steve Warns
• Because sometimes reporters misspells their own names in their bylines. –Anonymous
• Here’s an example of why local editing matters: I just read a story about a museum exhibit. The curator’s name is Mejer. Yet five times in the story it was spelled Meyer. This had gotten by a reporter who should have know better and others who were probably focused on other aspects of the story (or too busy to care). I said, “Hey, unless they hired a new guy, this is wrong.” I checked with the museum; it was wrong. This man is well-known in the community and the newspaper would have looked foolish. Now, would you expect a copy editor in India to question that? –Anonymous
• Copy editors are those mysterious and wonderful gnomes who so helpfully fill in the places that say “Hejdlijne willg goj hejre and hejre” and “Somejthing somjething somejething needjs toj go hejre hejre hejre xyxyxyxyx xyxyxx.” –Bruce