By and large, some of the worst email writers out there are professional writers. One of my author friends is being hailed as the leading crime novelist in the country, and when we communicate by email, she abandons all spelling and punctuation rules and practically runs her sentences together like the earliest forms of the written English language. She would have fit right in on the Lewis & Clark expedition. A former coworker of mine would send me emails during production that made me think she had a lobotomy over the weekend. And my former editor, the best newspaper writer I worked with, couldnāt spell my name correctly if you paid him $1,000 per letter. Itās easy, Bill, C-H-R-I-S. What did I get back: Shric.
Professional writers throw away all literary inhibitions in informal settings because we work so hard daily to not make mistakes. So when it doesnāt matter, we run away with errors like we fell off the wagon.
But still, we have hiccups when it counts. And itās important to mention not a single thing in print goes out without error in it somewhere. Like two editions ago in the Sun Day.
Perhaps you noticed the glaring misspelling of the title Cinderella on page 20. It was nice and big right in the headline, so you couldnāt miss it: Cindarella!
That was all me. Not Mason Souza, who was pinged as the culprit because he wrote the story the headline proceeded.
Worse, it was on the same page as the Theatre Companyās ad for the very production itself. All I had to do was glance a few inches southeast to see my headline went terribly wrong, a flagrant disregard for an all-time classic.
So again, I take full blame. However, when Mason went through the paper, he caught the misspelling right away and was quick to point out, āOh, Chris,ā his voice full of sympathy, āyou spelled Cinderella wrong. Itās C-I-N-D-I… This coming from the guy who wrote the article.
Whoever thought that title was so hard to spell? Wait a minute. Thatās right, Iām a guy. When I was a boy, I ran from Cinderella like she were one of the twins in the Shining. But I didnāt run from good spelling and grammar in this edition, as we once again delve into the magical world of the Theatre Group of Sun City with another story on their amazing production in this edition (See page 3). Only this time itās about the stage getting turned around instead of my spelling of Cindarella… I mean, Cindirella… I mean, Cinderella. Oh forget it. You know what I mean. Now while Erika picks up where Iām leaving you, Iām going to go try to spell bannana and Messissipi…
Chris La Pelusa
Managing Editor
I canāt with any good conscience let Chris shoulder all the blame here, though so graciously let me off the hook. Since the paperās inception two years ago, the litany of jobs I hold concerning the paper has diminished significantly (thanks entirely to the wonderful writers, ad representatives, and the permanent addition of Mason, who now wears most all of my old hats and many new ones) down to one small, but vastly important job: copyeditor. Itās the job I can do best and a job I like. Iāve done it for authors and publishers and have a reputation of being, put nicely, rather fastidious and exacting, a bit merciless, Iām told.
So what exactly is a copyeditor? Quite simply, they edit copy (i.e. the newspaper, in this case), to be certain there are no factual, consistency, clarity, stylistic, grammatical, or spelling errors. So really, when a mistake crops up in the paper, itās generally my fault because itās my job to fix them. Every written word is supposed to go through me…no less than twice, to varying degrees. (Excepting certain submissions and advertisements. Those are subject to the final proof, where time is always running out, but I do my best.) And in this case, I hold myself more culpable because, unlike Chris, growing up, Cinderella was my absolute favorite of all the fairy tales, and still is. No excuse to be found there for me.
But I have to say, the two things I love most about copyediting are the utter satisfaction of catching one of those conspicuously invisible little buggers before it makes its way into print. And, conversely, when it remains invisible to me, the magic that happens once it finds its way onto the printed page. It is nothing short of the transformation of the pumpkin into the gleaming, golden coach, the mice into horsemen, the rags into a bedazzled gown. Only it happens reversed. As instantaneously as the undoing of the magic spell at the moment the clock struck midnight, once that page is printed, I watch before my very eyes as the footmen become lizards, the coachmen, a rat sent to gnaw at me for the egregious and quite obvious error that is now leaping off the page.
Those final moments of copyediting the laid out pages are no less than a race down the staircase as the bell tolls. And sometimes, it has already tolled. But for me, the real magic occurs when, like Cinderella, I lose myself so completely in the enchanting world, become so immersed in the tale, that I not only lose track of the time, I find myself not reading for errors but reading for enjoyment. Just as the prince became so charmed he saw a princess where there was nothing but a servant girl in rags, so do I. Cindarella becomes Cinderella. And that has always been the true magic of the written word. The place it takes you where reality is suspended and true magic can happen, even the embarrassing kind.
Erika La Pelusa
Copyeditor
