Copy editors

Here's a tribute to copy editors.

They're probably the most often ignored when news consumers think about newsrooms. And now that newspapers are cutting back, there are even fewer copy editors in today's newsrooms. But they're the ones who know the community. The leaders, the street names, whether it's avenue or road or boulevard, whether it's President Obama or President Barack Obama (it's the latter, by the way. The AP style changed for some reason).

They're the ones who read stories the way a reader would, then make the technical stuff approachable, the abstract stuff concrete, and the faraway stuff humanized. They're on your side. Thank god for copy editors.

Apparently, according to our copyediting professor, copy editors used to wear green visors. The visors helped mitigate eyestrain because it is such a detail-oriented job. They're also called green eyeshades. They're way hip.

Anyway, the editors in our newsroom have multiple "hats" they must wear throughout the day. About half of them are actually also copy editors. Which means when they're wearing their copy editor hats, it causes lots of confusion about what they're supposed to be doing. The reporters want their attention, the senior editors want their attention, we wonder why they aren't doing what we think they're supposed to be doing when in fact, they're doing exactly what they're supposed to be doing -- copyediting. So, we decided to go a little literal with the term "hats."

Here are two of our editors diligently copy editing. How do we know? Because they're wearing the green visors! Duh.

Copy editors also write headlines. Here's an image of our recent favorite hammer headline:

A Coca-Cola truck caught a tree branch and "snapped" off a lot of the tree. Neither tree nor driver was injured. I should note that it wasn't a copy editor who came up with that hammer, however. Julieta was metaphorically wearing the green visor, though.

I'll end this post with a link to a Washington Post column by Gene Weingarten. It's about copy editors. You should also challenge yourself and see if you can find the fifty-something copyediting errors in the column. I'm sure it'll help you realize their value better.