Editor reads your page at 2 a.m.; finds it's, its

By George Blackburn

AKRON — For twenty-four years I have worked the night copy desk at a daily paper here. That means I'm the last person to read a story before it goes to the press, and my job is to catch what everybody else missed: the misspelled name, the wrong date, the sentence that says the opposite of what the reporter meant, and the headline that has to fit in two lines of 36-point type with nine minutes to deadline.

We put the paper to bed around half past twelve. I get home at one, and I can't sleep right away, so for the last two years I've been reading home pages. Family pages, fan pages, pages about cats and model trains and the Cleveland Browns. Most of them are a pleasure. Almost all of them would be a bigger pleasure with ten minutes of copy editing, and I can't stop doing it in my head. My wife, Jeanne, says I edit the cereal box. She is correct.

So here, for free, are the things I fix most. Corrections are in [red brackets], the way I'd mark them on a proof.

The rules

1. Its and it's. It's means "it is" or "it has." Its means belonging to it. No exceptions, ever. "My cat loves it's [its] new bed." Test: if you can't say "it is," you can't write it's. 2. Your and you're. Same trouble, same test. "Your [You're] going to love my links page." 3. Plurals don't take apostrophes. One CD, two CDs. "My CD's [CDs]," "the 1980's [1980s]," "Beanie Baby's [Babies]." An apostrophe means something belongs to somebody, or that a letter is missing. It is not a decoration. 4. A lot is two words. "Alot" isn't a word. You wouldn't write "alittle." 5. Don't make "click here" the link. The words you underline should say where they go. Not "Click here [cut] for my Beanie Baby list," but "my Beanie Baby list." Somebody skimming your page reads only the blue words. Make the blue words tell them something. 6. Don't open with "Welcome to my homepage." They know. They're there. It's the first sentence on half the pages on the Web, and it's wasting the best spot you've got.

7. Turn off the caps lock. ALL CAPITALS IS SHOUTING, AND IT'S HARDER TO READ, BECAUSE EVERY WORD TURNS INTO THE SAME SHAPE. One headline in capitals, maybe. Not paragraphs. 8. One exclamation point. Three exclamation points don't make it three times as exciting. They make it look as if you didn't think one would do. Usually none will do. 9. Date your dates. "Last updated Tuesday [Tuesday, Sept. 21, 1999]." Which Tuesday? Somebody might be reading it next year. 10. Give the TITLE a real title. The TITLE tag is what shows up in the bar at the top of the window and in people's bookmarks. If yours just says "Home Page," you're one of four hundred bookmarks named "Home Page," and nobody will ever find you again. Put your name and your subject in it. 11. Don't bury the lede. The lede is newspaper talk for the opening, and burying it means putting the news underneath three paragraphs of throat-clearing. If your dog just had puppies, the puppies go first, not your hello, your thanks for visiting and the reminder that the page is under construction.

Four things to do before you publish

Put the best part first. Newspapers write upside down: the most important thing at the top, then the next most important, and so on down to the things we can cut if the story doesn't fit. Your page works the same way. People decide in a few seconds whether to stay. Show them why they should.

Cut your first paragraph. Go ahead, try it. Nine times in ten it's you clearing your throat, and the page starts better at the second paragraph. I've done it to my own writing for twenty-four years and it still works.

Use a spell checker. If your HTML editor hasn't got one, copy your words into a word processor and let it check them there. Then read it yourself anyway, because a spell checker will happily pass "it's" for "its," "there" for "their" and "manger" for "manager," which is fine at Christmas and nowhere else.

Keep a style sheet. Every newspaper has one: a list of how we spell the names and words that come up over and over, so the paper says it the same way on page 1 and page 40. Make your own. Is it "e-mail" or "email"? "Web site" or "website"? Is your cat "Mr. Whiskers" or "Mister Whiskers"? It doesn't much matter which you choose. It matters that you choose once and write it down. Mine for this page is short:

Corrections
An earlier version of this page misspelled "accommodate." It also misspelled it the second time, in the correction. The writer regrets the errors and has added the word to his style sheet.

A note before you write in: I'm not trying to embarrass anybody. I've read pages by eleven-year-olds and eighty-year-olds that I'd put on the front of the paper tomorrow. I'm trying to help you look as good as you are. Merle Bower, who ran the slot when I was a kid on the desk, used to say a copy editor's job is to make the writer look smart and keep his own name off it. I've broken the second half of that here. I'll live.

Readers since November 1998:


Letters to the editor: [email protected]
I answer after my shift, so expect it around 2 a.m.

Last updated Thursday, Sept. 23, 1999