The Seven Deadly Sins of Copy Editing!

I searched the World Wide Web up and down (well...for around 15 minutes) and could not find a really good story about Journalism to write about. I knew they had to be some out there, but I was feeling lazy. Then a wonderful thought came to me! Our lecture professor uses a lot of Poynter Online articles to get her point across, so I checked there. It was on this website I came across the article, "The Seven Deadly Copy Editing Sins".

This article resonates with what we are learning in our lecture and lab class. Editor Anne Glover pins down seven sins many copy editors make:

1. Arrogance: This means don't believe that what you say is final and always correct.

2. Assumption: Do not assume that a reporter did the correct math or wrote down the right address. Always check the facts.

3. Sloppiness: This basically means don't make stupid mistakes, like "a jumpline that refers the readers to the wrong page".

4. Indifference: It's easy to treat the story you are reading as just a story you have to spell check, but this kind of thought-process is risky. It causes every page to look the same and for headlines to become boring. Pretend the story is YOUR story and have a little pride what you do to make it better.

5. Ignorance: This means always fact-checking and making sure everything is correct. Ignorance is writing the wrong date in reference to the end of WWI because you didn't feel the need to fact check. Glover says "Readers always know these things, and you damage the newspaper's credibility when you show you don't".

6. Laziness: This sin goes along with ignorance. Human being wants to do whatever is the easiest, and that can be anything from not looking up a word in the stylebook because its two rooms away or "not bothering to teaser something because you couldn't find out what page it was on".

7. Inflexibility: Yes, it sucks when a huge story hits after you already finished designing and editing the front page. But remember what your REAL job is: getting the news out to the people. You may have pull an all-nighter, but the end result will be worth it.

***These mistakes are very obvious, but if you really think about your life as a Journalism student, you know that you have at least contemplated these options quite a few times in your short career. For me, laziness hits the hardest. No one wants to search the web for good articles for an hour, ergo I'm sure no editor wants to spend hours upon hours making sure one story is precise. But considering how the public views the media nowadays, this is the most opportune and important time to make sure every minute detail has been examined carefully.

Therefore, I think this article is something any aspiring copy editor or writer should have linked in their "favorites" folder in their web browser. If they can look down the list and can honestly say they did not commit one copy editing sin while looking at the story they are editing, the story is probably ready for the public to read.