The Engine Room A blog about language use, misuse and abuse, brought to you by two sub-editors (copy editors) on a weekly magazine. If you have questions about words, grammar, spelling etc, why not ask us? Statistics Unique Visitors: Total Unique Visitors: Outgoing: Total Outgoing: 0 0 22 5170

Articles from The Engine Room

Substantive editing 2008-01-04 07:30:00 I recently found a nice little web page outlining the differences between copy editing, proofreading, and a third type of editing, 'substantive editing'. This third type of editing:looks at both the content and structure of a manuscript as a cohesive whole. Does the story or argument flow logically? Are there obvious gaps in a certain area? Too much information someplace else? Substantive editing can involve re-ordering large chunks of text, removing text, adding text, and even rewritingThis quite accurately describes a lot of the work that Apus and I do (in addition to our copy-editing duties). We are both sub editors (or subeditors, or sub-editors if you will), which is a job title that seems to be confined to this side of the Atlantic. Is it possible that the 'sub' in 'sub editor' stands for 'substantive'? Probably not, but it's a nice thought, and it might be of interest to our American copy-editor readership... ...

Word of the day: globesity 2008-01-03 11:11:00 Recently I keep catching news stories about 'globesity', the growing problem of obesity across the globe (yes, the word is yet another portmanteau). Michael Quinlon's World Wide Words has some good info about the origins of the term 'globesity' so I won't go into too much detail.However, I have noticed several commentators talk or write about the "globesity epidemic": here in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, for example. The World Wide Words page also quotes the Guardian doing the same.This leads me to ask: if globesity is, by its nature, global, shouldn't it always be a pandemic ("prevalent over a large part of the world" OED), not just an epidemic ("widespread in a community", OED)? And if yes, wouldn't a "globesity pandemic" be a tautology anyway?And now I'm off home for my dinner. ...

Christmas message 2008-01-02 07:57:00 In lieu of a Christmas bonus the chairman of the company that employs JD and I has boosted staff morale with an inspirational e-mail including the news that:Each of our divisions has performed well and ahead of their respective marketsThe word "respective" is meaningless in this context, but what about a spot of verb agreement? He could have written "Each of our divisions has performed well and ahead of its market" or "All of our divisions have performed well and ahead of their markets".A minor point? Certainly – but we are a publishing house, after all. ...

Fear is a great guard dog 2008-01-02 07:22:00 Back to work after the long Christmas break and one of the first pieces of copy I sub contains this phrase:Fear is a great guard dog but a very poor guideThis sounds like a proverb or a quotation, but if so it's a new one on me and Apus. It isn't listed in our reference books and Google fails to shed any light on it.Anyone else out there heard this one before – or has one of our writers been reading too many horoscopes? Which reminds me: happy new year...Not a great guard dog, unlike fear ...

No FT style book... no comment 2008-01-01 18:14:00 Tucked into my Christmas stocking was a copy of the Financial Times Style Guide; whether Mrs Apus was commenting on my lack of style I have yet to ascertain. In any case, while flicking through it as an aid to the digestion of a rather fine rib of beef on Christmas afternoon I came across the following, under 'honorifics':Do not give awards such as VC... Queen's Counsel keep their QC.This alone was enough to put me off the entire 218-page guide.Why? Because the suffix VC stands for Victoria Cross, which is the UK's highest award for valour, to the extent that many heroes have been awarded their VCs posthumously. A Queen's Counsel is a senior barrister (lawyer) who is appointed on the recommendation of the Lord Chancellor.Subs who run foul of the libel laws might have good reason to fear encountering a QC, but do the FT's subs really rate a VC below a QC?Whoever came up with that one should be ashamed of themselves.PSThe same style guide calls for the use of Mr/Mrs/Ms in news st ...

Word of the day: fourgy 2007-12-21 08:00:00 We haven't had a word of the day for a while, so I thought I would remedy that with 'fourgy' – a portmanteau of 'four' and, um, 'orgy'. I'm sure you can work out what it means.I came across this word in Douglas Coupland's novel JPod (published 2006, and pictured right), but I doubt whether it has its origins here. IMDb lists the 2005 film Wicked Fourgy of Whorror, for example. I'm not sure I even want to know.Googling 'fourgy' also throws up the word 'twenty-fourgy', which isn't as exciting as you might imagine – it's actually an orgy of watching TV series 24. I can relate to that.On another note, this will probably be my last post before Christmas so season's greetings and all that. And now that I have been entrusted with Apus's bulging 'Black Museum' file I need never fear running out of blog material again... ...

Life outside the engine room 2007-12-20 08:48:00 After more than 20 years in the engine room my escape plans are coming to fruition so within a few weeks JD will be labouring on with a new fellow stoker – though I hope to continue submitting noteworthy points from my seaside hideaway.One of the more precious artefacts I'll be leaving in JD's care is a thick file entitled the black museum, packed with some of the more noteworthy howlers produced by our charges over the past couple of decades. No doubt JD will trawl through them for your delectation, but while the file's on my desk, here are a few examples, picked at random:"it will in each case be a question of fact as in each case no two cases will be the same""a street lighting upright" (lamp post?)"fire or heat turns this chemical into a lethal gas which causes severe irritation to skin and eyes" (leaving an uncomfortable corpse?)"dangerously unsafe vehicles""underground motorway toll tunnels" "sloping rear ramps" "new and previously unseen problems""facilitates easy mounting" ...

Headline: Mum left tot in car to booze 2007-12-20 07:35:00 Ambiguous headline of the day goes to today's Daily Mirror with:Mum left tot in car to boozeWhen I read this I initially thought the tot was left to booze (in the car), when in fact the mum went boozing while the tot was just left.Nice headline words too: 'tot' and 'booze'. When was the last time you saw the word 'tot' outside a tabloid?The Mirror's web version of the story ...

Mr MacMaster and the sun lounger 2007-12-19 03:57:00 Surprised by a recent story in free London paper Metro. Here's the relevant bit:A businessman who was hit on the neck by a sun lounger blown off a pub roof was awarded £1million damages yesterday.Mr MacMaster was standing outside the Crown in Romford, Essex, when the accident happened on a windy day in October 2002. The neck injury was 'much more severe than one would expect' and left him in chronic pain, the High Court was told."Much more severe than one would expect"? He was hit on the neck by a sun lounger blown off a roof; there's not much more severe than 'instant death'.Incidentally, kudos to Metro for its punning headline: "Pub's ill wind costs it £1m". However the paper's online version of the story includes neither the pun nor the above quote...Drinking: hazardous to health ...

Production desk Christmas: 2 2007-12-14 14:05:00 Well, having just finished a delightful day of confusion and extra work caused by our charges failing to do their jobs thoroughly (and this, mark you, on an annual product we publish over the Christmas holiday) I can only say that shooting would be too good for them.Christmas? Bah humbug, says I. ...

A production desk Christmas 2007-12-14 10:06:00 The pre-Christmas period is one of the busiest and most stressful for us on our magazine. Not only do we have a bumper Christmas issue to prepare but we work on the two following issues at the same time (no one wants to come in between Christmas and New Year, after all).The production desk is a mess of layouts, proofs, plans and charts, and the smallest mistake can lead to much confusion. Earlier today there was a great example of the effect this can have on the best of us when I noticed that our production editor, who is normally a calm, reasonable person, was looking a little harassed."Is there anything I can do to help?" I asked him."Yes. Line up some journalists against a wall and shoot them for me," he replied, before stalking off.Glad to see we're all getting into the Christmas spirit... ...

Independent: Pratchett blooper 2007-12-13 07:42:00 Bit of a blooper today in an Independent story on novelist Terry Pratchett. Here's the passage in question – the italics are The Independent's own.[Pratchett] has written a number of specifically children's books, including Truckers in 1989, which became the first of its kind to appear in British adult fiction bestseller lists.Two others, The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents won the prestigious Carnegie medal for children's fiction in 2001.I'm not a particular Pratchett fan (unlike Apus) so hadn't heard of the books in question – but winning the Carnegie with two books in one year? That, the strange, unitalicised 'his', and the missing comma after 'Rodents' all rang my subbing alarm bells.You guessed it: Pratchett actually won the Carnegie with one novel, called The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents. Someone – probably a sub – compounded the italicising error by adding 'Two others' to the start of the sentence. And not checking on Amazon.(At the time ...

To float a balloon for something 2007-12-12 11:00:00 Has anyone come across the expression 'to float a balloon for' something? It appeared in some copy recently and was a new one on me.Judging by the context, it seems to mean something similar to 'to fly a kite for' something, ie express support (not to be confused with 'go fly a kite', a euphemism for 'go away'). But 'fly a kite for' isn't an expression I would personally use either, and I don't think it is that common.Googling just gets lots of pages about literal balloons and kites, rather than metaphorical ones. And there's nothing relevant in my Concise OED or limited reference library – time to invest in some new books perhaps? ...

It's not a flange, it's a congress! 2007-12-11 13:35:00 Spotted (not by me, I confess) in an Amazon book review:In this marvelous book Smuts draws from years of painstaking field research in which she followed around a flange of chacma baboons in the Mateti Game Park in Zimbabwe. Her findings inspired the plot of When Harry Met Sally.Fair enough, and if the film link's true a nice bit of trivia. But here's another bit of trivia: the collective noun for baboons is a congress. A flange of baboons was invented by scriptwriters on the seminal British TV comedy show Not The Nine O'Clock News for a classic sketch, 'Gerald the Gorilla' (yes, really). A fine case of fiction trying to become fact?Gerald would have approved.PSIsn't the net wondrous – I googled Not The Nine o'Clock News and found a youtube video on the Gerald sketch. Enjoy!http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MpbMm0433I ...

A brief cry of anguish: cost-negative 2007-12-11 05:15:00 JD just called me over to share a chortle at a suit's quote: "This policy will be cost-negative." It's a direct quote so he (and I) left well alone. But I had a brief fantasy of beaming in to grab the source of the quote by the ears to ask him: "WHY DIDN'T YOU JUST SAY 'THIS POLICY WILL SAVE MONEY', YOU POMPOUS TWIT?"I feel better now. ...