Proofreading

As a professional editor, I get paid to find typos. I hate it when I look at something a million times, bless it as perfect and then send it to the presses, only to have a blatant misspelling jump off the page at me when I happen to casually glance at the final printed product. That happened to me on Monday.

We were trying to finish the job before the end of the first shift, so that the customer could pick it up on his way out the door in the afternoon. The Repro crew printed it off quickly and cranked out the accompanying CDs with admirable speed. But when they handed me the final printed copy -- there it was: a glaring error that I should've caught several days before. Ugh.

There are errors that might slightly diminish the appearance of the page, or might make the reader wonder about your particular punctuation choices -- but don't really damage the final product. And then there are the typos that make the company look like a bunch of slack-jawed drooling morons -- and this was one of those. It had to be fixed.

Unfortunately, I discovered my error during shift change...so we had to bring a new group of Repro operators on board, and introduce them to the job. That's not a big deal...it just takes a little time. But the larger problem was that we had used up all the business-card CDs, and had no media to burn the corrected versions onto. That sort of thing could be a show stopper.

Well, OK, not really...we could always run down to Office Depot and pick up some other disks, but that would be entirely inconvenient. The other option: get on the phone and beg. That's what I did.

Fortunately, I scored pay dirt on my first call. There were extra CDs in one of the local supply rooms, and I promptly ran over to retrieve them. The favor will be called in at some point down the road, but that's only fair. The main thing is that we got the new disks. New labels were printed, and the job could continue. After a few extra hours in a general "running around in circles" panic, our group effort would finally erase my proofreading mistake.

What's the point of this story? Well, there isn't one, really. I suppose it was just a chance to show you that the life of a corporate editor isn't all lying around eating cheese and having enormous eunuchs fan us with palm fronds. You may think that we spend our days in plush comfort, entertaining visits from adoring rock stars and toadying politicians, using our editorial influence to create fluctuations in the stock market and influence international policy -- but sometimes it really is just about finding the right kind of paper, making sure there are enough labels for the CDs, and trying to keep the moronic typos from ever hitting the streets in 14-point Arial.

And the other point of the story is that I spend my entire workday reading and re-reading stuff to ensure typographical perfection...so I'm hoping you'll cut me some slack when I mess up within this blog. A person can only proofread so much material before some sort of error is going to sneak through. I'm asking your ongoing forgiveness for the various mistakes I've made (and will continue to make) within this column. (I don't expect forgiveness for the lame content, though. That's intentional...It's my "style".)

As for stories about the cushy side of editing life (eg, the parties on celebrity yachts, the private screenings of blockbuster movies, the hordes of groupies who follow us around with shoe-shine cloths and caviar trays, etc.), they'll have to wait. In the meantime, you're welcome to try to visualize just how sweet and rewarding it is to be an editor, and to know that you hold such a position of high envy among the business world. Use your imagination, and have a great day!