Abstract
John McIntyre has worked as an editor for more than thirty years. He served as the president of the American Copy Editors Society. And he has a few things to say that current (and future) editors should listen to.
His thoughts, some funny, some random, all worth reading, are part of his book, a book he touts as “a crusty old editor’s brisk maxims about the craft.”
While he could have gone into more detail about what he keeps in his desk—Tums, not rum—and could have given more life lessons, McIntyre keeps the focus where it needs to be, on the reader. “The reader doesn’t actually care much about you at all (and if you’re an editor, even less). The reader only cares about the result.” And he extends that with advice for reporters about the fundamentals of what constitutes a story. “If your article isn’t about why something happened or is important, and it doesn’t have at least three sources, it’s probably not a story.”
Sage advice for anyone working in any form of mass communication. This is not a book of “Life’s Little Lessons.” That has been done. It is a concrete advice for editors working in television production, online media, magazine editing, or newspapers. It is worth reading for folks in public relations or even sports information.
His advice, in no particular order, continues from thoughts on ethics in the profession (“You should have learned ethics by the second grade: Don’t copy. Don’t tell lies.”) to advice on the daily grind (“Editing is a daylight, cold-sober function. You have to have all your wits about you. That’s why you resort to caffeine.”)
And for the older curmudgeons, those people still using typewriters or the 1980s version of Microsoft Word, in reading the book, he also has an advice. “People resistant to technological change—those people who are still typing two spaces after a period at the end of a sentence—tend to fight with the machinery more than they make use of it. Master your tools.”
With experience at three newspapers, and experience “conducting séances on editing,” he acknowledges that the profession has changed, is changing, and will continue to change. Reporters and copy editors need to be conscious of design and aesthetic concerns while fighting for clarity and accuracy. Reporters can publish long stories online, stories that would almost never make it into print as the size of the paper and the page count keep shrinking. Still, he says, “It’s far from clear that online readers are more indulgent about expanses of self-indulgent slack prose than readers used to be. If I were you, I wouldn’t risk it.” And for the page designers, he offers advice: “When you have to trim an article to fit, take out the dumbest stuff first.”
While most of his advice is strict and to-the-point, McIntyre proves he is not without a sense of humor.
He advises that reporters be aware of their deadlines. (He has clearly worked with more than a few reporters who were not.) “A writer will take every minute allotted, and more.” All copy editors, designers, editors, and folks in pre-press and press operations can appreciate that.
In a shout-out to the LOL (laugh out loud) generation, he reminds people to read their own publication, RTFP (read the fucking post), and to proof anything in large type—twice, three times. “Anything in seventy-two-point Bodoni bold will look true.”
But perhaps McIntyre’s best advice is for those nearly burned-out copy editors sitting behind a desk merely marking paragraph indents; or for the nineteen-year-old interns looking for jobs. “If you don’t have enough pride in yourself, your craft, and your publication to do the job right, then you’re just taking up space. Consider career alternatives.”
It is definitely a sound advice.