Copy editing may be mission impossible, but it’s worth it
By Daily Bruin Staff
June 9, 2002 9:00 p.m.
Stacy Dodd Dodd served as 2001-2002 Copy chief.
Â
When I came to The Bruin three years ago, I saw my 30 column as
this far-off symbol of my journalistic coming-of-age. Now that
I’m finally writing it, I feel old. Things change in three
years. I thought I’d write something deep and meaningful,
drawing on my vast experience and insight into The Human
Experience. That, however, may have been the AP English talking; I
know now that 30 columns are, at heart, self-indulgent.
That’s OK, too, because you can only learn so much from a
group of people whose blood alcohol content at any given moment may
be higher than their GPA. Somewhere along the line, I learned a
lot. I changed. At my high school newspaper, I was a crusader for
student rights ““ everything from friendlier librarians to
standardized testing. Now, after three years, I cringe when I read
words like “empower,” and when “dialogue”
is used as a verb. Doesn’t student government ever just talk?
That’s one of the few things that bugged me about copy
editing ““ besides all the e-mail messages requesting back
issues of the paper. Do people think “copy chief” means
I run the Xerox machine? But like many readers, I get sick of
reading the same old thing. Why does every musician “blur the
lines between genres”? Why does everyone and their mom have a
foolproof solution to the Mideast crisis? Why does every team have
at least one athlete who “bounced back” from some dire
injury “when most players would have quit”? Why
can’t our basketball team get past the Sweet 16? OK, so maybe
that’s not the writer’s fault… I came here thinking
I’d start in copy and make my way into writing. Ha. I got
stuck. Actually, I got hooked. Copy editing is like a mission for
me. I can’t stand errors, period, anywhere, so I feel this
deep, almost instinctual need to correct them. Yeah, I’m a
geek. Copy editors only get noticed when they mess up. They
don’t give us awards. But that doesn’t mean we
don’t like our jobs. I’ll miss this job a lot, and
while there are things I wish I’d done differently, I
don’t want to leave with regrets. I’ve taken a lot from
this place that I value ““ even if it’s not exactly what
I expected.
