My goodness, two more posts about the sizzling practice of copy editing, this time via The Morning News. First, Lori Fradkin’s “What It’s Really Like to Be a Copy Editor”, followed up with Johnson’s (R.L.G.’s) reply. To which I can only add Charlie Baker’s lament:
CHARLIE: …That’s why she wanted me to go away, you see. She simply finds me shatteringly, profoundly—boring.
FROGGY: Now, why would she think that, eh?
CHARLIE: Oh, because I am. I know it. There I’ve sat behind my gray little proofreader’s desk for twenty-seven years, now—I sometimes wonder whether a science fiction magazine even needs a proofreader. Does anyone really care whether there is one K or two in “Klatu, barada, nikto”?
—Larry Shue, The Foreigner, I:i