29.5.08

An occupational hazard of being an editor

This week on Facebook, I announced that I was geeky enough to have read The Economist Style Guide, prompting two friends to step forward and say that they, too, had done it. Along with Suzie, who recommended the book in the first place, that makes three people I know who've read it.

What impresses me is that the other two not professional editors. And they're guys --- almost everyone I know who loves quibbling over the placement of a comma or the capitalisation of a word is, like me, female. Make of that what you will.

Speaking of The Economist Style Guide, I was reading it on the bus and an older gentleman (probably in his 60s) sitting beside me keep glancing over my shoulder at the pages. Eventually he asked me what the book was. I showed it to him and he nodded approvingly, then asked where he could buy it.

Even geekier than reading the Style Guide, I realise, is triumphantly spotting typos in it.

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4 Comments:

At 5/29/2008 2:29 PM , Anonymous wurh said...

Haha, that last line is brilliant.

 
At 5/29/2008 2:55 PM , Blogger Brandon said...

or the belief that finding typos is a form of triumph.

 
At 5/30/2008 3:06 AM , Blogger Elia Diodati said...

Have you seen the BBC style guide (pdf)? It's actually pretty fun to read. If nothing else, I finally learnt the distinction between the territories of the UK vs. those of Great Britain.

 
At 5/30/2008 10:28 AM , Blogger Tym said...

elia diodati > I hadn't seen the PDF version of the BBC guide, no. Just downloaded it now. Now if only I could figure out a way to somehow search all my style guides at once, whether they're in book form or PDF ...

 

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