Parents: you might call us grinches for this, but when your
kids win prizes at high school, we subeditors do not
celebrate with you. Go on, call us grinches. We already have
a reputation for being sour and dour and draconic; what do we
care?
Probably, the typists at Otago schools who must hammer the
annual prize lists into electronic existence and then send
them to the newspaper do not celebrate, either. But I cannot
speak for them.
I can only speak for the wretched subs who, every November
and December, must face the unenviable task of editing
screeds of names and prizes. Miriama Anonym, excellence
fabric technology, geography, merit alternative English;
Jingfei Bloggs, excellence chemistry, merit physics, life
skills; Charidie Notaname, diligence forward thinking.
Life skills, alternative English and forward thinking are
relatively new subjects to appear in schools. I hope life
skills teaches how to boil water and make toast, maybe change
a fuse. Some people come from homes where those things are
not taught.
I am curious to know what alternative English teaches, and I
hope the teaching of forward thinking will lead ultimately to
the demise of market capitalism.
But no matter whether the children have excelled in
traditionally fangled or newfangled subjects, subeditors do
not applaud them. No. We grinch at them, and their
accomplishments.
At this time of year, the "find and replace" function on a
sub's computer is regarded as favourably as if it were
bulging in Lycra and could fly. Sexy find and replace. Heroic
find and replace. Find and replace rescues us from manually
making the same changes hundreds of times.
Some schools, for example, have ambitions for all subject
names to begin with capital letters. Jingfei Bloggs,
excellence Chemistry, merit Physics, Life Skills.
The ODT, however, regards capital letters at the start of
common nouns as unseemly, so the subeditors must find all the
Chemistries and Life Skillses and cast down their initials.
O, merciful find and replace!
This function can be dangerous, though. Many of these
documents could rival a Saudi rich-list for length, so we try
to condense them where possible. Find and replace is used to
remove various words that go without saying.
One year, a subeditor used find and replace to remove
all the "ins" from a prize list (excellence in chemistry,
merit in life skills) but he forgot to put spaces before and
after the word "in". The dutiful computer found and removed
all instances of "in", without exception.
Nina became Na, Tina became Ta, Mina became Ma. Hine became
He, Benjamin became Benjam, and Jingfei became Jgfei. The
poor subeditor had to start over, once he realised his
mistake.
Running the spellchecker through the prize lists is
considered necessary to pick up any misspellings not already
spotted by the subeditor, but it can be hazardous when so
many names are present.
Spellchecker may recognise Benjamin, but it does not
recognise Charidie or Jingfei. Accidentally accepting its
suggestions for those names would produce, "Jingle Bloggs,
excellence chemistry, merit physics, life skills; Charade
Notaname, diligence forward thinking." Jingle Bloggs, Jingle
Bloggs, Jingle all the way . . .
So many names, so many prizes. Perhaps the main reason they
sour us is they make for tedious reading. A perk of our work
is that the bulk of what we edit happens to inform and/or
entertain us at the same time. Prize lists fall outside that
bulk. They reduce our job from one of joyfully applying
linguistic skills to one of grumpily running algorithms.
Still, we are assured names are news. You like to see the
names of your children and their mates in print, and that is
good. Just please spare a thought, this Christmas, for the
grinches at the ODT.
