Copy Editor’s Revenge Takes Form Of Unhyphenated Word

Bruce Huntoon, a copy editor at Pilot magazine, intentionally did not correct the copy of columnist Justin Mann Monday. ”I am tired of that insufferable asshole’s mean-spirited jokes,” Huntoon said…

Looks like The Onion could use its own copy editor.  ”Justin Mann Monday,” that’s an unusual name.

I like my job, but it’s kind of feeding on some of my more troubling personality traits, specifically, my constant compulsion for perfection.

Maybe it’s not really OCD; type A personality might be a better description.  But, whatever it is, it is getting harder and harder for me to accept errors in my products at work.  It killed me when we sent our international issue to the printer.

It was our first one ever, so it’s to be expected that it would be a little hinky the first time around, but man did I need to grit my teeth to let this one go.  So many things were wrong with it.  We didn’t have the format for international phone numbers standardized.  We had no standardization for foreign words, specifically for those languages that must be transliterated from another script to our alphabet.  I wasn’t even given enough time to check for obvious misspellings in names and locations.

It was apparently decided to leave all parentheses out of all phone numbers in that issue.  I wasn’t informed of this, only informed that we went with the clients’ standard on their websites, at least that was the story with place names.  At the very end of the process I was informed of the phone number decision.  Shoddy, very shoddy.  Part of it was my fault for not being proactive, but the lack of the communication added to my perfectionist stresses.

I think of it as such a horrible sign of ignorance not to go with the most accepted standards for writing out Chinese, Japanese, and Arabic words.  It harkens back to flat out renaming locations in foreign places:  the Yellow River, Ceylon.  Our publication was all over the place with location names:  Chang An, Chang-an, Changan.  The correct form?  Chang’an.

Then, the obvious misspellings.  I did my best to scan for inconsistencies over the whole publication (and caught a few) and for misspellings in languages I’m familiar with (English, Spanish, and French), but I simply didn’t have enough time.

Oh well, maybe next issue I’ll get it perfect.

My first name has been misspelled my whole life.  The most perplexing misspelling is the one above.  I have never, ever seen my name spelled that way, except when people misspell it.  I’ve seen Erykah (as in Erykah Badu), Erycka (ugh), Aricka (double ugh), but never Ericka.  So why do people misspell my name this way?  Are they trying to hedge their bets?  ”Well, I don’t know if it’s “Erica” or “Erika”, so instead of asking her, how ’bout I just put both a “c” and a “k” in her name.  That’s the ticket.”

Argh!!!

The worst are those people to whom I say, “Erika, with a k”, and they interpret that to mean with both a “c” and a “k”.  I feel like I have to live my life troubleshooting the weird interpretations people make.  What if I told them by last name is “Olsen” with an e?  Would they spell it “Oleson”?  Actually, I think that did happen to me once.

The most frustrating thing is when I fill out a form or give someone my driver’s license AND THEY STILL SPELL MY NAME WRONG.  They don’t spell my annoyingly difficult hyphenated last name wrong, oh no; that almost never happens.  Instead they almost always spell my not-particularly-unusual first name wrong.  This happened when I gave a guy my driver’s license when I signed up for a new cell phone.  I’ve also worked with people who see my name in print every week and still manage to think my name is “Erica”.

As a copyeditor this mystifies me.  People can look at my name and still see it spelled with a “c” or “ck”.  I suspect that, if I had a really unusual name or a really unusual spelling of my name, it would almost never be misspelled, and I’ve noticed this with the first part of my hyphenated last name:  Skornia.  If anything should be misspelled, it’s that, but it almost never is.  Usually, if it’s misspelled, it’s merely because I didn’t write it out clearly enough and the “r” and “n” seemed to merge together into “m”:  Skomia.  That’s understandable.  When I’ve worked with someone for four years, and they’re still spelling my name “Ericka”, that is not understandable.

But what am I complaining about?  People like this ensure my continued livelihood.

Despite the fact that I’ve been schooled on the difference between “nauseous” and “nauseated”, I still use “nauseous” incorrectly.

I am not, nor have I ever been, nauseous.  That is, I’ve never been in a position to make someone in my presence physically ill (as far as I know).

nauseous adj (1612) 1 : causing nausea or disgust : NAUSEATING

nauseate vb -ated; -ating vi (1625) 1 : to become affected with nausea

God, how I hate that word, also:  exploitative.

Can someone preventate?  What about exploitate?  No!  Unfortunately, “preventative” has been around since 1666 — and found its provenance only 27 years after “preventive” according to my dictionary.

“Exploitative” is even worse.  It came about first!  1885 vs. 1921 for “exploitive.”  Heaven grant me patience.

I say we should infuse English with a little common sense for a change and banish most of those “ative” words.

“Commentator” can stay.  ”Commenter” doesn’t quite capture the essence of what a “commentator” does.  Fake word for a fake occupation, works for me.