Friday, November 23, 2007

Resolutions

OK, here's the deal. If Xpesmas carols can flood the airwaves and the local blatt (along with its counterparts throughout the land) can sprinkle exclamation points all over the yearly demands to head for the mall today, I get to propose some New Year's resolutions a few weeks in advance too. Try these for starters:

1) No more "things I'm thankful for" columns. Especially the ones that complain about how hard it is to write a "things I'm thankful for" column:
There's a reason columnists make a list of things to be grateful for on Thanksgiving. It's not because it's easy to do.
(AHEM) Yes it is.
In fact, it would be much easier to concoct a rundown of gripes, things we want or wish we had: more time, fewer gray hairs, a bigger bank account.
Nah. If it really was easier, we'd see dozens of them every year.

2) No more cutlines that tell readers what they see:

Stop the press: You mean those people we see standing in line are ... standing in line? Note also the editing touches: using "wait" for "await" and booting style two ways on "5 a.m.," but nailing the double quotes on the "R" in Toys "R" Us. And we wonder why people think copy editors are a pain.

2 Comments:

Blogger The Ridger, FCD said...

"5:00 am" doesn't bother me too much, probably because I often write it just like that :-), but "wait the opening"? Argh.

3:31 PM, November 23, 2007  
Blogger fev said...

The time thing is one of those handy AP style markers that qualify as part of the Secret Handshake. The Trib makes a lot of exceptions to AP (some of them really, really weird), but that's one that even Tribsters follow religiously.

7:24 AM, November 24, 2007  

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