BYOC!
One of the many “exciting traditions” at my workplace is that every month we have a birthday party for all people with birthdays that month. Everybody takes turns being “in charge,” meaning bringing tasty treats. This month I’m “in charge” (brownies and ice cream—rarely fails to please) and I sent around cards for people to sign. Another “exciting tradition” here in the editing department, BTW, is that people “hide” their names on the card (with the idea that good editors will be able to find them). All in good fun.
Anyway, so this month we’re having a combined birthday/goodbye party, because one of the proofreaders is leaving. So I sent around the cards, including a note telling people about the party. I got the cards back this morning, along with the note, and realized that in my haste to send the cards around I had typed “combing party” instead of “combined party.” Usually I’m fanatically careful about stuff like that. It’s a side effect of working in editing—other side effects include checking and re-checking the punctuation and spelling on my blog posts, as well as finding it irresistible to edit other people’s Christmas cards and my copy of the ward newsletter (neither of which anyone else will ever see anyway, yet still I'm compelled). And I got into a silly argument with Matt a few weeks ago about why it was vital for him to use uniform indenting and not spell “tariff” with two Rs in his law school notes, even though he wasn’t turning them in. (Didn’t win that argument.)
Something like “combing” for “combined” is pretty much the death of you when you work with editors. And I haven’t experienced such a death yet, because I’m so obsessively careful. Fortunately I didn’t get any razzing, just a little red-penned “BYOC!” next to “combing party.”
It took me a second but then I seriously laughed for about 10 minutes. (Hilarity over the ridiculous: another side effect of working in editing. I think it also has something to do with being my parents' daughter. Anyone who knows my parents knows what I'm talking about.)
3 comments:
That's funny. I edit everything all the time. You may not believe this due to errors on my blog, but most of the time I just get impatient with it and want to get my post up.
But I hate obnoxious, rude editors. For example, right now construction is going on in our lobby and there have been signs posted in the elevators with grammatical errors on them. People have crossed out and corrected them and it drives me nuts! How rude!
"Combing" for "combined" is a perfect example of what my students do on a regular basis. I have often thought that if we started collecting and cataloging such errors, we might start finding a very interesting pattern - and who knows, since language is fluid, maybe we'd find the language of the future!! It's a thought!
Also, it is healthy to laugh hilariously - that's why none of us have high blood pressure!!
Ridicularity over the hilaritous. Tarrific.
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