THE RECIPE reads: ‘Try
these elegant omelettes filled
with shit-”? ... and the next
line begins with ‘‘ake
mushrooms.’’ With bold
strokes of a red pen, an
unfortunate word break is
averted and the newspaper’s
reputation as a . family-
oriented publication is sav-
ed.

‘By Tina Gilbertson —
Contributing Writer.

Saved by the proofreader. Who
else?

Oh, sure, we proofers get
blamed for everybody's poor
grammar .and the occasional
_ misplaced headline that slips by
. our, otherwise assiduous eyes, but
nobody knows how many near-
disasters are derailed daily with
the might of a pen.

_ Sometimes I think -we should get
paid not by-the hour, but by the
number of mistakes we head off
at the pass,

. However, there are just as many
embarrassments that are more or
less .irremediable by the time they

, reach the paste-up stage. |

The North Shere News editorial
proofreaders are- responsible for
Yeading all copy that appears in
the. paper with the exception of

; advertisements and classifieds.

«Those departments have their
own scapegoats.

: For those of you who. paid for

the course, here’s the poop.

When a press release is sent to
the paper, it is ‘marked up’’ by a
proofreader for the benefit of our
typesetters (we suggest paragraph
breaks and clean up spelling and
grammar, making it compatible
with the newspaper's ‘‘style,’’ or
writers’ guidelines).

The ‘‘copy,’? as the written
word is known in The Biz, is
entered into our computer files
and another proofreader reads it
on the screen.

Reporters’ copy skips the
mark-up stage, and sometimes the
first proofing, as reporters type in
their stories on to the computers
themselves.

From. the computer, copy gets
spit out in tangible form on long
strips of paper, and is pasted onto
life-size pieces of paper called
“‘flats."”

It is then read yet again, or in
the case of hot news stories, for
the first time, by a member of our
noble profession.

The flats are then scent to a
Printer to be copied onto
newsprint.

So that’s roughly how it works.

Now, with all that attention,
how can huge bloopers ever see
the light of day?

Let’s look at headlines that have
nothing to do with copy. For ex-
ample, the headline reads, ‘‘Boy
loses ball under bush,’’ and the
story reads, ‘‘An 80-year-old
woman lifted a half-ton truck
yesterday in an effort to rescue
her poodle..."

‘ How can we Tniss Something like

WE DO WINDOWS wee
_ for your style of living

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NEWS photo Terry Pators
THE comics fail to amuse Tina Gilbertson as she scans a ‘flat’ from the back section of a recent

Friday issue. The marks she makes are instructions to the production department, who wit then
doctor the pages until they are acceptable — provided there is time.

errors . grin- brazenly up at you
from your doorstep the next day.
Misplaced modifiers are insidi-

kind of thinking. Get it?
Neither does my editor. ;
Anyway, some of the gaffes are

this? Simple.
We read the headline. It’s OK.
We read the story. It’s OK.

They’re both fine grammatically,
but we forgot to check for a rela-
tionship. ‘Because it’s a different

30 days has Septe

perfectly grammatical, and since it .

is a complicated process to make
large changes to the flats, these

ous. Ina recent issue, for exam-. |
ple, a woman was talking about.

See Some page 36

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