Necrophilia-inducing typos and other editing links: A roundup

Yeah, that headline had better bring results, or I’m going to be upset.

Anyways, what’s happening in the world of copy editing, editing and journalism at large:

• Word Grrls notes how one missing letter on a book-seller’s site goes from the sassy, if cliche, “Dead Sexy” to the disturbingly niche “Dead Sex.” Unless that means sex by dead people, in which case perhaps it’s a vampire book? Anyways — the page is still up as of this post publishing: http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/Dead-Sex-Tate-Hallaway/9780425215081-item.html
• A wonderful Q-and-A from The Editor’s Desk that starts as a textbook plug but turns into an insightful — and hopeful — conversation about the evolution of copy editing in the digital realm, something that’s been a chief concern of mine for quite a while. The takeaway:
  

  Copy editing text — fixing spelling and grammar and fact-checking — is one piece of that role. But it’s also about quality assurance generally — do the links work, is the video too dark, is the audio too hot, do the captions in the photo gallery work in a linear or non-linear fashion, is the JavaScript properly loading the interactive graphic, do the state abbreviations in the database match AP style …

• To follow up on that, the balance of print versus online strains most staffs, and does so even more once you realize that print and online readers often want different things. The Columbia Missourian has the luxury of an army of student journalists, and here’s a description of its attempt at “creating a new copy editor” — pardon the unnecessary “new,” please 🙂
   
• Being a photojournalist or a newspaper reporter is apparently pretty terrible work. In fact, being a maid or a garbage collector, to pretty much span the gender spectrum of subservient work, rank higher in a Wall Street Journal list. View some other stellar, higher-ranking professions over at Charles Apple’s online digs.

• A quick take on the challenges the New York Times faces in the 24-hour news cycle, the Web vs. print differences in content, and the mistakes and decisions those problems lead to. All based off the latest NYT public editor column.