Writing Boots

A communicator colleague sends me a retiree notice from a plywood plant:

“John Grayhair said his farewell to feeding dryers on March 17th  after 44 years of service. He was sent off with a retirement party that included a steak dinner with family and crew, with lots of celebration including taking his family on a grand tour of the plant. John plans on sitting in front of his new big screen.”

I suppose I should be worried about the little voice in my head: "God that sounds pretty good right about now."

Last week the Chicago Tribune told employees it was eliminating 20% of the newsroom staff. A story on the move reports the Trib last month "mixed copy editing, page design, graphics, imaging and
some photo editing into a single department, creating new job
descriptions that will combine copy editing with graphics and photo
editing with design."

Let's play that back: Copyediting with graphics … and photo editing with design.

I suppose I can imagine one person being good at photo editing and design. But … copyediting with graphics? (I once wrote on the birthday card of a graphic designer, "It doesn't matter what I write here because you never read the copy anyway." Did that make her mad? No, because she never read it.)

To a combination football player/editorial hand like me, that's like combining "place kicker and offensive tackle."

Well, wait a minute. Maybe we're going back to a time before super-specialization, when everybody had to know a little about everything. And maybe, in the long run, that's not all bad.

Sent to me by Boots reader Kasia Chalko, this goes with both barrels after E.B. White and William Strunk and their Elements of Style.

I think they've had it coming for awhile for selling so many copies of such a smug book. But the only people who can defend it are professional writers who have found it helpful.*

Have you?

* My writing teachers were my father, my college professor Jack Null, Larry Ragan, Alden Wood, Mike O'Malley and Digby Whitman. Drinking from those firehoses, I never got around to reading Elements. But I have long used a line from Elements to force me to reread my stuff for clarity: "When you say something, make sure you have said it. The chances of your having said it are only fair."