From Mark T.

Just a few quick items from today's WDH that caught my attention and could provide reminders or lessons:

* Engulfed means to "swallow up, overwhelm," according to Webster's. Fully engulfed also means to "swallow up, overwhelm." When you see that phrase, as in the first sentence of the Rothschild fire story on the front page, get rid of "fully." It's a redundant word.

* "On the home's driveway," in the same front-page story, looked wrong to me. Does anyone else think it should have been "in the home's driveway"?

* Just how big are state officials? That's what I wondered after I read this sentence on the front page: "Despite their size, state officials aren't taking beetles lightly. " Strunk and White would have issued this reminder from "The Elements of Style": "A participial phrase at the beginning of a sentence must refer to the grammatical subject."

To make "beetles" the grammatical subject of this sentence, it should have been written this way: "Despite their size, the beetles are not being taken lightly by state officials." But even better: "State officials are taking the invasion seriously despite the beetles' size."

Spam, spam, spam, wonderful spam

I despise spam e-mails. I am of the opinion that the only proper response to spam is extreme prejudice: black ops teams, private unlicensed white vans, wiretaps, and secret prisons in Eastern European countries. I would like to see spam e-mailing get the same level of federal attention as the War on Drugs. The War on Spam: now that's something we can all get behind. I'd like to see whoever writes spamming programs forced to live in the deepest corners of the wilderness to avoid law enforcement attention, and I would like to see police shows where cops haul spammers out of their homes in handcuffs and "accidentally" use a little excessive force.

That said, I think some of the spam e-mails I get are pretty funny.

I tend to avoid most of the spam e-mails that seem to circulate around the office, and I suspect that's because my e-mail address is not printed in the newspaper. (Score one for anonymity.) Comparing notes with Charlie, he gets far more spam e-mails than I do, and he also gets signed up for politically motivated newsletters and some such that he never asked for. (I get plenty of phishing spam at home, though; I got one letter sent to me so many times I started to wonder if that old European lady really did need my help getting her fortune to America.)

Me, I tend to get spam about twice a week (please don't take this as an invitation to forward all of your spam to me), and it's usually the same thing: phony news alerts. I don't know about you, but I find them pretty hilarious because they're so out there. Gay rights terrorist kills 8 in bombing. James Bond to have gay lover in next film. George Bush unveils Iran invasion plan. Barack Obama picks Oprah Winfrey for vice president. All of these are actual e-mails I have received, and I'm a bit tickled how hard they try to get me to follow their links. They play on fears — homosexuality (gay terrorists!), war (George Bush is pushing us into another war!) or race (black celebrities are taking over the government!) — but they're so far-fetched that I can only sit back and laugh instead of getting annoyed.

So, spam is a horrible abomination unto all that lives (and a serious problem when working in a company where communication is essential), but does anybody have any good/funny spam stories?

A couple of reminders

For everyone that designs or corrects pages, please remember to tear off and staple to the front the quality control checklist on each page, every day.

For everyone that posts content to the Web, the three spots in the carousel each night should be made up of:

1. The top local story that has art
2. The top sports story that has art (if this story isn't local, it should be replaced by another story from any section by mid-afternoon)
3. The top features story that has art (if this story isn't local, it should be replaced by another story from any section by mid-afternoon)

Some budgets include specific carousel requests, so please take note of these requests when sending content.

Thanks,

— Brian O.

It was as though a million Wisconsinites cried out in terror... and were suddenly silenced.

Big props to Elizabeth Waggoner, Tim Langton, and Mark Multer for all of their hard work last night.  Our staffing situation wasn't ideal to begin with, and then the news came through the grapevine at about quarter to 11 that Favre was going to the Jets.  Quickly, every editor was contacted and plans were made to tear up our front pages and put Favre up there front and center.  Pages were redesigned and reproofed, and though Favre threw off the rest of the night — I myself didn't go home until 2 a.m. — we did a good job of getting things done when breaking news happens.  Good job!

What a diva

What looks kind of like an ad but contains editable content?

If you guessed the Shopping Diva feature, see me to claim your prize. (It's a coupon for a free 12 oz. Frosty, but I have only one, so act quickly.)

It seems the Diva confused her downtown Wausau icons this week. She was a little shaky on one minor difference between the name of David Jahnke (the late owner of St. Clair's Menswear) and the name of Janke Book Store. While checking PDFs, I was happy to be able to set her straight.

What I'm trying to say is that although the content is generated outside of the newsroom (I think), it is my understanding that the person who writes the copy wants us to proofread the text.

So whenever the Diva makes an appearance on a proof, please be sure to give her your full attention.

~ Elizabeth

Voodoo copy editing

A word that I had to look up today was "trickledown," to see if it was one word or two as an adjective (it's one). It seems like an apt word for what I need to talk about, because right now, I need to be strict.

It is very easy to make mistakes on the job, and nobody sees it more than the copy desk. Heck, it's our job to track down every typo and factual error and correct them. And all things considered, I think we do a good job of that.

But beyond typos and factual errors and so on and so forth, we also see a whole lot of other errors that we shouldn't have to see. In the past month or so, I've seen a masterlink not get made (and then we have to call somebody in on the weekend to make it, and costs us two hours of time we could've been paginating). I've seen run sheets not get made (and then we have to look on from other page sheets, which takes a whole lot more time, especially if things get moved around). I've seen pages get the wrong number in InDesign (and then late at night we wonder where that page is when we're checking PDFs and have to search the system). I've seen pages get misassigned as things they aren't; we don't have an editorial page on Sundays, because we have a Community Conversation section (and then we realize we have a completely open page we have to fill at deadline time). Those last two were in the span of two days.

These things trickle down to the copy desk and add to our overtime because we end up having to find the problem and fix it. And these things add an extra something to stress out about when we should be focusing on making pages and proofing pages. Especially when it's close to deadline, because nine times out of ten when these mistakes get noticed, it's close to deadline. And I'll be honest: these mistakes that trickle down to the copy desk put me, personally, in a bad, bad mood.

I have no problem owning up to my own mistakes. Heaven knows I make enough of them. But I do have a problem with paying for other people's.

So please. Be careful in your job. Check your work. Make sure it is done correctly the first time, because it might just trickle down.

Benton...

Alleged incriminator

It seems to be a common mistake to call a person who has been accused of a crime an alleged criminal. At times in headlines, we have called a certain Saratoga man an "alleged abductor." We also have been tempted to call him a "suspected abductor." Even with either modifier, we are still calling him an abductor. Because he is innocent until proven guilty, however, we should probably refer to him as an "abduction suspect" instead.

It may seem to be a subtle difference, but the AP Stylebook's "accused" entry says: "To avoid any suggestion that an individual is being judged before a trial, do not use a phrase such as 'accused slayer John Jones'; use 'John Jones, accused of the slaying.'" (And the "alleged" entry directs readers to see guidelines on the word "accused.")

For the sake of a headline, which would not have as much room as the AP example, we could probably refer to Jones as a "slaying suspect."

Does that make sense? Are there other simple ways to avoid calling someone an alleged criminal?

~ Elizabeth