Years ago, I wrote a story about a guy going into a sports hall of fame. Don't remember who it was or the HofF.
Anyway, I wrote that he'd gotten his just deserts, he'd gone into the HofF. Fine.
When I got back to the office, I found that the copy editors had turned just deserts into just desserts. Actually, just deserts is correct. I looked it up, made a copy of the dictionary page and left it in my friend's mail slot; he'd edited the story. The dictionary said that just deserts had the same root as deserves, so I knew I was right.
The next day, I found the same piece of paper in my mail slot, with a not-so-nice euphemism scrawled on it in big letters. We weren't friendly for a few days, but we got over it. Probably 30 (or more) years later, we're in different states, but we exchange regular emails or messages on Bluesky. In fact, I just sent him an email about a story on a man who coached his favorite NFL team, then coached my team.
But I did learn from the error. Never use just deserts in a story — unless some chef is being honored, and just desserts will have a double meaning — and never show your friend up with a dictionary.
><
EMAIL: tgilli52@gmail.com BLUESKY: PROFILE
MORE EDITOR@WORK BLOG ENTRIES
BLOG ENTRIES BY TOM GILLISPIE
ANECDOTES BY TOM GILLISPIE
ENTRIES FROM THE DOG BLOG
(a book of great stories about the Intimidator)
(the book of great NASCAR stories)
No comments:
Post a Comment