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 really friendly for a few days, but we got over it. Probably 15 years later, we're in different states, but we exchange regular emails. 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.
Contact: Email me at tgilli52@gmail.com or nc3022@yahoo.com. Also, my Twitter handle is EDITORatWORK.
More EDITOR@WORK blog entries
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(the book of great NASCAR stories)
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