Friday, September 4, 2009

Quotes, jump lines and other stuff

Editing a quotation: Normally, I don't mind adding information to a direct quotation. "It was a great year for (head coach) Joe Schmoe," said John Doe, Schmoe's assistant.

But I found this quote on Thursday: "He’s in [Executive Vice President of Football Operations] Bill Parcells’ office every day, changing player names who are waived, signed, or what have you," Leo Howe said. “He didn’t want to coach, he wanted to be in the front office."


That is too much. I might take out the bracketed part and change the attribution to ," Leo Howe said of the Miami Dolphins' executive vice president of football operations. And that last sentence might be better as "He didn't want to coach; he wanted to be in the front office."


Jump lines: I find jump lines interesting. In 1983, I interviewed a guy named Charles Seay, and his last name was pronounced See. Our jump-line style for his story made it SEE SEAY, Page 2-C. Sounded redundant.


Web site: Check out Word Reference. It looks like it'll be a useful site.



EMAIL: tgilli52@gmail.com  TWITTER: EDITORatWORK.

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