The other names were wrong, too

Years ago, I was working with one of the best newspaper writers I've ever seen. He wrote quickly and clearly, and people loved his stuff.

His lone weakness, I thought, was that he didn't back-read his stuff enough.

One night, I was in charge of putting out the sports section and he wrote a column about golf. There were four names in the column, and this was pre-Internet. Without a golf media guide, it was hard to spellcheck names. In fact, the not-so-great computers of that era didn't even have spellcheck. (At least we HAD computers.)

I immediately noticed that two of the names were spelled wrong and fixed them. The next day, I never got credit for fixing the two names. I just got hollered at over the other two names being misspelled.

The moral of the story? There was no way to get my co-worker to back-read his stories and fix mistakes (such as misspellings). So I made a list in the computer of sports names, and I checked and double-checked every name that came through my hands.

I didn't want that to happen again.

Note: If you're wondering, it wasn't a really long list; it might have been maybe a dozen names, total, in all sports. When spellcheck came along, I didn't need the list; I just added the correct spellings to my spellcheck.

Note: The Internet came along two or three years after the above story. Sigh.

EMAIL: tgilli52@gmail.com  TWITTER: EDITORatWORK.

More EDITOR@WORK blog entries

• You really DO need an editor

• Reminders for would-be novelists

• What I do when I'm editing

• What I charge (it's a deal) and what I edit

• Slogging through the Internet

• J-school: More eyes on your stories

• J-school: Go out and learn

• Rookie mistakes for magazine writers

Entries from The Dog Blog

• Katie cried

• Growl and pull

• 13-plus years with my dog Lady

• ... said the spider to ...

• The Dog Diary (2014)

• YIP! YIP! The stereo-sound huskies

• What Lady and Michael Jackson had in common

Blog entries from The Auto Racing Journal

• Angel in Black: Remembering Dale Earnhardt Sr.

(a book of great stories about the Intimidator)

• Then Junior Said to Jeff...

(the book of great NASCAR stories)

• My best day as a sports writer

• Jeff Gordon's milk toast to Dale Earnhardt

• Wayne Auton: A life in racing

More blog entries by Tom Gillispie

• Resume for a writer and editor

• An editor's views on powerful writing

• Advice for be and would-be novelists

• Links to TG's stories online

• Favorite quotes

• What I do when I'm editing

Anecdotes by Tom Gillispie

• Good Samaritan

• The PRESS cap and my friend Mike

• Watching TV

• No luck with Billy Sims

• Wipeout at Death Valley

• Days with rainbows

• A desperate writer working in the dark

• Yer outta there!