Sub-editors: how can I avoid killing them?

-- CharlieNo4 (starsandheroe...) (webmail), November 18th, 2005 4:19 PM. (Charlie) (link)

haha life takes some funny turns, dunnit?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jul/23/mediamonkey

lol at vanilla midget getting shook

"I have written 350 restaurant reviews for The Times and i have never ended on an unstressed syllable."

Oh the ironing.

To my mind if he only wrote that last graf in order to make a puerile Carry On joke that likely bypassed 75% of his readership, he's lucky it didn't get chopped off altogether.

This is a prime example of what I was talking about on the Mercury thread yesterday re. newspaper journalists being given ideas above their station. If I were the editor I'd send him packing. I don't care who his dad was or how many extra readers he gets with the Saturday edition. Or send him to Iraq for the next couple of years and get him to do some proper journalism.

Also, Why would you change a sentnece aso that it meant something i didn't mean?

Short people ain't got no reason to live

The fact that anybody would get so stunningly butthurt over a change to their sub-Two Ronnies song routine wordplay is quite frankly a damning indictment of the West.

You'd also think this rant would be more effective if shouted over a telephone. Written out, it's a bit green-inkish. Self-important primadonnas take note.

http://www.minorlooneytunes.com/pictures/finster003.jpg

Giles Coren, yesterday

He has no idea how stress works in English.

But A+ for use of swearing.

What. A. Twat.

would do his sister though.

I think he has a point.

FITE

lol journalism

I think he has a point.

Uot0eleven? Totally

^^^subs correct typo plz

weird: when i clicked on the link i thought, no! the guardian's got hold of that old e-mail coren sent years ago moaning about subbing and thinks it's new.

then i realised, no, it's coren doing it all over again.

listen, you jumped-up little cunt. when you actually have any idea about how to put a newspaper together -- to sweat and toil and draw and redraw and jump to the whims of editors and picture editors and feature editors; to prune and cut and fix and plaster and smooth over the myriad mistakes of soi-disant "writers" who can't tell a misrelated participle from a fucking libel risk -- *then*, and only then, i might fucking consider giving you one trial shift. until then, feel free to suck my root, and that of every other sub in the country, until it fucking bleeds.

also, get one sense of perspective, you little prick. (NB: same goes for me, but i'm not the fud making myself look like the king of the bell-ends in public, am i?)

I think he has a point

you know what? he almost certainly does. but it's the way he's going about it that makes me want to rip his head off.

i've worked with way more talented journalists than giles fucking coren, believe me. some of them have been utter cunts, too. but never -- not quite -- on that level.

Someone who subbed the most recent batch of writing I had printed seems to be under the impression that the first word after the second of two dashes within a sentence - such as this one - Starts with a capital letter.

This actually annoyed me more than the end of a reviews column I wrote mysteriously falling off the page, meaning it made no sense at all

xp
Yeah, it's bizarre because even he recognises he's gone waaaayyyyyy ott and yet still he kept on typing and then actually sent it in.

when i clicked on the link i thought, no! the guardian's got hold of that old e-mail coren sent years ago moaning about subbing and thinks it's new.

At least with that old email (if you mean the one I think you mean) he had more of a point - the subs had changed a quote from the book he was reviewing that was central to the book's plot.

But, like you say, it's how he goes about it.

Dude should come and work with me, two years of our subs and he'll just be grateful they spell his name right.

It strips me of all confidence in writing for the magazine.

;_;

"I can't think of a nicer place to sit this spring over a glass of rosé and watch the boys and girls in the street outside smiling gaily to each other, and wondering where to go for a nosh." <-- the little jingle that that I take with me into the weekend.

I've been sent this link approximately 237* times today, mostly by people whose work I sub. Should I be insulted?

For the record, I think his points regarding metre, innuendo and nuance are entirely valid (irrespective of the dreadfully dull, cliched and ungainly sentence in question), but anyone receiving that email who doesn't reply with the words "Go piss up a rope, you prissy, self-important fucktard" (other swear words are available) is being way too soft on the man.

Also:

listen, you jumped-up little cunt. when you actually have any idea about how to put a newspaper together -- to sweat and toil and draw and redraw and jump to the whims of editors and picture editors and feature editors; to prune and cut and fix and plaster and smooth over the myriad mistakes of soi-disant "writers" who can't tell a misrelated participle from a fucking libel risk -- *then*, and only then, i might fucking consider giving you one trial shift. until then, feel free to suck my root, and that of every other sub in the country, until it fucking bleeds.

bravo!

*three, but... y'know

Coren is the son of the late British writer and humourist Alan Coren, and the brother of journalist Victoria Coren. He was educated at Westminster School before going on to Keble College, Oxford, where he scraped a Desmond in English.

ahahaha

OMG that's changed since this morning!

His pre-GCSE knowledge of scansion let him down.

(x-p)

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00153/giles-385_153409g.jpg

am gon' geddum!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v292/aldo_cowpat/giles.gif

Winkler by Giles Coren (Jonathan Cape)

And he came hard in her mouth and his dick jumped around and rattled on her teeth and he blacked out and she took his dick out of her mouth and lifted herself from his face and whipped the pillow away and he gasped and glugged at the air, and he came again so hard that his dick wrenched out of her hand and a shot of it hit him straight in the eye and stung like nothing he'd ever had in there, and he yelled with the pain, but the yell could have been anything, and as she grabbed at his dick, which was leaping around like a shower dropped in an empty bath, she scratched his back deeply with the nails of both hands and he shot three more times, in thick stripes on her chest. Like Zorro.

xpost haha Coren getting exactly what he needs

I think the final sentence is ungainly. Maybe it's just my weary state, but as soon as it gets to the "and watch" it loses me. By the time it gets to "and wondering" I've totally given up. I would expect the subs to do more than drop an indefinite article.

I have short attention span for this kind of thing, though. His email is much more entertaining. Perhaps The Times should publish those each week instead.

Yeah, they basically made his shit sentence slightly less shit by not having a bad double-entendre add to the confusion

that is not the kind of thing I would take into my weekend, nor is "Like Zorro."

"he scraped a Desmond" would be up there though

I think the final sentence is ungainly. Maybe it's just my weary state, but as soon as it gets to the "and watch" it loses me.

Yes, it should lose over a glass of rosé.

It strips me of all confidence in writing for the magazine.

Hands up who actually believes this.

" his dick jumped around and rattled on her teeth" <--- rattled? How hard is this guy's cock?

Hard as a sword. Like Zorro's.

It sounds like it's demonically possessed and ejaculates for minutes at a time, so I guess all bets are off

" his dick jumped around and rattled on her teeth" <--- rattled? How hard is this guy's cock?

-- Raw Patrick, Thursday, 24 July 2008 14:13 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Internet hardman

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jul/11/pressandpublishing

I missed this one. What an arse.

damn, grimly fiendish went in