Sub-editors: how can I avoid killing them?

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

That Zorro passage "won" the "Bad Sex In Fiction" award - up against some stiff (oo-er) competition.

The First Casualty by Ben Elton

He felt the thick, luxuriant bush of soft wet hair between her legs and in a moment he was buried inside it.

"Ooh-la-la!" she breathed as he smelt the clean aroma of her short bobbed hair and the rain-sodden grass around it. "Oooh-la-jolly well-la!"

And so they made love together in the pouring rain, with Nurse Murray emitting a stream of girlish exclamations which seemed to indicate that she was enjoying herself. "Gosh", "Golly" and, as things moved towards a conclusion, even "Tally ho!"

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/mediamonkey/2008/07/indefinite_article_definite_an.html

'Coren says the email is "ancient" and is puzzled as to why it was surfaced now. "Looking at it - and you have to admit, it's a corker - it occurs to me it can only have been leaked by one of four Times staff. God, they must hate me."'

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b348/linda-u/S-mad-u-crew.jpg

guardian would be way more interesting if they let cam'ron guest copy edit for a week

"He felt the thick, luxuriant bush of soft wet hair between her legs and in a moment he was buried inside it." <--- this guy must be three inches tall or something. And he doesn't even climb into the pussy. Just the hair.

http://www.asiantribune.com/files/images/Death%20to%20America.jpg

Totally depends on how thick and luxuriant said bush is. Could be like Karadzic's beard down there. (xpost)

Yeah, there's something incredibly ungainly about that sentence anyway - if I'd been subbing it the indefinite article would have been the least of my concerns (and before I read on I assumed that they took it out because to most people reading it would *only* mean a blowjob, and have barely any connotations of food at all).

xposts

"Totally depends on how thick and luxuriant said bush is." No matter how hirstute you still gotta be the size of Ant Man to be buried inside it.

Glad to see that despite the letter the subs still didn't bother to change it back for the online version though.

Chaps,

ok well im super drunk right now after playing bass in an awesome metal show and i have a hot chick waiting for me in my bed so ill say this:

I will now explain why your error is even more shit than it looks. You see, i was making a joke. I do that sometimes. I have set up the street as "sexually-charged". I have described the shenanigans across the road at G.A.Y.. I have used the word 'gaily' as a gentle nudge. And "looking for a nosh" has a secondary meaning of looking for a blowjob. Not specifically gay, for this is soho, and there are plenty of girls there who take money for noshing boys. "looking for nosh" does not have that ambiguity. the joke is gone.

fuck times and its nu style of subbing whatever he wants whenever he wants (sans admin log)

hey.. if i was a dude in his 30's, in a dead end job that never got laid, and had barely any irl friends i would love anonymously subbing restuarant reviews too...

basically: this is the only thing dude has control of in his life.

even when he gets drunk he spends his time subbing reviews. kinda sad.
fine.

you can say 350 restaurant reviews were good today but one of them that was actually totally cool, brought the lols and was a solid article got subbed for no reason was enough for me to say "fuck this shit"

tom millar obviously loves the "this is the thread where i say"
style of pussy ass bullshit posts that make ilx terrible. just see idiot thread board for that bullshit. its basically the same 4 ilxors talking about their bullshit lives that no one asked about plus tom telling us how wasted he is.

its like an episode of sex in the city with tom and ned adding in there 2 cents once in a while. wow what bunch of lols.

im not one to make a big post about leaving but fuck this shit. for reals. im leaving for gershy who is a real bro and "GOD FORBID!!!!" bumped threads that already existed....

this paper is now just a bunch of rich college kids and dumb fat bitches (lets get real.... even the actual rock stars that post here are academic morons.) that wanna talk about the politics of messenger bags and facebook profiles. obviously tom wanted this. you can tell by his "dudes im totally wasted!" posts all over the dumb ass molify lingbert thread. so hay! you got what you wanted, tom!

i hope your life of never getting laid by anyone and being stuck in a dead end job is finally giving you what you wanted in life. everyone hates you btw. but hey as long as you rule who gives a fuck right?

And worst of all. Dumbest, deafest, shittest of all, you have removed the unstressed 'a' so that the stress that should have fallen on "nosh" is lost, and my piece ends on an unstressed syllable. When you're winding up a piece of prose, metre is crucial. Can't you hear? Can't you hear that it is wrong? It's not fucking rocket science. It's fucking pre-GCSE scansion. I have written 350 restaurant reviews for The Times and i have never ended on an unstressed syllable. Fuck. fuck, fuck, fuck.

Right,
Sorry to go on. Anger, real steaming fucking anger can make a man verbose.
All the best
Giles

Like Zorro.

I can't believe you ended the review on an unstressed syllable. That's not like you at all.

Adam Bovary, London,

"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."

I mean this is Operation Ore fuel, really, this sentence.

Actually if you read that whole review it's appallingly overcooked! I would have cut about half of it.

And smile when you’re looking for my reservation in the book. Smile like you hope it’s there. Don’t frown and dither as if you’re hoping I’ll die before you find it, saving you the trouble of seating me.

Smile when you offer me a drink. So your dad died last year. Deal with it when you get home.

Smile when my girlfriend complains that the carpaccio is raw or the gazpacho is cold. Smile and say the right thing.

That's not even the full sentence.

H3nry Harr1s is too good for the quality not to keep on rising until he has the simmer he wants, and 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 nosh.

59 words (or 60 with his indefinite article) apparently constitute a little jingle that the reader takes with him into the weekend.

He does have a point of sorts with the "smile" business, but unfortunately coming from him it sounds less like "put the customer first" and more like "applaud me for breathing, touch the hem of my garment" and other sixth form prefect mores.

But he definitively spoils it by outing his girlfriend as too dumb to know that carpaccio is raw and gazpacho cold...

this paper is now just a bunch of rich college kids and dumb fat bitches (lets get real.... even the actual rock stars that post here are academic morons.) that wanna talk about the politics of messenger bags and facebook profiles.

Jog my memory, was this about ILX or the Times

ask chaki?