Seven Deadly Sins of Copy Editing

After doing a Google search on the term copy editing, I found a decent Poynter article that sums up the roots of the most common errors made by copy editors. It's called The Seven Deadly Copy Editing Sins. In no particular order, those sins are:

1. Arrogance
2. Assumptions
3. Sloppiness
4. Indifference
5. Ignorance
6. Laziness
7. Inflexibility

I found numbers 6 and 7 most interesting. For number 6, I agree completely. It's hard to put in a full effort while copy editing when it's late at night and all you want to do is go home. I've fought that myself at the DI. And it is one of the worst things you can do. I put an article through that had the word "millennium" in the headline, but I let it go with just one "n." Luckily, the slotter caught it and fixed it. The real kicker is that I interned for a company all summer called Millennium Electronics Inc. I should have known that, but I was tired and missed it. And that's a big problem.

Number 7 I don't agree with. The way the article lays it out, they explain this as not being able to rearrange a page. Which, at the DI, I see quite frequently, even close to deadline. However, sometimes copy editors are too flexible, when they over correct articles and inadvertently add errors. They may have too much flexibility with headlines. For instance, we have access to font sizes as copy editors and we can fudge that to make a headline fit if we really want. The downfall is that it messes with the work the design table put into the article and ends up reading great, but looking funny. Sometimes, for copy editors, a little inflexibility never hurt.