<p>How does one, as Editor-in-Chief of a school newspaper, reduce the amount of errors found? We have 2 copy editors and 2 literary editors. Then we have an editor for each page: arts, news, science, etc. The articles go through 2 rounds of editing (each article is edited by at least 2 different people). Then we have the final editing day where all editors get together and just edit as many pieces as they want.
YET THERE ARE STILL SO MANY STUPID TYPOS IN THE PAPER!! IT DRIVES ME MAD!!!
Tips? Ideas on how to deal with this effectively?</p>
<p>Seems like the process you have going would take out all of the errors… </p>
<p>The only reason I can seem to think of would be if the people you have editing through the “2 rounds of editing” aren’t editing as well as they could…? Do you keep track of if they actually catch any errors in the articles. Maybe if its a specific part of the newspaper that has the most errors, or always seems to have errors, find the weak link in that part.</p>
<p>Also, I assume the articles are typed, so most blatant errors should be corrected by the spell checker.</p>
<p>At my old school, in English we each had to proofread 3 columns of the school newspaper (each column was proofread 3 times) and then for each mistake that was later found we got a lower grade on that assignment. Maybe you could do something like this with an English class at your school?</p>
<p>RDarin: It’s possible that it’s our editors but we don’t keep track of exactly who edits each article. And the errors are spread out pretty evenly, haha. They’re really stupid mistakes like they instead of the or vice versa. Things no spell check would catch unless it were human. Damn humans.</p>
<p>Romanigypsyeyes: I don’t think that would fly, especially w/ the students. Teachers wouldn’t be too happy about giving up curriculum time for the paper and wouldn’t think of it as a grammar lesson. Thanks though.</p>
<p>Have the writers of the article first read their own work 3 times. Then edit it. </p>
<p>Even my local paper has typos all the time, sometimes they just slip by.</p>
<p>I’m the editor-in-chief of my school paper too, and after we go through all the editing stages, our incredible copy editor and I along with our advisor just sit down and read through every single page before we go to print, including captions, ads, etc.</p>
<p>We don’t trust anyone else to make these final changes, either. We just change them ourselves straight on the computer because it’s the only way to ensure they get made.</p>
<p>And you definitely have to have people with a natural eye for grammar. Even the best content editor can suck at grammar sometimes, so don’t count on section editors to catch mistakes like that.</p>
<p>yeah. typos also drive me crazy</p>
<p>^I think the title was intended to be full of typos as a joke…</p>
<p>Yes Vegan would be correct b/c in the blurb I spelled it correctly.
dank and leah, I think I’ll take some of your ideas. The writers definitely should proofread before handing in articles and that might catch some of the typos. I think spending more time on proofreading in final edit or having a final final edit is important too and definitely worth it.
Thanks.</p>
<p>OH my god. My yearbook has so many typos. We usually have people who only do about a page, procrastinate, then leave after a week, so it never gets checked. Good thing we’re all basically anal/ocd about grammar mistakes. We actually spent an afternoon discussing plural subjects and verb agreements…to the point that our moderator just told us to shut up. Good luck with your own copyediting though-I’d just say to get anal people behind you</p>
<p>We have an editing system for our newspaper that works like this:
- Stories are placed on page. Page is made, blah, story editing/lengthened, whatever is needed.
- Page is edited by copy editor.
- Revisions made, page is edited again by another copy editor.
- Revisions made, page is edited by advisor.
- Revisions made, editor-in-chief takes PDFs home and makes final edits.</p>
<p>We still do have a few typos, though :(</p>
<p>Oh and clarification,
I’m not editor-in-chief but I’m planning to be (or was planning to be when I started this thread–I just found out I didn’t get the position, columnist for me and copy editor too so it’s pretty relevant still).
Thanks for all the suggestions.
Now let this thread die.</p>
<p>At least you didn’t wish your readers a happy “Holdiay” in size 56 type.</p>
<p>kcarls: “yeah. typos also drive me crazy”</p>
<p>Boy, you pick up on things fast, huh?</p>
<p>Oh–holdiay, that’s rough.
I’m sorry.
But why didn’t spell check catch it?</p>