About Editing and Writing

Marine Platoon Commander Jim Webb in Vietnam.

When magazines write headlines for stories, the writer is sometimes involved but usually the magazine’s editors decide what headline will work best, given the layout, without any input from the writer. That’s what happened in November 1979 when the Washingtonian published a 7,000 word essay by Jim Webb about why he didn’t think women should serve in combat situations.

Webb had been sent to Vietnam after graduating from the Naval Academy in 1968. He served as a Marine platoon commander and was awarded the Navy Cross, the Silver Star, two Bronze Stars, and two Purple Hearts for his actions in combat.

My wife Jean is a techie—she has all the popular devices from Apple and Amazon—and on Amazon Prime Day she couldn’t resist buying the Amazon Echo for $90, half the regular price. The tall black cylinder speaker answers to the name Alexa and you can ask her questions. Alexa, what’s the weather forecast today? And she answers.

Alexa now sits on our kitchen counter and mealtime conversations are interrupted by Jean deciding to ask Alexa something. Alexa, what are the chances of President Trump not finishing his term? It’s having a third person at the table.

As an editor, I liked to imagine the reader out on the open road, going 70 miles an hour in a convertible. One job an editor has is to not let the writer put stop signs on that road.

A stop sign I encountered almost every month at the Washingtonian was the use of “former” and “latter” in a story. An example:

“Robert Samuelson and Michael Gerson are the two most interesting, least predictable columnists on the Washington Post op-ed page, but the former surprisingly attracts more reader comments than the latter.”

Just repeating the names would make it easier for the reader.

A post yesterday said that quoting someone only by their last name can be a stop sign for readers. When in doubt, make it easy for the reader by clearly identifying who is being quoted even though that person has been quoted earlier in the story.

Another stop sign I run into, especially in Washington stories, is the overuse of acronyms.  The well-known ones—NIH, FDA, NFL—are usually not a problem. But some stories I edited had five or more acronyms for various agencies and organizations.

Nothing good ever happens in Washington prematurely.

Don’t trust a man under 40 who wears suspenders.

He who knows does not tell. —Lao Tzu

Washington is a much better place if you are asking questions rather than answering them.

Never insult the alligator until after you have crossed the river. —Cordell Hull

Washington is a city of one-adjective men

Everything in politics is written in pencil.

Washington is not a place to live in. The rents are high, the food is bad, the dust is disgusting, and the morals are deplorable. —Horace Greeley

I like the writing very much. I often ask my writing friends if they like to write and they always say that they don’t. They love the research, perhaps the fun after a book is published, but not the task of writing. I think that it is the glory of the work. You have assembled all of this information. You have thought about it. You have dreamed about it. You’re ready. You are bursting with all of this and then you have this meticulous, but somehow not entirely rational, process of organizing it so that you communicate it transparently to other human beings. That is great fun.

The New York Times plans to reduce the number of its copy editors. From Poynter this morning:

New York Times reporters plea for copy editors’ jobs in letter to bosses

New York Times reporters on Thursday sent a letter to the paper’s top editors to protest the oncoming cuts to the newsroom’s editing staff.