I before E: Except After 16 Hours

By Robin Keith

Never is the need for accuracy more evident than when 36-point, bold typos scream from their exalted position at upper right, above the fold. Fifteen years as a newspaper editor provides a great hard-knocks education.

It had not been the best of weeks. As triple-digit temperatures heralded the apex of another August in Texas, I sat at my cluttered dining table, in front of a mammoth green IBM electric typewriter, pounding out a Random Notions column for Thursday’s edition. As the name implies, I generally snatched a topic “from the air” for the bi-weekly column, attempting to inject at least a modest amount of humor. However, this was normally accomplished with the adept assistance of a Macintosh PageMaker program, in the relative quiet of my small downtown office.

That particular Monday in 1989, however, our four-year-old son had awakened covered in angry red welts, which quickly spread from his abdomen to his back, limbs, face, and eyelids—even inside his ears. We settled in to battle an especially nasty case of the “chicken pops,” made even more difficult by my husband’s and my offset work schedules. He worked while I slept and vice-versa.

My publisher quickly agreed (as I basically was the editorial staff) to allow me to work from home, and we established a messenger system of sorts to relay articles to Donna, our already overworked advertising/design manager, who would double as typesetter for the duration of Scott’s illness. Not a perfect system, granted, but those were pre-internet days, at least in our little town of about 4,000 souls.

Sue, in charge of office supply sales, delivered press releases, readers’ requests and contributed photos to my home, and carried them back for typesetting after they’d been edited, written and/or sized. As I struggled through what I feared to be the worst column ever written, she arrived with a fresh batch. “Don’t forget this is the back-to-school issue,” she said, dropping a hefty stack of papers and unopened mail on the table. “I gave the school supply lists directly to Donna this time; didn’t figure you could do much with them here. But we need the registration schedules and new teacher profiles by five.”

I thanked her, silently cursing our rotten luck, as I reached absently for the coffee mug and retrieved instead a sticky and half-empty bottle of Calamine lotion. “We’ll do the best we can,” she said. “Don’t worry.”

Of course I worried. I’d averaged approximately 45 minutes of sleep the previous two nights and was nearing the end of a marathon, frequently interrupted typing session. I’d been forced to revert to our pre-Macintosh headline sizing methods: Donna had printed out “The quick brown fox jumped deftly over the fallen log” in sizes from 14 to 72-point type of basic fonts and pasted them across the six columns of a blank paste-up sheet. I’d choose a font type and size for an article, type however much of the “brown fox” sentence fit column widths in that font, and then type a proposed headline to fit underneath. It wasn’t a perfect system, but it had worked during my first few years on the job, when an ancient headliner machine spat them out in long strips, and I could strike pretty close.

The big news of that particular week was not schools opening, but the dangers posed by a seemingly endless heat wave. I’d spent much of the previous day calling local health officials, and had two handwritten pages of quotes, statistics, and recommendations for the lead article. I’d put it aside, however, awaiting a return call from the county hospital, concerning recent heat-related admissions there.

That call came as I sorted the stack of papers Sue had left, and noticed a “canned” press release from a state health organization on the same topic. I decided to combine all the information, beginning with the local angle and finishing up with statewide statistics and other information from the release. A common practice, this allows several extra paragraphs to either flesh out the piece or be cut and tailored to available space.

I reworked the piece as planned, completed my semi-weekly column (weakly), handed it off to Sue, and ran another oatmeal bath for my itchy and very cranky son, thinking I’d not done too poorly after all. The next morning, in 36-point bold type, the lead story proclaimed, “Hospital Reports Sharp Increase in Hypothermia-related Admissions.”

Almost certain I’d not made that mistake, I quickly called Donna, who said, “Yes, I know. They’ve been calling all morning. We just warned folks about the dangers of freezing to death in 112-degree temperatures.” It seems I’d mistyped the word in the headline, but not the body of the article. Also exhausted back at the office, they’d simply gone with the first choice presented—the wrong one.

Errors like this frequently happen under burden of approaching deadlines, even with benefit of spell-check. As both words had been spelled correctly, the newspaper’s computer registered no alarm. This is one of the hazards of working past what my mom called “the witching hour”—that point during a long day after which everything becomes either hysterically funny, horribly upsetting, or otherwise strangely distorted. We’ve all experienced them—those times when even the word “that” looks weird.

Battling the witching hour phenomenon is especially important to writers, and can be accomplished with a little planning.

First in your arsenal is proper reference material.

Never assume you’re certain what that odd-looking word means, especially if you’re already bleary-eyed and nearing complete exhaustion. Along with Webster’s International Dictionary, I rely strongly on The Elements of Grammar, and The Elements of Style.

While I adore my PC and its built-in research tools, I continue to rely on these old favorites as the ultimate authority. Another resource I’ve learned to love is, The Dictionary of Disagreeable English by Robert Hartwell Fiske, who presents the information in an amusingly grouchy manner.

“Never assume you’re certain what that odd-looking word means, especially if you’re already bleary-eyed and nearing complete exhaustion.”

Allow yourself sufficient time to prepare.

I understand: writers love to procrastinate. I prefer to attribute this to superior intellect (our interests are many and varied), but other less-gracious souls might consider the adjective: lazy.

Whatever the reason, a writer’s credibility depends on avoiding this trap at all costs. I now try to complete assignments at least three days before deadline, a luxury I did not have in those early days of putting out two newspapers a week with a combined editorial/advertising staff of three, including one part-time floater from the front office. Completing assignments early allows extra time for reflection, fact checking, and revision, which will produce a more polished piece of writing.

“Manuscripts need rest, too!”

Allow sufficient time for gathering information.

Try to schedule interviews early and get research out of the way. My grandfather’s traveling philosophy works well with writing projects: starting a half-hour early provides time to deal with the unexpected. Sometimes interviews must be rescheduled; calls are missed; libraries close early (especially in rural communities).

Manuscripts need rest, too! My worst fears in newspaper work were frequently realized the day after we put the paper to bed. No matter how many times I re-read and edited a piece the day it was written, I’d often find awkward wording, misspellings, or grammatical errors once it returned from the printer’s, the next morning. I now try to allow a piece to “rest” a couple of days, while I get my mind off of it.

Even if strongly tempted, I won’t return to it until I’ve completed other assignments, thoroughly cleaned my house, or just spent a couple of days outdoors to gain perspective. Then, editing is simplified by re-reading the piece with fresh eyes. This brings me to the next suggestion.

Look at it from a different perspective.

Newspaper work taught me a new proofreading method: read it backward. Our brains are marvelous machines. They take in information, fill in gaps, and return processed material. If a letter, word, or even phrase is missing, our minds can and sometimes will just assume it’s there. Proofreading from the end of the article, story, or poem forces us to focus on each individual word. If I’d had the time and energy that day in 1984, the word “hypothermia” would have immediately jumped out as inappropriate.

“Writing is ten percent inspiration, 40 percent perspiration; the final 50 is pure frustration!”

Finally, take full advantage of untapped resources.

Do you have family and friends? Use them! In the past, I’d drive over to Dad’s to see what he thought of my most recent writing project. An avid reader and writer, he could pinpoint errors, suggest changes, and provide fresh ideas/perspectives. Today, my nearest family lives more than a two-hour drive from our home. But with the internet, I now solicit valuable input and critiques via email.

I rely heavily on critiques from friends and family, and offer them my various creative services in return. Although the majority of my professional experience has been in the area of non-fiction, I also enjoy writing fiction and poetry, and recently completed a short-short story I hoped to enter into a contest. After weeks of polishing, I zipped it off to my usual circle and anxiously awaited a response. The next morning, my inbox held the first reply, from my sister-in-law in Louisiana.

“Wow!” she began. After detailing what she liked about the piece, she added, “Of course, I’m no writer, and everyone else might understand it easily, but I did have to read some of it a couple times to find which character was speaking, because of the way it switches back and forth.” I shrugged it off; it made perfect sense to me! However, the next three responses held similar comments and I reworked the dialogue for clarity of voice. This is an important lesson for writers: of course we understand what we write; our goal is to make the reader understand it. And there’s no better way than to ask a reader (or two).

As my former publisher was fond of saying, “Writing is ten percent inspiration, 40 percent perspiration; the final 50 is pure frustration!” Forewarned of “witching-hour” hazards, writers who take steps to prevent the phenomenon might well reduce that familiar adage back to its original balance!

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Robin Keith lives in Archer County, Texas, with her husband and three children. During her 15 years as a newspaper editor/columnist in Jacksboro, TX, she received the 1995 Anson Jones, M.D. Award of Merit for excellence in health communication; Texas Press Association’s second in column writing and fourth, tabloids/special editions, 1993; West Texas Press Association’s first in features (Better Newspaper Contest), 1994; and 1994 Jacksboro Chamber of Commerce Citizen of the Year (shared with Ray Monroe) for organizing the Candy Cane Club to benefit local children at Christmas. She worked nine years as geriatric nurse in north central Texas before entering freelance writing in 2007. Her short article, “Dealing with Critiques, Criticisms and Unkind Comments” appeared in The Writing Kid, Sept. 2007; and Mom Writer Literary Magazine purchased her poem, “This Moment” for their upcoming spring issue.