There were a couple of glaring subbing errors in my piece about Norwich in the Weekend supplement of today's issue of The Times. Naturally, this is going to trouble me in some small way until at least 2040, and I'm going to spend the rest of the weekend worrying that everyone who reads it will be thinking it was me who wrote the same sentence twice in the sixth paragraph from the end, and couldn't spell "immediately", and not a sub who added the mistakes, as was actually the case, but they're far from the worst bits of subbing I've experienced. It's also reminded me what a good editing run I've had in the last few years (perhaps due, amongst other factors, to The Guardian shaking off their old "Grauniad" reputation by employing more eagle-eyed subbing staff). It wasn't always this way, as the following seven incidents demonstrate:
1. Tom Waits is actually called "Tom Waites" In Yorkshire (The Guardian, 2000)
I've been to see Tom Waits in Paris. Even though Elvis Costello sits in front of me, and talks a bit too much, the show is stupendous. I am on a high, only slightly brought down to earth by the memory of my electric toothbrush starting up on its own in my bag on the Eurostar over here, causing the music biz hipsters travelling with me to think I have packed a vibrator; and that I still have to write and file my review to the Guardian, by phone, before I go to bed. I write quickly, then dictate several hundred words to a Guardian copy-taker who, for reasons that remain nebulous, is based not in the Guardian office, but in Wakefield. "So have you definitely got that?" I ask. "It's Waits W-a-i-t-s?" "Yes," they assure me. "Got it." The next day the front page of the Guardian's Saturday Arts supplement announces a triumphant performance from "Tom Waites" in France, as does my review.
2. The Lightning Seeds' "classic", 'Pushin Too Hard' (Vox Magazine, 1997)
I have moved from the cliquey public schoolboys club of the NME to the quieter and more welcoming atmosphere of its sister magazine, Vox, nextdoor on the 25th floor of King's Reach Tower. Here, I am commissioned album reviews by Angus Batey, who is a drastic change from much personnel I've experience in my brief time in the music journalism world so far, in that he hasn't renamed himself after some drugs, is extremely approachable and civil, and doesn't say "BYE" in a pretend pseudo-manly voice when he puts the phone down. As a further plus, my reviews are mostly of old albums, which means I can stop pretending I'm more enthusiastic about impenetrable post-rock and modern indie shambling than I am. One of said albums is by Big Star's Alex Chilton, and includes a cover of the 60s garage punk classic, 'Pushin Too Hard', by The Seeds. Or, as one of Vox's subs decides, by The Lightning Seeds, the modern synth pop outfit I have often mused that I would rather eat my own furniture than listen to. Angus is hugely apologetic on the sub's behalf and I stay mad at him for a grand total of 0.4 seconds.
3. Willie Nelson's lost Dukes Of Hazzard theme tune (The Guardian, 1999).
I am wrong. Apparently, despite what a hundred different websites, my Dukes Of Hazzard DVD, and a book on Waylon Jennings tells me, Waylon Jennings didn't write and perform 'The Theme From The Dukes Of Hazzard'. Willie Nelson did. So say those pesky Guardian subs.
4. The Fifth Dimension's Strangey Byrdsian album, 'Younger Than Yesterday' (The Guardian, 1999)
I have pitched an idea for an alternative top 100 albums to my editor at The Guardian: banning 100 albums frequently seen on top 100 lists, including such usual culprits as The Beach Boys' 'Pet Sounds' and Marvin Gaye's 'What's Going On'. He has said this is a good idea. I have polled many, many writers and musicians, leaning subtly* towards fans of Nick Drake and Todd Rundgren, in the hope I can get them in the top ten, mainly because I am going through a big Nick Drake and Todd Rundgren phase. Everything is great! Nick and Todd do indeed get in the top ten. Actually, Nick wins, and goes on the cover, pushing the posthumous re-evaluation of his work by a new generation on apace. But what's this? In my list of banned LPs, the Guardian have decided to amalgamate The Byrds' 'Fifth Dimension' and 'Younger Than Yesterday' LPs into a mysterious "lost" album by California soul maestros The Fifth Dimension, called 'Younger Than Yesterday' - which, even if it does exist in some hitherto unknown musical fifth dimension, certainly cannot be called a "predictable" top 100 albums contender.
5. Tom Waits' "easy to miss" cameo in Interview With The Vampire (The Guardian, 1999)
I am wrong: despite what I have claimed in my write-up for the poll mentioned in subbing error 4, Tom Waits did not actually appear in Dracula; he appeared in Interview With The Vampire. So assert the Guardian subs, who presumably are also firm in their conviction that, drawing on his barfly research in Cocktail, Tom Cruise was the real genius behind the 'Swordfishtrombones' album.
6. 'Vegative Creep': Nirvana's First Truly Great Song? (Transworld, 2003)
The copy editor on my second book, Educating Peter, decides that Nirvana's song 'Vegative Creep' is not, as I claim, called 'Negative Creep', so they change it, without checking with me first. Despite the fact that their pretend title is arguably a better one, I am mortified it ends up in the final edition, causing reviewers to complain about factual inaccuracies. The pain fades slightly over the next few years, as I realise the rest of the book wasn't too great anyway, and it only sells about 3 copies a year, not helped by the fact that I beseech people who like my other books not to purchase it.
7. The Ill-Advised Trip Hop Album By Those Bastards Madder Rose Gets The Kicking It Deserves, Twice (The Guardian, 2000)
I have a difficult decision to make. As The Guardian's Pop Critic, it is my responsibility to review the 3rd album by New York's Madder Rose. I have met Madder Rose, twice, and found them to be ineffably sweet people. I am also very much a fan of their first two, somewhat Velvet Undergroundish, albums, but I have played their new one, and its incongruous trip-hop direction has left me cold. I should review it, and I want to be honest about what I think of it, but I also feel guilty, as it, and they, are so quintessentially harmless. I grit my teeth and give it an unfavourable review. The review runs, and I put its couple of hundred reluctantly dismissive words behind me, and hope Madder Rose don't hate me. Until the following week, when for reasons known only to themselves, The Guardian decide to run it again.
* Not subtly at all.
6 comments:
Oh dear! Mind you, I've seen worse. And if it's any consolation, as an occasional sub-editor, that moment before reading or opening final print copies is a rollercoaster of adrenalin, dark trepidation and a gentle and quite unpleasant nausea - and that's before you even spot the typo which will then appear in your mind at 3am for many weeks to come (shudder). Readers never blame the author, they always assume it's the sub-editor's error, and that’s unfortunately the way it should be (and boy does that hurt to admit it).
I'me really pleased you're spreading the word about Norwich; it's about time people realised it is a fine city indeed!
... I notice that my comment contains a typo (penultimate line). This is either a) my foolish error, b) an attempt by the author to prove his point about the sloppiness of sub-editors, in which case, point proven, or c) a case of poor sub-editing by the administrator. I will opt for the latter, if that's okay. That way I'll sleep better.
Don't worry, Holly. My original post contained an error too, until a more eagle-eyed friend pointed it out. I am actually in awe of most copy-editors, and the stuff they've managed to spot, which I haven't, even through 100 readings of a book.
Thanks for the kind words, Tom. I wish I could say that event lives as long in my memory, but - perhaps happily - I've managed to expunge it entirely. Which is odd, as I don't remember that many howlers at Vox - the subs there generally did a great job - and I like to think that if it had been my mistake I would have a) remembered and b) 'fessed up at the time and not blamed someone else.
Having been saved by subs on numerous occasions myself - particularly the ace ones who do sport at The Times and who have spotted such arcana as me accidentally transposing the name of the victorious batsman with the bowler of the opposition in a village cricket cup final at Lord's during the 28 minutes I had between the last-ball finish and deadline - I'm loathe to criticise them as a breed. However, the ones that have lodged most painfully in the mind are, in reverse order:
3: In a review of the DVD of Michael Bay's first Transformers film for The Times I wrote that he'd got "people and materiel" from the US military to give extra realism for the battle scenes, and that was changed to "material";
2: in my last feature for Mojo, on the Wu-Tang Clan, I needed to end the present-day intro and find a device to link back to the band's inception, and chose to end the opening section with the words "Can it be that it was all so simple then?", which would be instantly recognisable to a Wu fan as a quote from a Gladys Knight sample (though other versions of the song exist) that appeared in one of their best-known early songs. I didn't put it in quote marks - it was just there, on a line of its own before a line-space break ahead of the next section of the piece. In the printed version it wouldn't have extended beyond the end of the line so there was no need to edit for length or so as to not leave a widow or whatever. I guess it's not the most straightforward expression of the thought, and if you didn't recognise it as a quote you might have assumed it was badly worded. But still, it was, shall we say, disappointing to see the printed version in which it had been changed to the even more clunky, less-sense-making, and (most painfully) relevance-free non-Wu-referencing "Was really all so simple back then?"
1. In the "Groove Check" singles column on the NME dance page Vibes, I reviewed 2Pac's Dear Mama, released as a single around the time the rap icon (then still very much alive) was appearing in a New York court charged with raping and molesting a female fan. I wrote something to the effect that it seemed deeply ironic that of all the rappers with retrograde views about women, the one who's up on a rape charge should be the one who had written this quite affecting ode to his difficult relationship with his mum. In print, this was changed to say something like "It seems deeply suspicious that someone up on a rape charge would choose to release a single about his mum", which, shall we say, wasn't quite the point I was trying to make. Not that I think about it much, but whenever I do I'm still pretty angry about that. It was a legitimate view to take (back then, decisions about single release dates and so on were taken a long way in advance and it's possible the timing was coincidental - but as I say, it's still a point worth raising) but it wasn't the one I had written. If they disagreed with me, fair enough - and if they disagreed with what I'd written so much that they thought what I wrote should be replaced by something else, then fair enough too. But don't put it in the paper under my byline as if it was what I'd said, and definitely don't change my point of view to something else without at least telling me you're going to do that before it gets published. I did bring this up with an editor who admitted eventually that they should perhaps have let me know what they were going to do beforehand, and to be fair, nothing similar ever happened again. But still...
Cheers,
AB
I work for a newspaper where we dont have subs anymore – they were the first thing to go in the recession. It means, I suppose, that all the mistakes in my copy are my own, original work...
My current job involves a fair bit of sub-editing, and it's one hell of a responsibility. In the past, I would adopt a sneering zero-tolerance approach to typos when I saw them. Nowadays I just wince on behalf of the sub who will be self-flagellating over them for weeks to come.
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