Tuesday, November 29, 2011

What copy editors are for . . .

A section of an editorial in Wednesday's (Nov. 30, 2011) Daily Progress in Charlottesville, Va., read, "and opinions flew about like pin oak leaves in the autumn breeze."

Why did the author of a perfectly good editorial have to use as his similic* foil one of the few deciduous trees that holds onto its (brown, dessicated, dead) leaves throught the fall and winter? In the city of Thomas Jefferson and the always grammatical University of Virgina, one must be careful.


And this is what copy editors are for.

* In the nature of a simile (my coinage)