If you want to learn how to write clean copy, fast and under the gun – for marketing or any other arena where clarity is valued – the best training is in a big-city newsroom. (Assuming there are any such jobs left in journalism, but that’s another story.)
Those of us lucky enough to have spent a couple of years in a newsroom can regale you with tales of crotchety editors who stopped just short of whacking junior reporters upside the head if they failed to make subjects and verbs agree, or didn’t sufficiently chop up a run-on sentence.
For a taste of newsroom training (minus the abuse), it’s worth reading the “After Deadline” blog posts every Tuesday in The New York Times online. Associate managing editor Philip B. Corbett, who’s in charge of the paper’s style guide, shares insights into grammar and style discussions going on inside the Times newsroom – for instance, whether writers should use the colloquial “kids” when “children” might better fit the paper’s style.
Corbett also collects examples of goofs and gaffes (both inside and outside of the Times) to illustrate his points – like sound-alike words used incorrectly. (Do you “pour over” a document, or “pore over” it? Are you “adverse” to exercise, or “averse”?) I love Corbett’s no-nonsense approach and straightforward explanations. “After Deadline” is that rare thing: a fun read, but also an informative one.
