Replies to post #79639 on Biotech Values

[iwfal]

OT - Copy editors and "loose" vs "lose". On one paper I published I used the word 'loose' (as in 'let loose'). And the editor changed it. I changed it back, but the editor was so confident that what made it into print was 'lose'. (in fairness it made some sense written with 'lose', but was really awkward and had a substantially different overall meaning.)

[oldberkeley]

"Even the WSJ has cut copy editors.."

They have. Even more telling, veteran writers and editors by the thousands are reaching retirement age. These are professionals rigorously schooled in the basic notion that while all their copy might not win a Pulitzer, it will have zero punctuation, grammar or usage errors. This was a given.

They're being replaced by another generation who feel that these minor intellectual niceties are merely boring and unnecessary and that a properly written argument has no more weight than an error-filled one: "What's the big deal, you know what I mean anyway."