Hot Water Heaters - Both Redundant AND Superflous

For four years I have planned on working as a copy editor after graduating college. I have spent more time than I would care to admit editing my own writing as well as the writing of others. I keep track of grammatical errors I find while reading books, magazines, and newspapers. To me, copy editing is both a hobby and a habit (nerd credentials?). For these reasons, Guillermo Torres's* presentation, Being a Professional Copy Editor, was my favorite part of last Tuesday (seriously...).

The first topic Torres covered was his career as a copy editor. He has been a copy editor since 1979, and started his career in San Angelo (he did not say what newspaper he worked for, and did not say where San Angelo is located). Since then, he has worked for the Los Angeles Times and the Dallas Morning News, and is currently a copy editor for San Antonio's Express News.

Torres also discussed the important aspects of being a copy editor. "Your job as a copy editor is to make sure a story is accurate," said Torres. "If there is a mistake in the paper it comes back to the Copy desk."

He also described some of the things to keep in mind when editing text for a newspaper. He said it was important to be aware of your location, pointing out that certain words can mean something in one city and mean something completely different in another.

One thing Torres said that stuck out at the time, and still does, was "the highest calling of a copy editor is as the gatekeeper...the conscious of the newsroom. Being a copy editor is about protecting people who don't have a voice." For instance, keeping "loaded" words out of news stories. News is supposed to be strictly information, and information cannot have a bias. However, the means of communicating information (applies to all information) can be biased.

For the last half hour of the presentation, Torres had a discussion with the stupid on proper grammar usage (titled by Torres: 30 minutes of word usage hell). He used examples of grammatical errors he has seen throughout his years as a copy editor. This, I must say, was by far my favorite part of the presentation (I openly admit it: I love this kind of thing). I'll close with some examples from the four-page handout Torres provided (all words below are Torres's, including those in parenthesis):

-Isabel's relections run the gauntlet of emotions, highlighted by a repeated declaration of a physical death that isn't true, but a spiritual death that is. (A gauntlet is a glove, so that is the incorrect word to use in the sentence. A gantlet, a flogging ordeal, could have been it in an extreme case. Maybe. The correct word is assuredly gamut, which is a range or extent.)
-Writer-director Kevin Willmott's mock British documentary chronicles an alternate history of America...(the correct word is alternative)

Examples of redundant or superflous language:
-contradictory to that old adage (an adage is always old)
-hosiery that harmonized with their own personal style (really, you couldn't pick one of the three?)
-Gonzales isn't just a mystery to the general public (unless part of the public is private, and last I checked none of it is, then public is always general)

*Tangent: 's after singular nouns, an ' after plural nouns...why people write an ' without an s after any noun ending with an s is beyond me (it had to be said).