Are Copy Editors an Endangered Species?

The other day, I ran into a co-worker on the bus ride to work. He is a copy editor. So am I. Well, actually my title is Web Content Strategist, but I copy edit anyway, because proofreaders are born, not made.

He and I had the following exchange:

Me: So, you're a copy editor, I'm a copy editor. Do you think we'll be extinct soon?

Him: I hope not.

Me: I mean, because, have you seen the internet lately?

Him: Yup.

Me: Exactly.

You don't have to be on the internet much to notice rampant crimes against grammar, punctuation, clarity, and sense. It's not surprising. That's what happens when:

1. everybody self-publishes, and 
2. smart phone keypads make it difficult to access punctuation marks, and
3. people have such busy lives that "little things" like grammar are the first to go.

Of course, to a copy editor, grammar is not a "little thing." It is the shining, golden key to clear and excellent communication. Unfortunately, this seems to be a minority viewpoint nowadays.

Jobs That Evolve

Salary.com recently published a neat slideshow called 12 Jobs on the Brink: Will They Evolve or Go Extinct? Check it out: 

Copy Editor was not one of the "12 Jobs on the Brink" in that slideshow. But it could have been. I'd classify it as "Endangered."

Image credit: pbs.org

I've worked in publishing since 1999. In these 14 years, I've seen copy editors laid off. I've seen the copy editing function outsourced, freelanced, and just plain omitted. I've seen the hourly rate paid to proofreaders remain flat and even decline.

It's hard to show a clear return on investment for copy editing—that is, until an egregious error damages your reputation. But if everything you publish is online, you can fix an error in seconds—no more Dewey Defeats Truman.

Here's My Prediction

I predict that copy editors will become a luxury, affordable only to publishers with deep pockets.

And I believe certain industries will always employ copy editors because the stakes are high:

• Lawyers. In legal documents, a single misplaced comma can change the meaning of a sentence enough to prompt a lawsuit.
• PR and design firms. Their job is to make you look good, so one error could cost them their business.

Because it will become difficult to find a full-time job as a copy editor, editors will have to start learning backup skills. That's already the case for many editors, who branch out into project management, user experience design, javascript coding, and other areas.

Looks like it's time for me to work on those backup skills. Or maybe it's time to leave it all behind and write that novel instead. So far, people still seem willing to pay for those.

This Is What Chronic Sleep Deprivation Looks Like

Once upon a time, I was young and single and had no kids. I had nothing better to do than look after my own health and well-being. I regularly slept 8 or more hours a night.

Those days are a fond but fading memory. Like many modern people, I burn the candle at both ends trying to get everything done and still have some semblance of a life.

I'm one of a vast legion of folks who, voluntarily or not, are getting far too little sleep. But research shows we might be causing ourselves problems beyond just bags under our eyes.

A Typical Day

4:30 A.M.: My 17-month-old child wakes up for the day and cries for me. (No, I don't know why she is such an early bird. I've tried everything.) I wake abruptly, startled out of my dreams. My heart immediately stars pounding with fight-or-flight adrenaline.

I stumble to her crib, pick her up, whisper gently about how 4:30 is too early to get up, put her back down, cover her with her blanket, and walk out. This never works.

5:00 A.M.: Kid cries again. I get up with her. Sometimes I read her a book. Other times I keep the lights off and cuddle her on my lap while I stare blearily out the window at the pitch-black sky.

5:00-7:45 A.M.: Get both children dressed, fed, and ready for school and daycare. Get myself ready for work. Act perky and patient for the kids' benefit. Drink coffee. Place eye drops in my perpetually red and tired eyes.

I dare you to look at these and not yawn.
(Image credit: scienceinseconds.com)

8:15–4:15: Work. More coffee. Smile and act like I have my sh** together. Try not to let my exhaustion cause any embarrassing incidents, such as nodding off during an afternoon meeting or forgetting some important instruction from my boss.

5:15 P.M.: Home from work. Get children fed, bathed, and put to bed.

8:00 P.M.: Dishes, laundry, cleaning, tidying, bill paying. Make an effort to spend a bit of time with my equally exhausted husband. Sometimes I write a blog post, read a book, call a friend, or watch a TV show off the DVR. Other times I'm too wiped out to do anything except play Candy Crush or read Facebook statuses that I don't remember the next day.

10:30-ish P.M.: Collapse into bed and sleep like the dead... for 6 hours max, because that's when the baby will be up again.

Weekend: Try to make up some sleep by napping when the baby naps. This effort is complicated by the 4-year-old who no longer naps.

What Are We Doing to Ourselves? And Is It Worth It?

Long-term sleep deprivation or "short sleep" is associated with poor memory, heart disease, cancer, auto accidents, obesity, and type II diabetes. Take a gander at the scientific literature:

• Sleep: A Health Imperative. An overview of the health effects of sleep deprivation, from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the Sleep Research Society.
• The sleep-time cost of parenting. A study of employed adults that concludes: "Parenting minor children is associated with shorter sleep duration." (Thanks, Einstein, I could have told you that. Where's my million-dollar research grant?)
• Sleep deprivation and neurobehavioral dynamics."Chronic sleep restriction likely induces long-term neuromodulatory changes in brain physiology." In other words, we may be permanently altering our brains. Scary stuff.

I can tell you what effect chronic "short sleep" has on me:

• My memory is complete crap, to the point that it's embarrassing. I forget events, news, bank transactions, phone calls, people's names, things they told me.
• I fantasize about sleep like a starving person fantasizes about a huge, delicious meal.
• With no reserves to draw upon, I lack patience and I'm quick to jump to negative conclusions.
• My blood pressure, at 120/80, is higher than it's ever been (it used to average 100/60). 
• My right eyelid twitches. A lot.
• My alertness is OK, because I run on adrenaline and caffeine constantly.

Yet somehow I do a decent job at work, and as a parent. I have no idea how.

I just think I'm tired. This dude is REALLY tired.
(Image credit: imdb.com)

By the way, if you want a great movie about a guy whose insomnia has reached frightening levels, don't watch "Insomnia" (2002) with Al Pacino. Watch "The Machinist" (2004) with Christian Bale, who gives one of the eeriest, most haunting performances I've ever seen.

What I Fear... and What I Hope

Have you ever had a stressful time in your life where you had to GO, GO, GO for a while, and you slept little? And finally it was over, and you slept a ton, and then you got sick? That happened to me during college finals. I would run on adrenaline for days or weeks, then collapse when the semester ended. Most of the time, I'd immediately come down with a cold or other virus.

It was like my body went into super-overdrive. It poured every ounce of energy into keeping me going while I finished my papers and exams. Afterward, my body was drained—literally. Drained of the ingredients it needs for everyday body functions, like the immune system.

I haven't slept 7-8 hours a night regularly since 2008, when my first child was born. I fear a large-scale version of the cold I used to get after finals. I fear the nature of the beast that lurks, lying in wait for me.

And yet, others have it much worse than I do. Insomniacs. People with sleep disorders. People with chronic pain. Parents of colicky twin babies.

We survive because the human body has an amazing capability to adapt when huge demands are placed upon it. If you'd asked me 10 years ago whether I could sleep just 5-6 hours a night for a year and still function, I'd have said no freaking way. And yet that's pretty much what I did after each of my kids was born. And here I am, still sane (I think), to tell the tale.

Ahhhh.

It's a testament to our strength. And it amazes me. And it reminds me that I have to respect this wonderful biological machine. Since I can't change my wakeup time (for now at least), I have to turn off the computer and force myself to go to bed at 8:30 some nights. It's worth it.

In the meantime, I raise my cup of coffee to you, my fellow short-sleeping zombies. We'll make it through. And if we don't, then it's like they say—we'll sleep when we're dead.

Spam? I Don't Know Whether to Be Annoyed or Flattered

Image credit: almostsavvy.com

Apparently, Edit This Blog, which is a week shy of 3 years old, finally got enough web traffic to attract spammers.

In the past week or two, I've had 3 spam comments, which of course I deleted. They typically include some generic "nice blog post" remark followed by a link back to their own site (I assume so, anyway; I'm not about to give them the satisfaction of clicking on it).

As annoying as spam is, I find it hilarious that my humble little blog is actually getting spammed.

PSA, spammers: I think my readership may be, like, 25 people. Run along now and spam some blog that's actually a big deal. You're welcome!

Why Adam Weinstein's Rage Gives Me Hope

By now you've probably seen this Huffington Post article, seeing as how it's been "liked" on Facebook nearly a million times:

Why Generation Y Yuppies Are Unhappy

Basically the article says Generation Y is unhappy because they were raised to feel that they were "special" and entitled to an awesome life, and that attitude recently collided with the Great Recession. Here's a quote that sums it all up:

Paul Harvey, a University of New Hampshire professor... finds that Gen Y has "unrealistic expectations and a strong resistance toward accepting negative feedback," and "an inflated view of oneself." He says that "a great source of frustration for people with a strong sense of entitlement is unmet expectations. They often feel entitled to a level of respect and rewards that aren't in line with their actual ability and effort levels."

You may also have seen this rebuttal by Adam Weinstein:

Fuck You. I'm Gen Y, and I Don't Feel Special or Entitled, Just Poor.

Gen Y Is Not the Problem, And Not the Point

I think the Huff Post article makes a good point. Thwarted expectations are the root cause of much of the anger, sadness, and disappointment in human existence.

But it overgeneralizes. I mean, come on, as if everybody born between the late 70s and the mid 90s is EXACTLY THE SAME.

And even if they did have unrealistic expectations at first, Gen Y has been in the workforce for quite a while now. Unpaid "internships," ridiculous corporate demands for productivity, and stagnant wages drove away the rainbows and unicorns very quickly.

You can feel that cynicism in Weinstein's rebuttal:

“Stop feeling special” is some shitty advice. I don’t feel special or entitled, just poor. ... I’ve tempered the hell out of my expectations of work... And I’m still poor and in debt... Last weekend my baby had a fever, and we contemplated taking him to the ER, and my first thought was - had to be - “Oh God, that could wipe out our bank account! Maybe he can just ride it out?” 

One commenter blasted Weinstein, accusing him of being part of "A generation that grew up with soccer games that weren't scored because we wanted everyone to feel like a winner. A generation that went to school with sliding scale grades that allowed everyone to pass every class."

Weinstein responded with rage:

I never got a trophy for participation in my life. I'm a state college grad, too. I've taught judgy head-up-rectum holier-than-thous like you. ... You want to talk to me about my entitlement? Name a streetcorner, dipshit. Better bring a friend if you have one.

I've seen plenty of debate on the topics of Generation Y and entitlement. And I've seen plenty of employees hanging on in quiet desperation through this recession.

But rarely have I seen such anger and fighting words.

I am happy to see that rage.

I'm happy because the bullshit has gone on long enough. Middle-class wages have been stagnant in America for a long time. Executives make hundreds of times what workers earn. The minimum wage is a joke. Costs for key necessities—education, health care, gasoline—have skyrocketed over the past two decades.

I have felt that pinch personally. I've worked for the past 15 months in a "temp" job with no benefits and lower pay than I was earning 3 years ago. I've been laid off twice over the past 5 years, and I cobbled together a string of contract gigs to pay the bills. During those in-between periods of unemployment, the bills piled up. Raising a family is expensive, and unstable employment is an incredible source of stress.

ALL generations are suffering in this recession. Not just Gen Y.

I can see why Weinstein and others are pissed off. They're having as much trouble as everybody else making ends meet in a depressed economy (arguably MORE trouble, since they have more student loan debt than any generation before them). Then articles like the Huff Post article add insult to injury by telling Gen Y that their misery is THEIR OWN FAULT because they didn't work hard enough and had "unrealistic expectations."

I think it's a perfectly realistic expectation to be able to feed your family and pay your rent on a full-time job. I'm glad Adam Weinstein and others in Gen Y share that expectation. And I'm glad they're mad about it:

You are welcome to work your wage slave job with more hours for less pay, but I'm sick of it and refuse to accept it. –Eshln242 

The solution to the country being fucked up is not "climb over your fellow man and grab that brass ring." It is "make the country less fucked up." And the first step to that is people standing up and saying that there is a problem. –IMissTheOldInternet 

Class warfare? Sure, I'm down... I had a conversation with a guy at the bar who was making $4 million a YEAR, and I asked him to explain to me why he should get a tax break. ... Minus all of his expenses, he nets $1.5M a year, and couldn't defend against kicking in $250k more and still net $1.25M. That, right there, I think is the problem ... the inability to come up with a rational answer to why rich people can't give a little more and still have pantsload of money and not say the equivalent of "Because!" or "I worked hard for this money". Guess what, people work just as hard as you, cupcake, and don't get paid back. –hyattch

I used to think Americans were too lazy to take to the streets about anything. Maybe Gen Y will change that. Write their own version of events. If being called "special snowflakes" fuels that fire, then maybe that Huff Post article wasn't just a bunch of tired overgeneralizations after all.

7 Thoughts About Turning 37

The author. I promise that's
not a roll of toilet paper on
the left.

I turned 37 last week. While birthdays are not a huge deal to me anymore, this one made me more reflective than others. It's kind of in the middle, you know? I'm not a spring chicken anymore, but I'm far from decrepit. It's a nice place to be, really. But it did produce a few reflections.

1. There are lines on my face now. But only when I smile. Or when the sunlight is really bright. Or when fluorescent lights are on. Oh, who am I kidding.
   
   In my 20s, I used to identify with song lyrics like:
   
        "I'm standing on the rooftop, shout it out!
        Baby, I'm ready to go!" –Republica
   
        "Hot child in the city!" –Nick Glider
   
   Nowadays I identify with song lyrics like:
   
        "The morning sun, when it's in your face,
        really shows your age." –Rod Stewart
   
        "Every time I look in the mirror, all these
        lines in my face getting clearer..." –Aerosmith
   
   
2.  

   

   The weekend ponytail. I don't care
   how gray I get, I am keeping it long
   enough for a pony, even if I look like
   Marilla from "Anne of Green Gables."

   Apparently I'm still young enough to get away with acting ditzy to get favors. In a store today, I approached a tall, handsome man standing next to a shelf, smiled up at him, and said, "Could you do me a huge favor? Would you grab one of those applesauce jars for me? I can't reach that high." He smiled back and handed me the jar.
   
   At least I think I'm still young enough. It could be that he was humoring me. Or maybe he thought I might be a cougar on the prowl. Or he was shocked by my weekend "fashion sense"—no makeup, baseball hat over my unshampooed ponytail, grubby jeans—and figured he'd get rid of me as quickly as possible before I asked him for directions back to "the home."
   
   
3. When buying alcohol, I still get carded every once in a blue moon. But I just laugh and hand them my driver's license and keep laughing while they check it, because yeah right.
   
   
4. I have a few gray hairs now. Well, not right this second. Because I pulled them all out. Just a few have made their appearance so far, and I'm still in that delusional phase where I pluck them. But it's only a matter of time before they return with vengeful armies of their peers, bent on total conquest of my scalp.
   
   The gray hairs first appeared sometime in my mid-30s. I can't remember my exact age, but it was shortly after I had kids. That's what's known as NOT a coincidence.
   
   
5.  

   

   Image credit: wesly.org

   I'm a prime number now, baby! This fills my inner math geek with delight.
   
   
6. It's absolutely true what they say about your 30s. They are better than your 20s, because you still look pretty good but you're tons more confident. Translation: you look pretty good with the right makeup and ambient lighting, but it doesn't matter because you don't really give a crap what people think anyway.
   
   
7. My dad visited this weekend. He said, "Thirty-seven. Boy, that sounds young." And that gave me pause. Because it's all relative. When I was a kid, 37 sounded ancient. To my dad, now in his 60s, it sounds like youth.
   
   I like this middle place. I can see back, and I can look forward. I like where I've been, and I like where I'm at now. I'd say I'm looking forward to my future, but I don't want to jinx myself. Uh-oh... is a superstitious nature a sign of aging? Ciao, ya'll... I need to go apply my anti-wrinkle cream.

Why I Love the Movie "Brave"

Image credit: pixar.wikia.com

My 4-year-old daughter, Maggie, loves the movie Brave. And when I say "loves," I mean "is borderline obsessed with." We've watched it so many times, I could probably recite the script from memory.

While watching the film, Maggie rides her toy horse and pretends to shoot arrows from a "bow" made from two pens. She acts out the rock-climbing scene by scaling our couch and perching precariously on its arm, her own arms stretched triumphantly toward the ceiling as she shouts "Woo-hoooooo!" just like the movie's main character.

I thought the movie was a little silly at first (it is a kids' movie, after all, and I'm old and cranky and cynical). But it has grown on me.

Here's what I love.

1. Merida's insanely curly hair. It's the classic symbol of the free-spirited woman who will not be tamed (except by her own choice, of course). Merida follows in the footsteps of Carrie Bradshaw, Hermione Grainger, Claire Randall from Outlander, Skeeter from The Help, and many others.

Merida is the first Disney princess to rock unruly curls. As a naturally curly girl myself, I love that. You'd think that distinction might have belonged to Tiana, Disney's only African-American princess, but Tiana's curls were always pulled back. And the half-hearted waves on  Esmeralda and Belle are not "curls" by any stretch.

Check out this great piece from Pixar's blog. Who knew it's even harder to manage curly hair in pixels than in real life?

Merida has more than 1500 individually sculpted, curly red strands that generate about 111,700 total hairs. Brenda Chapman insisted upon Merida having such curly hair, which was very difficult to create. Claudia Chung, the simulation superviser, said, "We've never seen anything like Merida's curly hair. Technically, that was incredibly hard to achieve." ... The results were so pleasing that they used the program to create all the other hair in the film, from Angus's fur to the triplet's hairstyles. It took three years and left them only six months to finish the rest of their work on the film. 

2. The 10th-century Scotland setting. Watching this movie has opened up all kinds of conversations with my daughter about history, social customs, and language. My 4-year-old can now explain phrases like "will-o-the-wisp" and "stuff her gob."

Maggie is too young for some of the conversations we could have. As she gets older, I hope we can talk about why it was considered important for Merida to get married in that time and place. And why Merida's mom insisted on teaching her geography, music, and public speaking, even though those lessons bored Merida at the time. And which of Merida's actions were truly brave. And what both Merida and her mother learned from their adventures, and from their mistakes.

3. Merida's independent spirit. She's bold, energetic, outspoken, tomboyish, and thrill-seeking. For me, her spiritedness makes her a thousand times easier to relate to than any other Disney princess.

Merida comes right out and declares that she's not ready to get married because she wants her freedom. "I don't want my life to be over," she says. It's hard to explain just how refreshing that is. It makes her pretty unique not only among Disney heroines, but among female movie characters, period.

She's one of the only Disney protagonists who doesn't have a love interest (Sulley from Monsters, Inc. and Remy from Ratatouille being the others). Sure, by the end she's more open to the idea of marriage, and she flirts with boys from the other clans. But it was her choice, and it was not the focus of the movie. What a nice change from the standard love story.

4. The bits of dark humor. Like when Merida's mom is saying, "A princess should be compassionate!", and right behind her, a cook lops off a chicken's head. Thanks, Pixar and Disney, for throwing in little winks for the parents' benefit. It makes it a lot easier to sit through the movie for the 147th time.