Thursday, December 5, 2002

Editing Bits

Now it's time for the semi-annual, somewhat regular "Ramblings from a Copy Editor" feature. Today, I'll share a couple of my recent efforts in the headline-writing deapartment (Ooh! Ahh!). Here's a head I was pleased with:

A man, a plan, a decorated van

Atop a story about an elderly gent whose early 80s van was decorated with the names of his grandchildren and stickers from locations he and his wife visited. Another one, which received some comment, was:

Sweating to improve

It was a label-type headline, on a centerpiece about schools in the Tampa area that were doing poorly on the big state test (the Florida Coomprehensive Assessment Test, or FCAT) and were, as I said, sweating to improve.

Of the two headlines, I think the first is clearly the best. Several other editors commented to me about it as well. Yet my superiors mentioned the second. Curious.