substuff is now on holiday

... and won't be back until 2010.

I give all seven people who have visited the blog so far permission to take any postings occurring in the meantime as a sign of mental illness.

Mrery Chrsitsam!

Ringworm: dietary aid?

Ok ok, it's not a subbing-related post. Just daftness.
A person here unnamed just waylaid me in the kitchen to show me a small red circle on her palm, which she told me she hoped was ringworm. Because she'd heard having ringworm made you lose weight.

She clearly missed her vocation as a doctor.

1) Yuck
2) Duh!

Life of Bi

This is one of those niggly ones that crop up just infrequently enough to be forgotten.

I have gone to the oracle (The Times Style Guide), as follows:

bi
Its correct use is in Latin compounds, where it has the force of two, not half, such as bicentenary/bicentennial (a two-hundredth anniversary), or biennial (recurring every two years). Biannual means twice a year; to avoid confusion, write out twice a year.

Biweekly, meanwhile, is even stickier. According to Oxford, it can mean twice weekly or every two weeks. Best to steer clear and go for fortnightly and twice weekly, methinks.

Just deserts

A big thank you to Sally Baker, feedback editor at The Times – article here.

Well I never! It is "just deserts", not "just desserts", as I had always assumed, meaning "that which is deserved".

Now to slip that into a festive party conversation or two. Possibly when the desserts come out. Should ensure I have rather more free time on my hands come next December...

Oh, and... courtesy of Trog, an example of great subbing and temporal confusion, courtesy of the Times Online.

The 50 Biggest Movies of 2009
Our selection of the fifty most exciting blockbuster films for the year ahead

The present perfect and the past simple

Ohhhh yes, Kitty and The Bastard. I have lured you here with the promise of bitchiness and lexical self-congratulation. But now I am going to bang on about grammar. Yes!

The present perfect:
profits have risen this year
Kit has eaten six mince pies today... so far...
Someone has scribbled all over this in red
(the period of time is not yet finished, or very recently finished)

The past simple:
Profits rose last year
I ate three doughnuts yesterday
Someone scribbled all over it in red, but I've sorted it out now
(the period of time is finished)

That's all. Perfectly simple. :-)

The Craven

Once upon a Thursday dreary, press day making journos weary, Looming deadlines bringing holes in many stories to the fore, While I nodded, nearly napping, from behind there came some flapping, "What's going on here, what is happ'ning, happ'ning on this press day morn?" 'tis but muttering,' said I, `tis but stuttering - Only this, and nothing more.' Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December, And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon page four. Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow From photo library of sorrow - sorrow for the lost picture - Longed-for shot of Johnnie Walker that would make the story richer - Make it glow for evermore. At an hour before the deadline, subs were struggling for a headline With the copy they were meddling, over typos they did pore Vainly, deeply, did they wonder, why that face was set like thunder Had they made some grammar blunder on a page they saw before? “Christ, this really is a bore.” Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer, 'Subs,' said I, 'and hacks, truly your forgiveness I implore; But the fact is Chief was napping, you see his strength is sapping, At his keyboard he's not tapping, not tapping at his copy poor, To those deadlines please bid adieu' - here I opened wide the door; - 'Don't hold your breath for that page four'

Confessions of a sub-editor

I am a sub-editor and I love it. I love the spellings, the grammar and the punctuation - and nothing makes me laugh more than a damn good typo. Or the time my Japanese friend emailed me that his colleagues were giving him a shit.

This is a blog for my glamorous and esteemed colleagues Kit and The Bastard, and for anyone of an equally nerdy leaning.

Today I have only two offerings. The first, musings on love and its relationship with convenience retailing:

[Famous retail chain's] head of marketing support, [let's protect his name], says he now aims to build up a communications message as the shopper progresses through the store, a process that he likens to dating. “It starts with teasing and results, hopefully, in closure,” he says.

And the second, a crystal-clear conclusion:

With better research and more sophisticated techniques being applied by a greater range of companies, there are plenty of reasons to argue that price is far from the only trick left to distract the post-recession consumer focus on price.

Enjoy, if you dare.