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More proof that sports writing (and, apparently, sports editing) is the ultimate job for the inane: ESPN.com’s Greg Garber.

In an article about placekickers, Garber discusses Adam Vinatieri’s impressive stats for game-winning field goals:

He hit the winner in Super Bowl XXXVI, a 40-yarder as time expired, to give the Patriots a 20-17 victory over the St. Louis Rams. It was the first time a Super Bowl ended on the last play.

Actually, all 40 Super Bowls “ended on the last play.”

[Aside: I know that the first two Super Bowls were not originally called Super Bowls, but the name was there from the start, the NFL renamed the first two games as Super Bowls and the freakin' Super Bowl trophy is named after the guy who won those first two games, so as far as I am concerned, you can leave your nit-picking out of it and let me carry on with my own.]

What Garber meant to say, of course, is the kick marked the first time a Super Bowl was won by scoring on the last play.

Given that we’ve already established that intellect is not requisite in sports writing, I’ll let Garber have a pass, since the article is otherwise a good work and I’ve made many a gaffe along that line when spewing forth words on deadline.

What’s sad is that one would assume this article was edited prior to publication.

Actually, that reminds me of a time in college, where I used to edit the student newspaper. We wound up publishing a story, which I had edited, that contained a glaring error.

I can’t remember who wrote the story, what it was about or the error we made, except a general feeling that it was a doozy, right up there with “Dewey Defeats Truman.”

I do, however, clearly recollect my excuse for allowing the error through. I said, “I wasn’t reading it, I was editing it.”

Having spent over 15 years of my life editing copy, ranging from the work of student journalists to some of the finest writers in Maine to some of the worst writers in Hawaii to the absolutely incomprehensible drivel that is the milieu of letters to the editor, I can assure you there is a huge difference between proofreading and fact-checking.

The Essence of Editing Professional Work: Diction, Syntax, Punctuation

When you edit the work of professional writers, especially those who have been with you for a while, you don’t expect it to be wrong (because writers who are wrong consistently are consistently fired). You generally are looking for diction, syntax and punctuation errors.

That’s especially true when you edit work for a newspaper or magazine. They use a standard writing style so that moving from one story to the next isn’t an alarming change of pace.

So, you get bogged down with tasks such as checking for embarrassing homophones, changing towards to toward or like to such as, removing extraneous commas and putting to lowercase all the wrongly capitalized words.

[Aside: In American English, the word is toward; in the Queen's English, it's towards. The Associated Press Stylebook says commas never appear before the final item in a list or before a conjunction; I take a softer approach than that but generally agree. You use such as to provide an example and like to make a direct comparison: "I am envious of prolific authors, such as Stephen King. If only I could turn out copy like he does." The AP Stylebook says that titles are lowercased, unless they are used as part of a person's name. So the following are all correct: "I met President George Bush." "I met the president, George Bush." "George Bush is the president." "As a president, George Bush doesn't measure up to his dad." (End of sermon.)]

[Another aside: One of my favorite homophone blunders to make it to print was from the Kennebec Journal many years ago. A collegue had written a story about how people would go and pick through their neighbors' trash when the special, "throw-out-anything" collections take place. A sentence in that story noted one person who was paticularly pleased by the "vice" he picked up.]

Of course, for the most part, things such as punctuation errors and diction gaffes are minutiae (although arrogant old biddies with too much time and too little to do love to write letters to the editor pointing them out). It takes a different kind of focus to spot those than to spot factual errors, especially if you are used to editing someone’s work.

When you get used to editing a paticular writing style, it has a rhythm in your head, which makes things such as syntax or punctuation problems more pronouced, but which also means you don’t read it closely. I imagine it’s similar to a mechanic who works on the same kind of car all the time; he listens to an engine and can tell when something is wrong, just from the sounds it makes; but unless it’s making an unusual sound, he doesn’t suspect anything is wrong.

The Essence Of Editing Non-Professional Work: Scrubbing Grout

When I edited letters to the editor, it took a long time for several reasons. As a result, generally speaking, the letters — once published — were better works than the editorials or columns.

Most people don’t write clearly, so you have to clean up many letters to make them comprehensible. Then, you need to troll them for libel or utter nonsense.

[Aside: When I was editing letters, my basic attitude was as long as what you said was cogent, you could say anything you want. However, the newspapers added these requirements:

• Any facts you stated had to be true (I consider this unnecessary when it comes to opinion, but practical in real life)
• You couldn't attack advertisers or anything advertisers cared about (the newspaper's management will deny that, but if you look through the Kennebec Journal or Morning Sentinel, you will see no letters criticising car dealers or real estate salesmen; and believe me, on more than one occasion, I was yelled at for printing a letter that some uptight advertiser didn't like)
• You had to keep it under 250 words
• You can't thank people

Letters that thanked people, had factual errors or that might offend advertising interests were simply rejected. If a letter wasn't much over 250 words, I cut it to fit; when it was way over, I put it in the circular file.]

Finally, after you’ve made a letter comprehensible and verified it’s not full of lies, you fix any remaining syntax or diction errors and fit it to some semblance of AP style.

Notice how much more work that is than basic copy editing. Thus my excuse: “I wasn’t reading it, I was editing it.”

Back to the original point: I guess Garber can have a freebie on his gaffe, considering the low bar he normally has to clear, but his copy editor needs an excuse better than “I wasn’t reading it, I was editing it.”