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Just been sent this Giles Coren thing - thought I'd share with MN :) (Can't decide whether to applaud or stick pins in him)

227 replies

JustineMumsnet · 23/07/2008 23:40

As sent to Times subs...

Chaps,
I am mightily pissed off. I have addressed this to Owen, Amanda and Ben
because I don't know who i am supposed to be pissed off with (i'm assuming
owen, but i filed to amanda and ben so it's only fair), and also to Tony,
who wasn't here - if he had been I'm guessing it wouldn't have happened.
I don't really like people tinkering with my copy for the sake of
tinkering. I do not enjoy the suggestion that you have a better ear or eye
for how I want my words to read than I do. Owen, we discussed your turning
three of my long sentences into six short ones in a single piece, and how
that wasn't going to happen anymore, so I'm really hoping it wasn't you
that fucked up my review on saturday.
It was the final sentence. Final sentences are very, very important. A
piece builds to them, they are the little jingle that the reader takes with
him into the weekend.
I wrote: "I can't think of a nicer place to sit this spring over a glass of
rosé and watch the boys and girls in the street outside smiling gaily to
each other, and wondering where to go for a nosh."
it appeared as: "I can't think of a nicer place to sit this spring over a
glass of rosé and watch the boys and girls in the street outside smiling
gaily to each other, and wondering where to go for nosh."
There is no length issue. This is someone thinking "I'll just remove this
indefinite article because Coren is an illiterate cunt and i know best".
Well, you fucking don't.
This was shit, shit sub-editing for three reasons.

  1. 'Nosh', as I'm sure you fluent Yiddish speakers know, is a noun formed
    from a bastardisation of the German 'naschen'. It is a verb, and can be
    construed into two distinct nouns. One, 'nosh', means simply 'food'. You
    have decided that this is what i meant and removed the 'a'. I am insulted
    enough that you think you have a better ear for English than me. But a
    better ear for Yiddish? I doubt it. Because the other noun, 'nosh' means "a
    session of eating" - in this sense you might think of its dual valency as
    being similar to that of 'scoff'. you can go for a scoff. or you can buy
    some scoff. the sentence you left me with is shit, and is not what i meant.
    Why would you change a sentnece aso that it meant something i didn't mean?
    I don't know, but you risk doing it every time you change something. And
    the way you avoid this kind of fuck up is by not changing a word of my copy
    without asking me, okay? it's easy. Not. A. Word. Ever.
  2. I will now explain why your error is even more shit than it looks. You
    see, i was making a joke. I do that sometimes. I have set up the street as
    "sexually-charged". I have described the shenanigans across the road at
    G.A.Y.. I have used the word 'gaily' as a gentle nudge. And "looking for a
    nosh" has a secondary meaning of looking for a blowjob. Not specifically
    gay, for this is soho, and there are plenty of girls there who take money
    for noshing boys. "looking for nosh" does not have that ambiguity. the joke
    is gone. I only wrote that sodding paragraph to make that joke. And you've
    fucking stripped it out like a pissed Irish plasterer restoring a
    renaissance fresco and thinking jesus looks shit with a bear so plastering
    over it. You might as well have removed the whole paragraph. I mean,
    fucking christ, don't you read the copy?
  3. And worst of all. Dumbest, deafest, shittest of all, you have removed
    the unstressed 'a' so that the stress that should have fallen on "nosh" is
    lost, and my piece ends on an unstressed syllable. When you're winding up a
    piece of prose, metre is crucial. Can't you hear? Can't you hear that it is
    wrong? It's not fucking rocket science. It's fucking pre-GCSE scansion. I
    have written 350 restaurant reviews for The Times and i have never ended on
    an unstressed syllable. Fuck. fuck, fuck, fuck.
    I am sorry if this looks petty (last time i mailed a Times sub about the
    change of a single word i got in all sorts of trouble) but i care deeply
    about my work and i hate to have it fucked up by shit subbing. I have been
    away, you've been subbing joe and hugo and maybe they just file and fuck
    off and think "hey ho, it's tomorrow's fish and chips" - well, not me. I
    woke up at three in the morning on sunday and fucking lay there, furious,
    for two hours. weird, maybe. but that's how it is.
    It strips me of all confidence in writing for the magazine. No
    exaggeration. i've got a review to write this morning and i really don't
    feel like doing it, for fear that some nuance is going to be removed from
    the final line, the pay-off, and i'm going to have another weekend ruined
    for me.
    I've been writing for The Times for 15 years and i have never asked this
    before - i have never asked it of anyone i have written for - but I must
    insist, from now on, that i am sent a proof of every review i do, in pdf
    format, so i can check it for fuck-ups. and i must be sent it in good time
    in case changes are needed. It is the only way i can carry on in the job.
    And, just out of interest, I'd like whoever made that change to email me
    and tell me why. Tell me the exact reasoning which led you to remove that
    word from my copy.
    Right,
    Sorry to go on. Anger, real steaming fucking anger can make a man verbose.
    All the best
    Giles
OP posts:
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Sobernow · 25/07/2008 16:56

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

bagsforlife · 25/07/2008 18:15

I thought I read an article a few months ago that said he had 'come out' and was gay, but haven't heard anything since, so is he or isn't he? (not that it makes any difference to the pedantry).

He always used to go on about his girlfriend in his restaurant reviews but haven't read any recently (stopped taking the Times).

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cornsilk · 25/07/2008 18:55

He's gay? I thought he was engaged to the girlfriend he went on about in just about every review. I clearly must be missing his very clever sub text.

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thumbwitch · 26/07/2008 22:39

he he, thanks for the link, Cappuccino - love Eddie Izzard!!

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MrsJohnCusack · 26/07/2008 23:22

am PMSL ast boysarelikedogs - "I want Hammond for my key ring"

very good

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edam · 26/07/2008 23:40

Wow. He really is a very precious bunny indeed, isn't he? Really don't think his gay subtext is clever or funny enough to be worth so much angst.

I'm with MI - hand my copy over to the subs, collect cheque, move on to the next job.

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BoysAreLikeDogs · 26/07/2008 23:42

He would be perfick to jangle my keys from.

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PortAndLemon · 26/07/2008 23:56

Just reading his passage that was nominated for the Bad Sex Award. Hmmm.

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BoysAreLikeDogs · 27/07/2008 00:01

My eyes, my eyes.

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motherinferior · 27/07/2008 11:29

I broke it to some rather fabulous contributors last week that - through no fault of theirs - the copy they'd written wasn't going to be run. (Supplement, advertising, credit crunch, yada yada yada.) They seemed remarkably able to stand this, given that their cheques were in the post

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LoveAndSqualor · 27/07/2008 11:52

As a sub and a journo, I'm with MI (and the Times subs) - write it, file it, shut the feck up. Happy for people to do what they like with what I've written, and more than happy to do what I want with something someone's filed to me. Had a looooong correspondence not so long ago with an irate chump wordsmith, whose purple prose I'd reconfigured. Suck it up, was the gist of my emails.

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motherinferior · 27/07/2008 11:56

TBH, I write a piece every week for a trade mag which gets slightly butchered each week. I trouser the money. I have a living to earn.

I also work with some subs who do - Giles, are you reading me - collar me and point out that I have written absolute gibberish and what, please, does this mean; and/or who translate said gibberish into fluent prose. It's called editing.

And boy oh boy have I myself edited some complete gibberish into coherent prose in my time...

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Carmenere · 27/07/2008 12:01

Personally I am just grateful if I get re-commissioned, seeing as there about 100 other journos who could do what I do probably better ready, willing and able.
Nobody is irreplaceable Giles.

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motherinferior · 27/07/2008 12:12

I did once lose it with a mag years ago - I was writing a piece about autism, and I'd made it very clear on the copy that the word 'sufferers' was NOT to be used, and the subs did edit it in, and I felt I had to make the point. But I'd stressed that wasn't just my personal preference, and I'd marked it on the actual copy to be edited.

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FlossieTCake · 27/07/2008 22:31

Kudos to MP for sneaking this into the talk round-up . thoroughly enjoyed.

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margoandjerry · 27/07/2008 22:42

I had to read the sentences several times to work out what had changed but while I was trying to spot the missing word I was thinking "What a poorly crafted sentence".

He obviously thinks he's Nabokov - Nobokov more like. And he's shaky on commas too I'd say.

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thumbwitch · 28/07/2008 00:50

as a sub-editor, I got v.cross with some idiot person in the production team who kept buggerin up my nicely sub-edited articles by running them through Microsoft grammar check and inserting tons of spurious commas. I mightily got the arse after I had to write about 4 times for every page "remove spurious comma" and suggested in no uncertain terms that she leave the subbing to me as it was my job and I knew what I was doing far better than sodding Microsoft! However, I said it far more politely than that to her - she obviously didn't know any better and she desisted from use of said shite program after my request.

And I hadn't even written most of the articles!

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1dilemma · 28/07/2008 01:15

this is soo funny!
SO those o us who aren't journos are subs!!
Seriously you all are

(1dilemma checks she's not wondered onto the journalist thread by mistake)

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mrsshackleton · 28/07/2008 12:08

I come in contact with GC more often than I would like.
He is the most self-important person I have ever met with a vile, vile temper. All his girlfriends dump him when the penny drops that he may be reasonably famous but he is an arse.
There are definite ishoos there - connected with I know not what but a long spell on a shrink's couch would be my advice.
His glowering picture byline is hilarious, in rl he is short and looks like an extra from lord of the rings
I think his emails are appalling, I understand why he is upset with the sub editors but why be so gratuitously rude. It's just showing off his brilliance. Disliked him before, dislike him a lot more now.

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BoysAreLikeDogs · 28/07/2008 12:09

har har at nobokov, margo

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motherinferior · 28/07/2008 16:24

Our subs have just taken out my Mrs Doyle reference, dammit. Should I go over and strop?

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penguinaballerina · 29/07/2008 21:51

He does swear a lot, doesn't he?

Collins English Dictionary defines nosh as follows:

  1. ~n. Food or a meal. 2. ~vb. To eat.


So it is correct with or without an "a".

Speaking as a copy editor, if I was editing that article I probably would have left the "a" in.

But to make such a fuss about the rhythm and metre, anyone would think he was writing an epic poem, not a restaurant review! It will be lining tomorrow's wastepaper bin!
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Cappuccino · 30/07/2008 09:34

I just read that bad sex link and it made me feel rather ill

how can a dick 'clatter'? Are some of them made of tin? Why wasn't I aware of this?

I don't think I would shag Giles Coren now that there is the possibility of his dick being made of tin

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SugarGlider · 28/09/2008 16:02

And now this. Is it wrong to snigger?

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LadyGlencoraPalliser · 29/09/2008 19:15

God he really is up his own arse isn't he? I saw this in the Guardian today.

Asked how he felt about the spoof, in which Hitler is a chief sub-editor who learns that Coren's copy has been altered, the journalist said: 'I'm fluent in German, so watching it with subtitles is not quite as funny for me as for everybody else. There was a time when an Englishman could speak fluent French and German, but I suppose the YouTube generation spends its time doing this instead. It would be funny for me if it was in Russian.' But he went on to concede that he 'laughed a lot' at the video.

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