Friday, 25 July 2008
The revenge of the sub
This isn't the first time Coren has done this type of thing. His previous victim was fellow reviewer Feargus O'Sullivan. Before that, an unfortunate magazine sub-editor caught both barrels of Coren's direct email style for altering the typographers favourite phrase, the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
According to Giles, this latest email is "ancient". Could its leaking be connected with the recent emergence of a foul-mouthed Coren caricature on twitter? This assumed-to-be poseur kept me amused this week but has now sadly (if understandably) been booted from the service.
So is this an example of the sub's (or subs') revenge? The suspect list must include Owen, Amanda, Ben and Tony from the Times' editorial team who were the apparent targets of Coren's rage.
**Update: The Times subs have responded.
Labels: Giles Coren, guardian, rants, the Times, twitter
posted by Gez at 3:46 pm
1 Comments
The holy Coren
[In a highly satirical editor's note that will no doubt leave Dan foaming at the mouth, Coren-style mad, I'd like to share a transcript of a few highlights of the letter sent by Coren.
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.He goes on to explain the correctness of the indefinite article in the context of Yiddish syntax and the puerile double entendre implied by the original phrase.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.
And then this:
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.Don't hurt me, Dan - Ed]
[Actually it's Gez. I don't know anyone called Ed]
Labels: Food Criticism, Giles Coren, restaurants, sub-editing, the Times
posted by Dan at 1:00 pm
3 Comments
Tuesday, 7 August 2007
Jeff gets grammatical
They say that each page will have “somewhat fewer words,” which is really bad editing; there are either fewer words or there aren’t; “somewhat” is meaningless and a grammatical waste of one of those precious words left behind.Imagine if we can entice this man, arguably the world's most powerful blogger, to fight for our cause.
I'm drunk with power at the very thought of it. Mwah-ha-ha!
Labels: Buzzmachine, Jeff Jarvis, the Times
posted by Gez at 10:03 am
1 Comments
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