On editorial butchery and epiphanic moments

by Lee Hopkins on March 21, 2006 · 0 comments

in miscellaneous

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. You can even subscribe by email! Thanks for visiting!

Donna Papacosta, sad, yesterdayThat fabulous doyenne of Torontorian communication, the Divine Miss P, has once more highlighted the importance of knowing your audience.

Using an example of beautiful sentences full of glowing words that get butchered by client managers, I can empathise. Like Donna, words for me are like a breath of one’s soul — reading back a sentence or paragraph that one has just created and that ’sings’ is indeed an almost epiphanic and certainly rapturous* moment.

It’s not about ego-stroking; it’s not about puffing oneself up with false pride… it’s about recognising a gem, a diamond, a sapphire, when one emerges God-breathed from one’s fingers or mouth.

And it’s the sadness when you either see someone else butcher it, or else you have to ‘cut’ it yourself because it just doesn’t fit. There is no greater pain for a wordsmith than to see your ‘word children’ die.


Technorati:

* perhaps not in the full, biblical ‘Book of Revelations‘ context, though…

{ 0 comments… add one now }

Leave a Comment

You can use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

Previous post: On OPML and XML and Darwinian evolution

Next post: Clippings