Error Free: Give Your Editors Some Love

Have you ever had one of those days? Your mind goes numb as you sit at the keyboard trying to figure out what to write. Your ideas are still flowing like they always do, but your fingers don't translate accurately.

Or maybe you just never did well with grammar and spelling in high school.

Either way, you write nonetheless, pouring out your heart for others to read and enjoy. Your team is the best in the country and you want everyone to know it, even if the team's record doesn't necessarily reflect their apparent dominance.

So you type and try to make sure you catch the inherent mistakes that come from writing. But you don't always catch everything.

Maybe it was a misplaced comma. Maybe you spelled "BCS" wrong. Maybe you left out a word so you accidentally said, "O.J. Found Guilty."

Who's always there, watching your back? Who moves that comma, who changes "BPS," who adds the "not" to make sure you're not libelous?

Editors.

They read the AP Stylebook (the most current edition, of course) every night before they go to bed. They walk around town with markers to correct grammatical mistakes on drive-thru signs and in store windows...or maybe not. But they fix things and improve writing, which makes them more important than we often realize.

We have a "Pick of the Day" and a five-star system to rate each other's writing. B/R, I want to know what we can do for our editors.

For now, I want to do my part to recognize the people behind the scenes that make everything we do here on B/R run a little more smoothly. 

There's a specific editor I have in mind that has watched my back, cleaned up my writing, and made my stories flow better. He's always improved what I've written, but never failed to tell me what he liked or encourage me.

Mosang Miles edits college football and college basketball and does a darn good job at it. I'm sure I'm not the only one whose mistakes he's caught and writing he's improved.

Jeff Gorman has also edited a few of my articles—and a large portion of the entire site—and also deserves a big thank you.

So give a shout-out to your editors today. Tell them that you appreciate their hard work. Give them a pat on the back. Send them a handful of cash.

And oh yeah, bug B/R about making something up to honor or rate or appreciate our editors.

On behalf of writers everywhere: We love you, editors.