Vegas & The Aftermath - Diary

[tikay]

LittleMissC mentioned PokerNews, which reminded me.....

Did anyone see the absolutely superb interview with Neil Channing in PokerNews? One of the best interviews I've ever read - Neil speaks so well. He speaks quite slowly, but makes his thoughts very clear. He told me it was an old interview plucked from the PokerNews website, which sort of adds up.

I was chatting to Neil last week, & congratulated him on the interview content, but I could not resist asking him one question.

He had been talking about a big Televised Cash-Game, & described the commentator as "the second-worst TV commentator ever". And I was just a tinsy-winsy bit worried as to who he thought the worst was.......

The "second-worst", according to Neil, is GreekFish.

"You don't get on?" I ventured.

"No no, that's not the case at all, I like him a lot. Because he is a bad commentator does not make him a bad man, he's a good guy, & I like him a lot".

Neil is an incredibly intelligent man.

I quite enjoy PokerNews. Lots of pictures - that's good - but the typos & poor English in some parts of it drives me absolutely nuts.

In one recent article, there was a sub-headline, being a quote from the actual article. The sub-headline was wrong, it was just wrong. I looked up the original part of the article from which it had been copied, (on the very same page!) & that was perfectly correct. So it had been directly copied from the interview - & still misquoted!

It's far & away the best poker mag out there, imo, but those typos drive me insane, I must confess.

I also enjoy Barry Carter's pieces in PokerNews, too, he writes pretty well, but one recent edition had 17 - seventeen! - pieces by him!

Still, as you can infer, I read the thing from cover to cover every month, & that's the only Poker Mag I can do that with.

Young Mr Rutter writes very well in it, to, as does my blonde & APAT colleague Rich Prew.

[AlexMartin]

LittleMissC mentioned PokerNews, which reminded me.....

Did anyone see the absolutely superb interview with Neil Channing in PokerNews? One of the best interviews I've ever read - Neil speaks so well. He speaks quite slowly, but makes his thoughts very clear. He told me it was an old interview plucked from the PokerNews website, which sort of adds up.

I was chatting to Neil last week, & congratulated him on the interview content, but I could not resist asking him one question.

He had been talking about a big Televised Cash-Game, & described the commentator as "the second-worst TV commentator ever". And I was just a tinsy-winsy bit worried as to who he thought the worst was.......

The "second-worst", according to Neil, is GreekFish.

"You don't get on?" I ventured.

"No no, that's not the case at all, I like him a lot. Because he is a bad commentator does not make him a bad man, he's a good guy, & I like him a lot".

Neil is an incredibly intelligent man.

I quite enjoy PokerNews. Lots of pictures - that's good - but the typos & poor English in some parts of it drives me absolutely nuts.

In one recent article, there was a sub-headline, being a quote from the actual article. The sub-headline was wrong, it was just wrong. I looked up the original part of the article from which it had been copied, (on the very same page!) & that was perfectly correct. So it had been directly copied from the interview - & still misquoted!

It's far & away the best poker mag out there, imo, but those typos drive me insane, I must confess.

I also enjoy Barry Carter's pieces in PokerNews, too, he writes pretty well, but one recent edition had 17 - seventeen! - pieces by him!

Still, as you can infer, I read the thing from cover to cover every month, & that's the only Poker Mag I can do that with.

Young Mr Rutter writes very well in it, to, as does my blonde & APAT colleague Rich Prew.

deffo a good mag, still needs a proof-reader though. Tighty should give it a final once-over imo.

[TightEnd]

lol no comment.

My sections are accurate when sent!

[tikay]

LittleMissC mentioned PokerNews, which reminded me.....

Did anyone see the absolutely superb interview with Neil Channing in PokerNews? One of the best interviews I've ever read - Neil speaks so well. He speaks quite slowly, but makes his thoughts very clear. He told me it was an old interview plucked from the PokerNews website, which sort of adds up.

I was chatting to Neil last week, & congratulated him on the interview content, but I could not resist asking him one question.

He had been talking about a big Televised Cash-Game, & described the commentator as "the second-worst TV commentator ever". And I was just a tinsy-winsy bit worried as to who he thought the worst was.......

The "second-worst", according to Neil, is GreekFish.

"You don't get on?" I ventured.

"No no, that's not the case at all, I like him a lot. Because he is a bad commentator does not make him a bad man, he's a good guy, & I like him a lot".

Neil is an incredibly intelligent man.

I quite enjoy PokerNews. Lots of pictures - that's good - but the typos & poor English in some parts of it drives me absolutely nuts.

In one recent article, there was a sub-headline, being a quote from the actual article. The sub-headline was wrong, it was just wrong. I looked up the original part of the article from which it had been copied, (on the very same page!) & that was perfectly correct. So it had been directly copied from the interview - & still misquoted!

It's far & away the best poker mag out there, imo, but those typos drive me insane, I must confess.

I also enjoy Barry Carter's pieces in PokerNews, too, he writes pretty well, but one recent edition had 17 - seventeen! - pieces by him!

Still, as you can infer, I read the thing from cover to cover every month, & that's the only Poker Mag I can do that with.

Young Mr Rutter writes very well in it, to, as does my blonde & APAT colleague Rich Prew.

deffo a good mag, still needs a proof-reader though. Tighty should give it a final once-over imo.

You are not wrong. It would only take an hour to proof-read the whole thing! Very odd. But a great read, & I like it.

[AndrewT]

I find they add a little extra game when reading, find the errors.

A bit like a Where's Wally book, except every page is just a sea of guys in red and white stripey jumpers.

The August issue was a classic - I wondered how long it would be until there was an error if I started reading from the beginning.

I managed one word.

The very first sentence of the Editor's introduction began something like "Augusts' issue"...

[tikay]

lol no comment.

My sections are accurate when sent!

And are printed accurately - being C & P from your original, I imagine. As are those of Mr Carter & Mr Rutter.

It's prob just me, & I'm not having a pop.

It's all about detail, & standards.

Listen to Radio 2, or Radio Five, and the hourly or half-hourly news bulletins are always a minute or two late. Listen to Radio 4, or watch BBC1 & they are correct, to the second.

Sky Sports start sports programmes "to the second".

DTD start their Tourneys on time - to the second. Luton do the same now, too. APAT & Sky Poker Tourneys, ditto.

It's all about being professional, & an obsession with detail. It costs exactly the same to do things properly.

PS - What an arsehole I must have been for my staff (when I was working properly) to cope with.

But right is right.

[tikay]

I find they add a little extra game when reading, find the errors.

A bit like a Where's Wally book, except every page is just a sea of guys in red and white stripey jumpers.

The August issue was a classic - I wondered how long it would be until there was an error if I started reading from the beginning.

I managed one word.

The very first sentence of the Editor's introduction began something like "Augusts' issue"...

Yes, I saw that, too! I'm glad I'm not the only one who is so intrigued by it.

But I confess, a bunch of us, while waiting for a Tourney to start at Luton, have a regular monthly competition. Someone has to nominate a page number, then we have to count the typos & grammatical errors.

I did discuss the whole subject with the Editor a while back, just trying to be helpful & constructive, but I think my comments were misconstrued.

[tikay]

Stat-Attack.

After Jamie O'Hara was sent off last night, Spurs now have more Red-Cards this season than Points.

Right, I must disappear for an hour. I've got a long & painful e-Mail to write, groan.

[Chompy]

Nothing more annoying than sub-standard editorial staff/proofreaders. I always double check my weekly copy to a certain paper and they always manage to butcher it.
This made me avoid sending the copy over until closer to deadline time but that only made things worse. Photos that don't match the copy, key paras that I'd never written, etc. Grrrr

[AndrewT]

Nothing more annoying than sub-standard editorial staff/proofreaders. I always double check my weekly copy to a certain paper and they always manage to butcher it.
This made me avoid sending the copy over until closer to deadline time but that only made things worse. Photos that don't match the copy, key paras that I'd never written, etc. Grrrr

Chompy reveals his true identity to be Giles Coren.

[tikay]

Nothing more annoying than sub-standard editorial staff/proofreaders. I always double check my weekly copy to a certain paper and they always manage to butcher it.
This made me avoid sending the copy over until closer to deadline time but that only made things worse. Photos that don't match the copy, key paras that I'd never written, etc. Grrrr

Chompy reveals his true identity to be Giles Coren.

Oh Andrew, I LOVE YOU.

That article is so good, I shall ruminate on it (about it?) for hours.

In fact, I shall reproduce it in full. That is just so good!

[tikay]

WARNING - Offensive language.

Letter in The Guardian.

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 ***** 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

[AndrewT]

Yeah, Giles got a lot of stick from some people for flying off the handle about a single indefinite article being edited out of his, er, article, but those people are idiots. They don't seem to realise that he was 100% correct.

[Rod Paradise]

Yeah, Giles got a lot of stick from some people for flying off the handle about a single indefinite article being edited out of his, er, article, but those people are idiots. They don't seem to realise that he was 100% correct.

The idiots' reply was pretty good as well though, I get their point too.

SWEARY WORD WARNING.

Reply.

Sunday Times subeditors reply to Giles Corenguardian.co.uk, Tuesday July 29 2008 15.58 BST
Article history
Dear Giles,

Sub-editing is a noble profession. It is also a thankless one - particularly when your writers call you a "useless *****".

There was a sharp intake of breath when your e-mail hit the inbox of subs throughout the industry this week - that was after we'd stopped laughing. Not that we didn't think you had a point. Yes, tinkering with copy just for the sake of it and without consultation is wrong. It is disrespectful and arrogant. And we can see why you'd be furious at the loss even of an indefinite article.

There is nothing more irritating than a sub-editor who thinks they know better than a writer, particularly one who cares deeply about his work. But did you really have to be so rude?

Laura Barton stated in Friday's Guardian that there's "something of a long-standing tension between writers and sub-editors". Do you wonder why? Contrary to your belief, we don't "believe we know best when we know fuck all".

If you could only see the state of some of the raw copy we have to knock into shape. It's badly structured, poorly spelt, appallingly punctuated, lazily researched. We're not saying your writing falls into that category - on the contrary, your journalism is highly accomplished. Never having worked on your copy, we can only take your word for it that it is beyond improvement in its pre-published state. Strange as it may seem, many writers do not possess your grasp of language; indeed it is sometimes difficult to believe that English is their mother tongue, and they don't give a damn about what they produce because they know that a good, often highly educated sub-editor will correct it, check it and turn it into readable prose.

None of this, however, can excuse your nasty, bullying, "know your place, you insignificant little fuckwit" e-mail. Yes, it's funny, in a way that pieces that use "fuck", "shit" and "*****" so liberally often can be, but, please - someone made a mistake. They surely had no intention of sabotaging your deathless prose. So you don't like what happened to your piece - have a word with your editor. The hapless sub will no doubt already have been soundly thrashed and had their dictionary privileges removed.

Some years ago, a colleague of ours had a T-shirt printed up with the legend "xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxx is a *****" on the front, which he wore every week when having to deal with the writer to whom it referred, because he, like you, became so disproportionately abusive when his use of language was questioned. We'd hate that to happen to you, because you can actually write, and having "Giles Coren is a sanctimonious little twat who needs to get over himself" could be quite costly in T-shirt lettering. Subs are no more infallible than writers. So, let's all try a little mutual respect, shall we?

All the best,

Mia Aimaro Ogden
Joanna Duckworth
Senior sub-editors, The Sunday Times

[tikay]

Nothing more annoying than sub-standard editorial staff/proofreaders. I always double check my weekly copy to a certain paper and they always manage to butcher it.
This made me avoid sending the copy over until closer to deadline time but that only made things worse. Photos that don't match the copy, key paras that I'd never written, etc. Grrrr

I never knew you wrote articles - may I ask upon which subject?

No, let me guess.

Gambling? Greyhounds? Trichology?