apocope: The loss of one or more sounds from the end of a word, as in Modern English sing from Middle English singen.

I thought the piece was really funny, but I seem to be in a minority.

BTW, that hourly rate is depressingly low. That's what I used to bill in the early 1980s. Is that really still the going rate in New York? Yikes!

Greg, the mismatch between skills and compensation is as bad as ever.

Attention to detail has always been one of The Onion's great (and underappreciated) strengths, I think. I remember one article, "37 Record-Store Clerks Feared Dead In Yo La Tengo Concert Disaster," which posited a ceiling collapse at the 40 Watt Club: Every detail of the incident was spot-on, down to the names of the record stores where the clerks worked.

(Hey, give me some credit, at least I know -- and can explain -- the difference in usage between "less" and "fewer"!)

What's usually called duct tape is a dull silver fabric tape with rubber adhesive. That stuff is very poor at sealing ducts. It is waterproof; I think that is the source of the trade name "Duck Tape".

Thus, "Use the car, which is green" means that the context has already limited things to one car, and I'm telling you it's green. "Use the car that is green" means that there are many cars you could use, and I'm telling use to use the green one.

Or, at least, that's how it was taught to me.

-J

As for the actual copy editing of the Great American Novel: Melville, of course, qualifies, of course, but I merely proofread the book. I did severely copy edit some of the wrongheaded notes the editor had added, but that's another story. If I'd been copy editing it, I would certainly have some fact-checking queries... But I think that somewhere along the line I must have done at least one GAN. Teresa knows a certain high-profile best-seller I worked on, which I'd rather not mention in this forum, but which could in a certain way qualify.

But to a true copy editor, the most important book is always the one we're working on. Two, three, many Great American Novels...

I'm not going to get into a big quibble about duck/duct tape, but I do know that in certain contexts "duck" is perfectly correct.

The article captures well a certain quintessential personality I'm all too familiar with, in both a negative and a positive way. In fact (check the photo on the link), Joanne, wherever you are, you're kinda cute. What say we have coffee sometime? I'm sure we'd have lots to talk about...

http://www.octanecreative.com/ducttape/duckvsduct.html

I once interviewed with a company that was handling an advertising account for Manco, which at that time produced Duck Tape™. My research then indicated that they were very... uh... sticky about the brand name issue. The company that owns it now seems to have a better sense of humor about it; they even sponsor a duct tape [sic] promwear competition:

http://www.ducktapeclub.com/tales/article.asp?PID=24

:-)

The company that makes Duck(R) Tape has a somewhat different -- or at least redacted -- version of the history; they note that the tape (which they refer to in the generic as "duct tape") was developed in the 1940s during WWII, but claim that in 1985 their CEO "officially [renamed] duct tape 'Duck Tape'" and created the cute little yellow duck mascot for it.

Yet another place (http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/ducttape.htm) notes that it was invented in 1942 by Johnson and Johnson, was originally called "duck tape", and the use on ducts was not the original use -- it was pressed into service for ductwork in the housing boom after the war. Further, they note that the original duck tape was olive drab; it was only after the use on ducts became popular that it was made in silver.

'Duck' is certainly not an apocope. If it WERE true that the original usage was 'duct' and the 't' was historically lost, an apocope would have occurred, but even in that (contrafactual) case, the resultant WORD would not be "an apocope."

In fact, as several have pointed out, 'duct' is a hypercorrection, and the tape became (mis)-used for sealing ducts due to Sapir-Whorf phenomena.

As Sigourney Weaver says in Galaxy Quest, "Why does it always have to be DUCTS?!"

The tape sold in hardware stores as "duct tape" is a silvery plastic film (usu. polyethylene or PVC) over a coarse nylon or polyester mesh, with a gummy adhesive that can fill small voids.

Duct tape apparently WAS invented to seal HVAC ducts - the plastic film makes it airtight, and the adhesive prevents gap leakage. (Though it turns out the plastic film ages and degrades and the adhesive dries, shrinks and cracks, so it's really not very good at sealing airducts.)

It largely replaced a previous generation of "duct tape" that was something between heavy aluminum foil and lightweight flashing, with an even thicker, gummier gap-filling adhesive - which still exists, mostly serving odd purposes in the racing and auto-body trades, but isn't much sold as duct tape any more.

(That's why "duct tape" used to always be silvery.)

"Duck Tape" (TM) the brand-name was a trademarking of the apocope of "ductape" applied to a line of duct tape in smaller rolls (and in multiple colors) aimed at the consumer market. (They have since diversified. :-)

--

Here's the odd part:

The stuff we gaffers use on stage and set and call "Gaffer's Tape" is descended from a tape created by Johnson & Johnson's Permacel division for the US military in WWII.

It's a waterproof heavy cotton canvas with a natural rubber adhesive that separates cleanly when the tape is removed. It can be torn cleanly by hand, and can be torn into narrower widths along the lenghtwise grain of the fabric. (These days some brands use a synthetic rubber adhesive for better performance and a vinyl coat over the cotton canvas fabric for improved waterproofing.)

It comes in 1, 2, 3, and 4-inch widths and a variety of colors, though black and grey are the most popular on set. Permacel is still the choice of most pros, but there are other brands.

The orginal came in 3-inch wide rolls, in Olive Drab (and... grey? white? I forget). It was officially called "waterproofing tape" and there are attested sources of GIs referring to it as "duck tape".

It can be used for most of the things people use duct tape for - and is, in fact, a better tape for most such applications.

And so "duck tape" "duct tape" and "Duct Tape" can each be correct, depending on precisely which tape you're talking about. :-)

But, as far as I can tell, Duck Tape (TM) and the GI's "duck tape" is a coincidence. And duct tape isn't descended from duck tape. :-)

How do I start a career as a copy-editor? Should I apply to an alt-weekly, or can I go from college student to real-newspaper-copy-editor in one step?

Re: compensation. The Copy Editors List (CE-L) recently discussed a job offered in Bethesda at $14/hour. One could earn more as a moderately skilled clerical temp.

When escaped from grad school in 1993 I planned to make a living copy-editing, but when I arrived in Chicago I discovered that while the Brittanica was rumored to pay a generous 18k yearly for copy editors (that's, what, $9 an hour?), just about any company out there would pay me $12 an hour to merely type on a computer. I thought, at the time, that everyone knew how to use a computer, but apparently not. Basic tech writing started at $15 an hour and so did help desk, so that was the end of my editorial ambitions.

That, and the fact that when I sent a resume to the Chicago Tribune I misspelled "proofreading." Yep. I really did. Sometimes you have to just know when to hang your head in shame and completely alter your life plans.

Nice ducts! (Brazil)

______________________________________________

Is it twisted of me to react to this thread with the thought that the nice high-paying computer engineering job I just got will allow me to afford to continue my copyediting habit?

Glen Blankenship writes:

It's a waterproof heavy cotton canvas with a natural rubber adhesive that separates cleanly when the tape is removed. It can be torn cleanly by hand, and can be torn into narrower widths along the lenghtwise grain of the fabric. (These days some brands use a synthetic rubber adhesive for better performance and a vinyl coat over the cotton canvas fabric for improved waterproofing.)

It comes in 1, 2, 3, and 4-inch widths and a variety of colors, though black and grey are the most popular on set. Permacel is still the choice of most pros, but there are other brands.

The orginal came in 3-inch wide rolls, in Olive Drab (and... grey? white? I forget). It was officially called "waterproofing tape" and there are attested sources of GIs referring to it as "duck tape".

Me, I like something called Polyken, an olive-drab, fiber-reinforced vinyl tape which holds much of our lab together. From Glen's description, it sounds like an imitation of gaffer's tape. Can be torn cleanly, etc. I haven't worked much with real gaffer's tape, which I might like better.

Alas, 25 years after I started working here, the stockroom quit stocking this tape. Instead they now give you a silver roll of something like duct (duck) tape, which just isn't the same....

Man, am I in the wrong field.

Silly me, learning how to use computers instead of putting my nitpicky habits to good use.

So how DOES one become a copyeditor? If your local paper thinks it doesn't need one and you don't know of any local publishers, that is.

Also, once you know In Design you basically know PageMaker, Illustrator, Acrobat, and a fair amount of Photoshop and GoLive, which is a good skill set just now.

fwiw.

That said, I know people who are making $7/hour (they work for the gym I go to). They all either have more than one job, or are students and primarily supported by their parents.

That's a fascinating inversion, rather like what happened to (e.g.) "pompous" or "awful". When I started working on set crews (36 years ago), 2" cloth tape that did not come off easily was called "duct tape". When the stuff you describe started to appear, it was sometimes sold as "duct tape", but we called it "quack tape", partly for the pun and partly because it bore about the relationship to real duct tape (as it was called then) as a quack does to a doctor. (We sometimes wondered whether there were any threads at all in it as it looked like the plastic was stamped to seem threaded.)

Which makes the fact that I just found a typo in one of my own emails--after I had sent it out to an English grad colleague-- particularly mortifying. I mean, I am a person who rewrites her emails before sending them, let alone more formal documents.

If it weren't compulsive behavior, it wouldn't be compulsive behavior.

The former include lots of expenses that are covered in the latter (half of FICA/Social Security, necessarily; usually various benefits like vacation, sick leave, health insurance, and more).

Corporations generally pay at least twice as much for an employee as the employee gets.

Hourly cash is not a simple measure.