My good friend Mr Wholesale

An Engine Room regular has suggested that Apus and I are a little too critical of the writers we work with. By way of apology, I'd like to share an anecdote showing that sub-editors are fallible too.

I was checking a page proof when I came across the sentence: "The licence was lost by Mr Meats Wholesale" - 'Mr Meats Wholesale' of course being the name of a wholesaler. However I read it as the name of a person: first name Meats, surname Wholesale.

As a result I was left wondering why Apus, who I knew had subbed the copy, had used 'Mr' before this person's name, as it isn't our house style to use titles.

Eventually I reached the conclusion that 'Meats Wholesale' could be the name of either a man or a woman, and therefore the 'Mr' was necessary to indicate the gender of this person called Meat. Well, it made sense to me...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

That gets me thinking about stupid names....

Heard of that fool who's on TV lots at the moment who's name is "Bear Grylls". That is definitely in the same league!!

JD (The Engine Room) said...

Ha ha one of my former housemates knew Bear... I think 'Bear' is a nickname, his real name is Michael (sadly)