John McIntyre, copy editor for the Baltimore Sun and former president of the American Copy Editors Society, has created his top 25 rules of editing. These are great. I can certainly relate to number one on his list, McIntyre’s Ratio: The project will require three times the planned time to achieve one-third of the desired result.
(Another good one: 12. A thesaurus in a reporter’s hand is like a pistol in a toddler’s.)
