This often means dealing with words that are misused. For instance, a boy in the United Kingdom may come home from his first day at secondary school and tell his mum: “My new English teacher is wicked!”
His mum might be ready to phone the head teacher to complain. But, the boy probably meant ‘wicked’ in the teenage slang sense; a modern word for ‘cool’. And cool, here, does not mean ‘moderately cold; neither warm nor cold’!
Clearly, if you are editing a teenage magazine, you would leave such words as they are.
But, a good copy editor will watch out for them in other contexts.
I remember asking my school teacher when I was eight: “Can I go to the toilet?”
She replied: “I don’t know if you can go to the toilet or not, but you may go to the toilet if you feel the need to go.” I remember looking at her blankly, before leaving the classroom, pronto.
Similarly, I remember one of my sons talking to a German man while he was playing football on holiday with his two brothers. The man asked: “Can my boy play football?”
My son, aged 12, replied: “He is welcome to join in. We’ll tell you if he can play later.” A copy editor in the making! But he was right. The difference between ‘can’ and ‘may’ was essential … especially when England play Germany at any level of football.
I remember a Dutch friend coming over to the UK on holiday. We were visiting some tourist attractions when he pointed to my camera and asked: “Are you going to make a picture?”
He was puzzled when I corrected him: “No, I’m going to take a picture.”
“Take it where?” he answered. In fact, his word ‘make’ was, strictly speaking, more accurate, because photography is a creative process … you make a photo the same as you make an omelette.
So, when you are editing, it is important that you pay attention to the meaning the writer is attempting to convey, and make sure that they use the correct words.
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