Welcome
to the Web's first, best and so far as we know only page of
Copy Editor Jokes
Who knew when we launched this page on a slow night in 2001 that it might actually outlast every professional journalist in America? Be sure to visit the guestbook to vent your rage, share your memories or post a job opening.
Genesis and Raison d'etre
It all started when a co-worker sent the following e-mail, described
as a "Copy editor joke:"
A man flies into Boston and gets into a cab. He says to the cabbie, "please take me somewhere I can get scrod." The cabbie says "Wow, that's the first time I've ever been asked that in the first person pluperfect subjunctive!"
(If you're not laughing uproariously, you might as well go away now.)
Anyhow, after I stopped laughing uproariously, I got to thinking -- that's the first "copy editor" joke I've heard, and it's about a cabdriver, not a copy editor! And when I stopped to ponder how many lesser professions -- lawyers, drummers, even reporters -- have their own volumes of jokes, I thought it was high time to start making some about my own craft.
The jokes that follow are intended to prime the pump, if you will -- to encourage the limitless potential of my professional brethren and cisterns who can make intern copy into Hemingway and one-column, three-line, 54-point head spex into poetry. Surely, these are brilliant people who should be able to come up with a decent light bulb joke.
When you do, just leave it in the guestbook.
(The guestbook can be viewed here.)
You can use that same venue to inquire about advertising opportunities (dictionary and stylebook publishers, take note.) And now,
On to the original jokes
(So this copy editor walks into a bar...)
New! View
submitted jokes
(So this copy editor e-mails a joke into a bar...)
View some useful links
(So this copy editor stays at work instead of going to
a bar...)
New! Visit
the Gallery of Fine Dictionary Art
(So this copy editor comes up with
an idea for a website while having too much at the bar...)
people have pretended to be working when they were really looking at
this page.
Disclaimers
The advertising on this page is provided by Yahoo; I
neither control nor endorse it. Opinions expressed on this page are probably
my own and have nothing to do with my employer, my co-workers or my family.
In fact, most of them are either bemused, annoyed or embarrassed at this
whole thing. But that's their problem. Non-original images and sounds are
possiblyÊ in the public domain, or at least linked to their respective
owners where possible; owners of said images should send e-mail to the
above address for cheerful resolution of any complaint.
Except where noted, this site is Copyright 2006; all
rights reserved by the author.