BettyPam vs. the Individual Person
July 26, 2024 by Harvey
In today’s Journal
* BettyPam vs. the Individual Person
* An Early Reminder
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
BettyPam vs. the Individual Person
a guest post by Dan Baldwin
I am fortunate enough to write articles and features on interesting and often fascinating people and organizations.
In some cases I am required to work with an executive-level person who must fact check the piece. Executives are busy people and many have a female executive secretary who works closely with her boss.
She is sometimes the infamous gate keeper in terms of getting a meeting with the boss. In many cases the gate keeper is tasked with the fact-checking duties when the boss is featured or interviewed for a magazine article.
However, all too often the gate keeper turns into BettyPam.
What is a BettyPam, you ask?
A BettyPam is someone to whom the executive delegates (dumps) proofreading and related writing tasks. Upon receiving this task, she (in her mind) becomes a writer, editor and literary critic. As I have noted so often before, the executive dumper is quite proud of his dumpee. “She got straight B’s in high school English, don’t ya’ know.”
In her hands, perfectly good sentences and sometimes entire paragraphs become mangled former literary pieces.
For example, when using a tag, I structure the reference like this. “That was how we did it,” Bob says. The structure of the tag is important. Bob is listed first because he is more important to the story than the word “says.” It’s simple, but it’s important.
But BettyPam reads novels and magazine stories where that tag is reversed: “‘That’s how we did it,’ says Bob.” Because she has seen the mistake so often, she thinks that’s the proper structure. So she “fixes” it, which means the writer must go back and repair her damage.
BettyPam has and will continue to adopt writing errors she sees in print or sees/hears in broadcast media.
For example, she loves to use “individual” instead of “person.” It’s a small matter and the rule is broken daily by people who should know better. “People” or “Individual persons” is the best way to make that statement. BettyPam inevitably deletes “persons” or inserts “individuals” because that’s what she thinks is right.
Earning straight Bs in high school apparently gives her greater insight than that of a professional writer with years of experience. Don’t laugh; the boss often thinks the same way.
Perhaps her greatest error and biggest challenge for the writer of business articles is her driving need to make her boss look good by employing often outrageous puffery. For example, in my article on CEO Bob Made-Upname, I wrote,
“Made-Upname is a respected member of the XYC Co. corporate team and has earned the respect of his employees, according to VP of Sales, Martin Othername.
BettyPam punches this up with, “Made-Upname, we all call him Bob in the office because he’s such a swell guy. Sometimes he lets us get away with calling him ‘Bob-oh.’ That really gets us laughing. He’s a great guy. Just ask any of his crew.”
All she wants to do is to make her boss more “folksy.” Believe me, the readers of Forbes or Industrial Age or Michigan Farming aren’t really interested in folksy.
The BettyPams of the world are also in love with verbosity. If one word serves the purpose, half a dozen more will make it better!
For example, if the submitted article contains, “Bob turns on his computer to write” she will change it to “Bob turns on his computer for the purpose of writing.”
If I write, “Bob’s office is close to the manufacturing floor,” she will tuck in “Bob’s office is in close proximity to the manufacturing floor.
“Bob has an open-door policy to stay close to his staff” morphs into “Bob has an open-door policy in order to stay close to his staff.”
Sometimes, she can even combine her favorite phrases. “Even when Bob turns on his computer for the purpose of writing, he maintains an open-door policy in order to stay in close proximity to his staff.”
Joy!
There is very little you can do about BettyPam. She is eternal—like the flu.
Your best strategy is to take your BettyPaminized work, correct the errors and proceed. I have found that in potentially tense situations (BettyPam is the boss’s wife/girlfriend), the phrase “I made a few minor adjustments according to our journalism stylebook” works well.
BettyPam may have only made Bs in high school. She might even be only semi-literate. She is, however, much closer to the subject of your writing than you will ever be.
So step lightly. Keep your cool. Be careful. But ultimately get the article right. When it’s published the errors will be there for all to see, and guess who gets the blame.
***
Thanks, Dan.
To read more of Dan Baldwin’s usually humorous posts, visit his website at Four Knights Press.
An Early Reminder
Today is Friday.
If you’re in (or want to jump in or back in) on the Bradbury Challenge, be sure to get your story info in to me before TNDJ goes live on Monday morning.
The Challenge is free, and it’s an excellent way to drive yourself to the writing chair and increase your productivity as a fictionist.
So whaddayou waiting for? You’re a writer, so write. To participate in the Challenge, just email me with the story title, word count, and genre:
Story Title 1234 Genre
We’re all waiting to cheer you on.
Talk with you again then.
Of Interest
How to Choose the Best Categories
Or watch a video on the same topic.
The Numbers
The Journal……………………………… 960
Writing of Blackwell Ops 26: Tailor Moses
Day 11…. 2747 words. To date…… 23357
Day 12…. 1425 words. To date…… 24782
Day 13…. 3020 words. To date…… 27802
Day 14…. 2536 words. To date…… 30338
Fiction for July…………………….….… 37546
Fiction for 2024…………………………. 464678
Fiction since October 1………………… 730189
Nonfiction for July……………………… 30750
Nonfiction for 2024……………………… 241630
2024 consumable words………………… 668762
2024 Novels to Date……………………… 10
2024 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2024 Short Stories to Date……………… 4
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)……………… 92
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 9
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 241
Short story collections…………………… 29
Disclaimer: I am a prolific professional fiction writer. On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark and adherence to Heinlein’s Rules. Unreasoning fear and the myths of writing are lies, and they will slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.
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BettyPam. I like it! It has a nice ring to it. LOL
Seriously, though, I've run into fiction editors just like that. Make me cringe when I see what they do to a writer's work. Early in my publishing venture, I had a copyeditor (highly recommended by a fellow writer) push me to use things like "giggle" as dialogue tags, flip the tags around as Dan mentioned ("said name" instead of "name said"), and combine sentences into nonsensical ramblings (without proper punctuation!).
By the time all was said and done, I used less than 10% of her changes to that novel. Needless to say, I never used her again, and I warned other writers away from her. Taught me a valuable lesson in blindly trusting recommendations from other writers, too. Make me realize not all of us have the same standards, by any stretch.