Common Name: Editor
Scientific Name: Changus textus
Habitat: Libraries, bookstores, cramped offices or cubes, in front of computers everywhere

Editors have officially been listed under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), a decision that follows an intense legal battle in federal court by editorial activists and organizations including TYPO (the TYpographical Perfectionists Organization). Editors, considered the most anal mammals on earth, usually can be identified by their glasses and bloodshot eyes, with males averaging 5 feet 8 inches tall and females 5 feet 3 inches tall when not hunched over a keyboard. The U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, estimates that 105,920 editors existed nationally in 2007 (not including those who were self-employed or “editing for free/fun”).

Now, however, editors everywhere are considered endangered due to outsourcing, workload stress, and instant messaging/texting devoid of punctuation and proper spelling. Scientists cite the decrease of funding for libraries in cities like Pacific Grove and Salinas as just one serious threat to the editor’s natural habitat.
The outsourcing of writing and editing-a white-collar business trend termed “mass word production,” similar to the trend seen with manufacturing in the 1980s-to cheaper, faster, non-native-speaking countries has also resulted in more homeless editors hungry for typos and grammatical errors, a decrease in red ink sales, and some really crappy text.

But why should you care if editors are a dying breed? Editors work behind the scenes to provide you with accurate, clear, and concise information that you rely on almost daily in newspapers, periodicals, books, directories, universities, radio and television (reality shows excluded), and even the pharmaceutical industry. Imagine, just for a moment (because any longer would be too terrifying), a world without editors. In a restaurant, do you want to order a salad with “tomatoes, onions, goat cheese” or “tomatoes, onions, goats, cheese”? Or how about accidentally being given Flomax, used to treat the symptoms of an enlarged prostate, instead of Volmax, used to relieve bronchospasm? That’s right, without good editing, people can DIE-the problem is that serious.

So we urge you to act now (for tomorrow may be too late) to protect editorial integrity globally. Unless we take action now, scientists predict that the common editor could become extinct as soon as 2010, with some die-hards typing in their last corrections (on their tombstones) as late as 2025. But what can you do about a problem that’s so big? Even though the problem does seem overwhelming, you can make a difference. You can support your local editor by continuing to read the Foolish Times. It doesn’t cost a thing but your time, and maybe a sore gut from hardy laughing. Also, urge our Administration to read the Foolish Times; by voting for and supporting only representatives who read the Foolish Times, it may even lighten up the doom-and-gloom global forecast facing us all.

In short (not tall), we must commit to the long-term battle to save the editor, so that future generations can grow up to become editors, not just doctors and lawyers, and can have the comfort of knowing that editors can and will continue to provide entertaining error-free writing for decades to come.

(Note: If you find any typos or factual, grammattical, or other errors, plaese write to:

Copy Editing Staff
Foolish Times
Monterrey, Mexico)