Written by Eric Damer; copy edited by Meagan Kus
Like many people who find themselves working as an editor, I grew up in a household of word enthusiasts. My father, an English teacher, methodically circled spelling and grammar errors in the local newspaper or identified errors in environmental print, but he also loved puns, spoonerisms, double-entendres, and wordplay of all sorts. Well before I turned to editing as a line of work, I knew the value of saying what you meant, and meaning what you said—unless you had a joke to tell. Now, it seems, I have difficulty turning off my error-checker for the sake of a chuckle.