It's prbably been asked before

But our news desk is hiring some copy editors. I noticed that they give them a spelling test.

I know spelling is a big deal, I mean mispeled words ar anoying in priont. But really, what paers still use this test to judge potential hires?
In other words, doesn't everyplace have spell check, and do you want to work at the place that doesn't?

 

Well, SportsJournalists.com does and you apparently were too lazy.

 

All I can say is thank god the mistake in the subject line is supposed to be there.

Angola ... if that's the only one you caught, look again.

 

Tht poste luks fin. Im stariing at Jo's avetar.

 

Some places test you on your knowledge of sports. I don't see a spelling test as that big a deal.

 

all the typoed words were intentional. Sorry, maybe it was overkill.

 

I took a comprehensive 10-page editing test for my current job. It included two pages of spelling, a couple pages of sentence structure/grammar, and the rest was current events/factual knowledge. It's a beast (and a newsroom joke, of course, but you still have to take it.)

Spelling is still a good test to see how much you pay attention to detail -- I think it says a lot about a person if they can't spell, even on here. (And don't tell me it's "just" a message board and you spell everything right at your day job -- bullshit. If you can't type well enough to spell correctly here, that carries over to anywhere you type.) Spell check is a great tool, but it shouldn't be relied on as the be-all, end-all that you can trust 100 percent of the time.

What happens if you spell, as someone at my shop almost did tonight, Alberto Gonzales' name "Gonzalez" in a headline? Yeah, there's an editing problem there moreso than a spelling problem but if you're not good at spelling or don't keep up with the former Attorney General, you might not catch that it's wrong. So, yes, spelling is an important skill -- and much more preferable and reliable than spell-check.

 

I saw the obvious ones in the first sentence, I just thought he had returned to normal typing and had a typo.

I had a buddy who got hired at the Seattle Times last year and he said he had to take a ridiculously hard editing/spelling/grammar test. He must've done good, because he got hired.

Fake edit: I rarely use the spellchecker here - unless I'm drunk - but now I'm paranoid and just used it.

 

First off Buck, good answer.

Second, about two years ago, I applied for a news desk job at a company that did the same thing. Page after page after page. At least 10 pages. I was in a little conference room running through that bitch for at least an hour and a half. I like to think I'm up on current events and history but damn, that was a bitch. And it asked some random questions like who the mayor of their town is, and the area house rep., state rep., etc...(stuff I'm sure I'd learn after I moved there, but could care less at the moment) About two days after I recovered, they offered me a job. I said no --- if the interview was that painful I can't imagine the first day. (Actually it was a pay thing, the ME and the NE were great people, I knew if I took it I'd enjoy working there).

 

I don't think it's too much to ask that copy editors be able to spell. I don't rely on spell check, and neither should you. You can always look things up, but at some point you have to know how to use affect and effect, or that it's not milktoast.

Like was said earlier, it's a detail thing. Copy editors have to be detail-oriented. If you're not oriented to spelling, what else aren't you oriented to?

 

Okay let's pose a hypothetical. Say you have two applicants. You have a copy editing test and a 100 word spelling test.
Applicant A is perfect on the spelling, but only gets about 70 percent of the editing. Applicant B gets only about 10 of the spelling words right, but is 100 percent in the copy editing (other than spelling), then who do you hire?

 

Whoever wows me in the interview.