Re: Editing issues

**Margaret Lauterbach m*@earthlink.net**

True for news writing, but not so much for feature writing. My weekly
pieces have a beginning, a middle, and an end. But I make sure that my
column is always the same length, within an inch or so. Most editors have
a block where they just plop it in.

What the local paper does (and probably others) on occasion is fiddle
with the paragraphs to make it fit. They'll arbitrarily combine two
paragraphs into one to save a line, or more often, break one paragraph up
into two or three to pad it out. It makes for some ugly prose sometimes,
but I do understand that I had several days to write it and they have an
hour to publish it.

D