The responsibility of determining whether or not any statements or implications of the story as written are libelous also rests upon the copy-reader. He must know the law of libel, therefore, as it is construed in his state, and must prevent violations of it in the matter that he edits. Less often he is called upon to decide whether or not anything in the news story violates laws regulating the transmission of printed matter through the mail. Whenever the copy-reader is uncertain on any important point involving the management of the newspaper, he refers the question to his superiors.
Some Common Errors. In reading copy rapidly the beginner will do well to be on the lookout for certain kinds of common errors in spelling, grammar, and punctuation. The quick eye of the copy-reader will catch the frequently misspelled words without difficulty, but uncommon proper names are more likely to cause trouble, and in cases of doubt, books of reference should be consulted. To prevent errors in grammar from slipping through in a story, the copy-reader should note such points as (1) the agreement of the verb with the subject, particularly when they are separated from each other by words or phrases; (2) the relation of pronouns to their antecedents; (3) the position of participles in relation to the words that they modify; (4) the use of coördinate conjunctions to connect elements of the same kind; (5) the position of correlative conjunctions with relation to the elements that they connect.
In punctuation, not infrequent errors are (1) the use of a comma instead of a semicolon to separate independent, grammatically unconnected statements; (2) the omission of apostrophes in the possessive case and in contractions; (3) the omission of a period after abbreviations; (4) the use of double instead of single quotation marks; (5) the failure to put quotation
