O.K. so you've probably heard this story already but as a copywriter I simply had to blog about it. Basically the restaurant critic for the Times, Giles Coran has written a fantastically vitriolic e-mail to the sub-editors at the newspaper complaining, with the liberal aid of very bad swear words, that his copy was edited a) badly and b) edited at all. And that e-mail was leaked to the Guardian who did the only decent thing they could and put it straight online for the whole world to see.

Now reading it, his colourful language might shock you. You might think he is being a petulant child. But you can't deny he has a way with words (he does after all have a first in English from Oxford). And for me you can't deny that he makes a flawless argument. As a result a lot of other writers who have had their copy edited badly, have celebrated Coran's "brave" stand and wished they'd had the balls to write that e-mail. The really positive thing I took from this correspondence however is that Coren is passionate about his craft and that he spells out how much effort goes into writing a piece of copy.

If you're doing your job properly then every sentence flows into the next and every single word counts. No wonder then that writers get annoyed when someone who doesn't write for a living, slashes away at your copy as if they were that other one time resident of Fleet Street, Sweeney Todd.