Photo Illustration by Tracy Greer
Copy editing is a mission of style-knowing, rule-following, clarity-seeking. The valiant editor wields the red pen like a sword, swashbuckling a path through a story for the benefit of readers.
Or perhaps it's more like tilting at windmills.
Either way, most rules of copy editing are clearly defined. The Associated Press Stylebook serves as the bible of the craft.
But language is a living thing, and our understanding of society changes faster than the stylebook can keep up.
Which brings us to the latest point of discussion among the Fronteras Desk: What term to use to describe the young activists who are in the country without documentation?
(We've already had the discussion on how to refer to their ethnicity, and why we don't call them illegal immigrants.)
It started with the proposed Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act. First introduced in the U.S. Senate in 2001, it would grant conditional permanent residency to young people who were brought to the U.S. as children by their parents.
As a play on the bill's name, those affected young people became known as DREAMers. And in Fronteras Desk stories we referred to them this way, with the letters in DREAM capitalized.
But the DREAM Act never became law, and was superceded in June 2012 when President Barack Obama announced the administration's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
The young activists didn't start calling themselves DACAers, they stuck with the more hopeful and marketable "dreamers." And copy editors are stuck at a crossroads.
Since the DREAM Act is no longer a thing, using DREAMers in our current style may not make sense. And generally, we refer to people as they wish to be referenced.
But to use the word "dreamers" without qualification may be too casual for readers who may not follow the immigration debate closely. Using the capital letters is a signal to the reader that we're not discussing people who are sleeping.
As a personal preference I try to refrain from putting words in quotation marks unnecessarily — it can place an unintended emphasis on a word or phrase and have a negative connotation. It can make the reader question the writer's take on the subject. Think of the following sentence:
The people who work at the Apple Store are "geniuses."
I'm either explaining their job title, or mocking it. It's impossible to be sure.
The rules just don't evolve fast enough to keep pace with social usage of language.
A scan of other media outlets shows copy editors across the country are struggling with the same question. Some use DREAMers, some use dreamers, some use "dreamers." Some use all three in the same publication. Some don't use any variation of the word and just write around the concept with a lengthy explanation.
For now, I feel it's most accurate and most clear to use DREAMers. But I'm open to a discussion on the evolution of the term.