How Copyeditors Get Their Jollies

Yesterday, someone editing a manuscript that had some religious info in it asked a question about the terms pastor and rector. We subscribers to an editors' e-mail list (owned by two people named Bill and Jane) promptly did the proper editorial thing: We began a pun war that's only now dragging to an ignominious end:

Lutheran churches have pastors. Episcopal churches have rectors.

And online churches have e-rectors?

Oh, don't go on about rectitude.

And they make new ones with e-rector sets.

If the e-rector is at the center of a scandal, does he suffer from e-rectile dysfunction?

Co-rect.

If he does, maybe someone can curate?

That would likely turn him into a loose canon.

Or a primate.

Besides, the only person who can cure something like that is the organist.

There's a cardinal sin here somewhere in this pope-ourri.

This is getting pastor joke. Perhaps we all need to go back to checking our reverences.

We may be rechoired to at any moment; it's holy up to Bill. Still, I wouldn't altar a thing.

Or is he our elder statesman? Or nun of the above?

Should we ask hymn?

Yes, because he's our organ-izer.

Now, that's an en-chanting thought.

Nunsense. Jane may also answer our invocation, if she's not spirited away by the urge to throw a pi[at]ous.

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