I pay the bills as a newspaper copy editor. This is an altogether different creature from a book editor. Those of us who punch daily deadlines are the short-order cooks of the publishing world; we read and edit reams of copy in a compressed window of time. In many ways, the pressure-cooker aspects of the job lend themselves to the cultivation of pet peeves -- little word burrs under our saddle that we automatically change to something more palatable (to us, if to no one else). But copy editors aren't alone in this tendency. Anyone who spends time pushing words -- writers and editors -- ends up adopting some of these needy pets. It's all well and good until a few pets become an unmanageable zoo that detracts from the more important aspects of job. Here, then, are some common peeves that often require too much care and feeding to be worthwhile: Split infinitives: In the 1994 film Quiz Show , Charles Van Doren (played by Ralph Fiennes) rather pedantically points out that a TV...