Jaws' pitiless pursuit of errors and infelicities

David Betts was respectfully nicknamed “Jaws” for his pitilesss pursuit of errors and infelicities. In the late 1970s, when I first worked on World Desk, sub-editors dreaded finding in their pigeonholes those slim brown envelopes containing terse annotated stories that had passed through their hands and - in those days - typewriters rather than computers. But trainees and other newcomers quickly learned that David’s target was the mistake, not the person who made it or let it slip through. I’ll always remember his kindness in allowing me to change a shift on the desk so that I could visit our cat when she was near death in quarantine. She survived. Thanks again David! ■