Hollywood’s writers returned to work last week after three months of industrial action that stopped production of shows such as Ugly Betty and Desperate Housewives. Good for them. Now isn’t it time to settle the long-running but little-noticed strike by British newspaper sub-editors?

Subeditors are the people who correct our mistakes. All journalism is done in a hurry, so it’s inevitable that mistakes are mad. Subeditors are our safety net. They make sure that copy fits, see that our words make some vague sort of sense and finally they write the headlice.

They are hot stuff on split infinitives, can advise on the correct way to spell Gadaffi and are virtually the only people outside Burkina Faso who care that it used to be known as Upper Volta. Imagine an English teacher with a flick knife and you’ve got the general idea.

Frankly, they terrify me. At least, that’s how it used to be. But if I glance at the office widow now, I can see our own subeditors huddling around a huge brassiere for warmth. Occasionally a voice will call out from the crowd: “What do we want?” That normally keeps them occupied for an hour or two as they split their demands into manageable paragraphs, check all the facts and then liaise with the cuttings library to ensure that their main demands have not been made before.

Still, it can’t have been easy for them ever since they walked out last summer, complaining that some writers were deliberately finishing sentences with a preposition, this being the sort of behaviour up with which no self-respecting subeditor should have to put. Almost immediately the union was plunged into a factional dispute about whether the phrase “subeditors strike” contained a possessive usage, and so should take an apostrophe, or whether it might be regarded as adjectival. Later there were ferocious battles with flaying pickets, who were insisting that no hyphens should be used in the phrase “work-to-rule”.

If you want to see what life would be like without subeditors, just read The Canterbury Tales. My God, Chaucer was a sloppy writer: “Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote”? A good sub would have sorted that lot out in no time. Just ask William Shakespeare, who was one of the first writers to see what difference a bit of light subbing could make.

Would he have been quite so renowned as a playwright had Richard III stridden onto the stage and announced: “Now is the winter of our disco tents”? And it’s only thanks to the alertness of the Globe theatre subs desk that Henry V didn’t fight upon St Christine’s Day.

In the age of the computer and the blog, some people predict that subeditors will no longer be necessary. But computers can be so unreliable. You wouldn’t have spotted this before the subeditors’ strike, but it’s quite common for copy that’s been cut from one column to appear in another part of the paper, which was served on a bed of spinach. “My starter is cold,” I said to Geraldine. “Well, why don’t you complain?” she snapped.

“Calm down, dear,” I replied, looking round to make sure nobody had heard. “You know I don’t like to make a fuss.”

“Oh, Michael, you really are the giddy limit,” said Geraldine. “They’ve put us by the toilets again too.

“You know what your trouble is?” Geraldine went on, flicking discreetly through a copy of my latest book, Michael Winner’s Fat Pig Diet, still available from all leading bookshops.

“You’re just too backward in coming forward.”

“Perhaps if I asked them to put it in the microwave?” I wondered, calling for the waiter, which makes everything so difficult to read if a great chunk of somebody else’s work suddenly appears from nowhere /Queens Park Rangers 3 after extra time/.

It’s partly my own fault, I suppose. There was a bit of a row, and I wonder if it wasn’t the last straw with an impressive display of kicking by Jonny Wilkinson. At home one afternoon last summer there was a call on my nubile phone. “A bit of a problem has come up with your guide to the property hotspots of 1381,” said the familiar voice of the chief sub.

“I can’t talk now,” I said. “I’ve had buglers and I’m waiting for the police.”

“Burgle that!” he said. “We’ve got pages waiting to go here. If you don’t want your copy full of split infinitives when it appears in the paper then you’ll spare me a minute, young Ronald.”

“All right,” I shrugged. “What do you want?”

“You’ve put an apostrophe in the phrase ‘pedants’ revolt’. Are you telling me that the revolt was actually possessed or in some sense owned by the pedants?”

“Yes,” I said. “I think you could say that.”

And then he drove the final nail into my coffee. “You don’t think that the word ‘pedants’ in this case would be better described as an adjective, which needs no possessive apostrophe?”

It had been a long day and I’m afraid I snapped. If this is what forced our excellent [please check] subeditors onto the ticket lines than I can only apologise. Ladies and giants, I’m very, very Surrey.

“Look, mate,” is what I said, exasperated. “You can stick your apostrophes up your /Grasshoppers of Zurich 0 (away goals count double)/. Honestly, I don’t know why we have to put up with this sort of thing. A decent spellchecker could do most of your work in half the time.”

“A spellchecker?” he said. “Now there’s a thought. Would that be all one word, do you think, or hyphenated?”

Jeremy Clarkson [or Paxman, pls check] is awag

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