"I before E, except after C and in the case of a little town in the lower North Island," he once told me, never to be forgotten.
But that final spell check or re-arranging of a sentence before a tight deadline can often bring problems back the other way, leaving a red-faced scribe to hastily apologise for words that did not leave his hand.
'Subbies' have the tough job of regularly taking long-winded descriptions and trying to make them fit in a space half the size.
If you gave them a square peg, you can't be surprised if they trim the edges to fit the round hole.
Still, over the years I have had the gender of a rescued dog change on me from a boy to a bitch, watched a pair of Australian geese become Austrian, and seen surnames in stories that went nationwide end up completely different from what I wrote.
I remember in April 2013 when a story on the close connections between players and coaches in the Taihape and Border rugby clubs became a little closer than I intended. The subbie combining two sentences suddenly made Border stalwart Guy Lennox the father of young fullback Fraser Middleton, which required a few embarrassing phone calls to the Lennox household and Fraser's actual dad Bruce Middleton, lest the rumour mill in Waverley kicked into overdrive.
Then there are always the days when the egotistical writer with his "poison pen" and the subbie with the twink eraser can't see eye to eye.
In January, I asked Wanganui cricket guru Dilan Raj why a leading local bowler did not make the final cut of a New Zealand youth team and his honest description of fitness concerns did not make that edition.
A flurry of in-house emails ensued and the explanation offered was that the evening's subbie in Auckland was exercising his knowledge of Wanganui cricket and felt it would be unfair for the player to have his coach publicly point out some of his possible frailties.
My less-than-amused reply said it was an important assessment and if the player would be offended, he had plenty of time to take it up with me during the three hours I would spend at Victoria Park the next day.
I'm assuming the NZ Herald stories that followed on Jesse Ryder's latest drinking binges or the exclusive on Chris Cairns' alleged matchfixing were sent to a different desk.
But some of my favourites have been those times when the lines are quite literally stolen from the subject's mouth - like emotive words getting removed from otherwise memorable quotes.
All Wanganui Chronicle reporters encourage their interviewees to be frank in their statements, hoping for that clever anecdote which will captivate the reader.
Olympic cycling medallist Simon van Velthooven is a walking rent-a-quote, as I discovered on the New Zealand team's trip to the Cooks Gardens velodrome in February.
So imagine the frustration when over 100 cycling fans must have thought I have a hearing problem when the joke Van Velthooven told on the house microphone about beating Australians Jacob Schmid and Josh Harrison was different to what appeared in the next day's paper.
So, to recap, Bruce Middleton's son Fraser is not the love child of Guy Lennox, Dilan Raj thought Nick Blundell might have gone to the U19 World Cup if he could have dropped a few kilos, Simon van Velthooven thinks Aussies are "nasty", the youngsters in the TCOB hockey team were given a drinking "initiation" a fortnight ago which helped them bond, and Ruapehu coach Chris Winter promised today's premier rugby grudge match with Taihape will be a "good battle".
That's what I pencilled in yesterday afternoon, and if you're reading it, then this time it made it past the erasers.
