Another Journalism Lesson

The opening of the Gettysburg Address after an imaginary trip through the Boston Globe copy desk:

Fourscore and seven years ago (can't we just make it 87 years ago?) our fathers (WHO ARE THEY?? Any mothers???) brought forth on this continent (North America?? Northern Hemisphere??) a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men (people, men and women, what???) are created equal. (Why don't we just say they founded the United States and leave it at that? Pacing's better.)

From a celebration of print media's ancient and beloved culture of in-house in-jokes in The Atlantic.