subbing

Pluralsubbings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of sub.

   The coach was criticized for subbing out his best player with twenty minutes left.

   Volunteers are subbing the series into English as each episode airs.

   Note

   The b doubles before -ing, and the form works both as a participle (she is subbing at the middle school today) and as a gerund naming the work (subbing suits her schedule). Standing in for someone, often as a teacher, is informal American use; bringing a player on or taking one off is British sports talk; and online, fans subbing a series are adding subtitles.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   A round of copy editing on a piece of writing.

   Each feature goes through several subbings before it reaches the page.

   A hasty subbing left two errors in the headline.

   Similaredit

   Note

   Copy editing goes by this name in British publishing; Diana Cambridge's How to Write for Magazines (2007) explains sub as what Americans call copy editing. The noun counts, so a piece can go through three or four subbings, each a fresh pass. In Ronald Clark's Einstein: The Life and Times (1971), subbings sit beside choppings and translations among the edits a report goes through before readers see it.

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