A sub-editor is the person at a newspaper or magazine who takes what a reporter has written and gets it ready to print. The job is bigger than the name suggests. A sub-editor corrects spelling and grammar, checks facts and names, cuts a story so it fits the space on the page, makes the writing clearer, and — this is the famous part — writes the headline. Reporters get the byline; sub-editors get the blame when a headline goes wrong.

The word is British, and also normal in Australia, Ireland, India, and elsewhere in the Commonwealth. It is often shortened to sub: "the subs have gone home", "it's with the subs". In American English the same job is called a copy editor, and Americans may not recognise sub-editor at all. In Taiwan, students meeting this word in a British reading passage should read it simply as the newspaper's editing desk.

One useful caution about the sub- here: it does not really mean this person is a junior editor who will one day be promoted to editor. Sub-editing is its own craft, and many sub-editors stay subs for a whole career. The prefix reflects where the work sits in the production line, under the editor's authority, not the skill level of the person doing it.