=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= SFEP-ED-L Vol. 1, no. 9 3 November 1996 SFEP Editorial mailing list =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Contents: [1] "Mea culpa": on-screen accuracy Q & A---Previous threads [2j] Dictionaries and reference books [2k] Punctuation in quoted matter [Was: Spelling and punctuation] [2l] Legal citations [2m] Is 'mid' an adjective? Q & A---New queries [2n] Punctuating quotations [2o] Spacing abbreviations [3] FYI Business matters---Previous threads [4d] Just payment for work performed [5] Bookmarks [6] Administration =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= --[1] "Mea culpa": on-screen accuracy ------------------------------ [To return to a previous thread ...] Date: Wed, 30 Oct 1996 From: Merle Read, MRead43273@aol.com I agree that we should be 'allowed' to make e-mail spelling mistakes. After all, no-one's being paid to spot 'em! Even professional pedants have to realx (I'll just leave that in ...) I always feel for anybody who's proofread and missed a typo in the Newsletter, knowing there will be a collective sharp intake of breath up and down the country as a result. Anyway, it is a truth universally acknowledged that it is much more difficult to proofread one's own words: the brain obviously knows what should be there, and just supplies the correct version automatically (analogy: spell-checker on automatic replace). Of course that doesn't explain why I sometimes can't read my own handwriting... --[2] Q & A -------------------------------------------------------- [2j] Date: Wed, 9 Oct 1996 From: Chuck Hollingworth, c.hollingworth@bangor.ac.uk Re: Dictionaries and reference books Can anyone out there recommend a really good, up-to-date dictionary of zoology? [PLEASE, SOMEONE ANSWER THIS QUERY! SURELY ONE LIST MEMBER MUST HAVE A RECOMMENDATION ...] ------------------------ Date: Sun, 27 Oct 1996 From: Josephine Bacon, 100270.3224@compuserve.com I use Grolier's Academic American Encyclopaedia which is free online if you subscribe to Compuserve. I find it superior to all the others, it is much more in-depth and also gives a bibliography. ---------------------- Date: Wed, 30 Oct 1996 From: Merle Read, MRead43273@aol.com I have the 1990 COD, handy for work purposes, but I much prefer my trusty 1979 Collins English Dictionary. I believe later eds. of the CED missed out the syllabification info contained in the 1st, which is a shame. For American English and proper nouns I like Webster's New World College Dictionary (3rd ed). For anyone fond of trawling 2nd hand bookshops I can also recommend Cassell's Encyclopaedic Dictionary (8 vols., 1902--1903), good for Azed-type crosswords and all your pre-20th century reading. It's so satisfying to look up an obscure word and find a charming illustration to complete the mental picture. This summer I realised that I seem to have a dictionary addiction problem: they're about the only thing I miss from home when I go on holiday ... what a sad admission! I can recommend Collins Dictionary of Quotations (1995) (though I'm biased, having done some work on it) as an alternative to ODQ. It is more extensive than ODQ4 but don't know how it compares with the very latest ODQ. --- I think it would be useful to have a list of general reference works that are related to particular subjects, as opposed to core copy-editing/proofreading works. I was recently asked by a (desperate?) publisher to edit work on a subject that I hadn't touched since school, and I was desperate enough to agree to do it. It would have been useful to know of an editorially recommended standard reference work in the field. --- Finally, readers may be interested to know that the Wordsworth Dictionary of Science and Technology (1995, c. #2.99) is the same as the 1988 Chambers Science and Technology Dictionary. A 1000-page tiny-print bargain! --------------------- Date: Fri, 1 Nov 1996 From: Iain Brown, 100131.3564@compuserve.com For next week's issue of SFEP-ED-L I will list all the dictionaries and reference words that list members have suggested to date. +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ [2k] Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 From: Ian Kingston, 100345.1764@compuserve.com Re: Punctuation in quoted matter I think (although US citizens may be able to tell me otherwise) that always placing the punctuation inside the quotation marks is considered correct practice in the USA, even if it seems illogical to us. I dimly recall a discussion of this point on COPYEDITING-L some time ago, at the end of which a vote was taken. The American style won narrowly from the British style, but considering that COPYEDITING-L is overwhelmingly American that was a pretty good result for 'our' style. An even dimmer recollection is that Canadians use a third style, but what it is (or even whether it exists!) eludes me. ---------------------- Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 From: Philip Gardner, philip.gardner@asgard.zetnet.co.uk > I certainly feel that > 'It was,' said Kate 'a mistake' > is wrong, and should be > 'It was', said Kate 'a mistake.' Shouldn't it be as follows? 'It was', said Kate, 'a mistake.' ---------------------- Date: Tues, 29 Oct 1996 From: Mandy Macdonald, 100754.3643@compuserve.com No-one seems to have noticed the _missing_ comma in your example? Surely it should be: 'It was', said Kate, 'a mistake.' See Hart p45 (1974 edn), which has: 'Go home', he said, 'to your father.' +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ [2l] Date: Tues, 29 Oct 1996 From: Christina Thomas, 106133.722@compuserve.com Re: Legal citations Jane Kerr isn't underestimating the general reader. 99.9 recurring per cent of them won't notice but there is one person out there who will, and that person will notice anything she has missed. Another manifestation of the ubiquitous Sod's Law +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ [2m] Date: Sun, 27 Oct 1996 From: Josephine Bacon, 100270.3224@compuserve.com Re: Is 'mid' an adjective? I always hyphenate "mid" because it is an abbreviation for middle, unhyphenated would look most odd, don't you think? ---------------------- Date: Sun, 27 Oct 1996 From: Andrea Cordani, ships@dircon.co.uk I sympathise about the enforced dropping of the hyphen. I edit a directory of HIV/AIDS agency information, and in the recent health service trusts reorganisation, there has appeared some organisations with names such as Mid Downs Health Promotion Service and Mid Sussex NHS Community Health Trust. In vain have I struggled (D'Arcy like) with the *proper* form, which I consider to include a hyphen, but I have had to cave in and abandon them because: a) the corporate identity of these bodies is designed without hyphens (on their letterheads and so on) and they want to recognise themselves in our directory exactly as they appear in life b) because having some with and some without the hyphen produces illogical results in the computer generated index, and means that users have to scan two areas of the list. ---------------------- Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 From: Ian Kingston, 100345.1764@compuserve.com I'd be interested to know which dictionary Judith's non-mid- hyphenating client recommends that her freelances use. It seems quite common for publishers to have house styles that say 'Use Dictionary X', but which also list a set of in-house preferences that contradict the dictionary. This always strikes me as a waste of effort - if I have to check a word in the dictionary I also have to check to see whether it's in the style guide. It also seems a little arrogant: 'We know better than the people who've spent years compiling a dictionary'. In the case of 'mid-', COD has no adjectival form without the hyphen (but poets can use 'mid' for 'amid'), while Collins does have the advective 'mid', but only in the subject of phonetics. ----------------------- Date: Tues, 29 Oct 1996 From: Petra Kopp, 101766.1505@compuserve.com Judith Wardman's comments about hyphens have struck several chords... I'm currently editing a typescript that has sent me dithering all over the place. The author happily uses 'mid' as an adjective without a hyphen, as in 'mid engine, rear wheel drive vehicles'. He also uses 'build up', 'run up' etc without hyphens, but goes for 'semi-sealed' with a hyphen. My instinct would be to go for a hyphen in all those examples, but then I received a couple of pieces of junk mail which also contained the 'run up' type of usage... Then, finally catching up on the piles of newspapers I had promised myself to scan before the trip to the nwespaper bank, I came across an interesting article in last weekend's FT. James Morgan, BBC world service economics correspondent, wonders whether the global role of the English language might not in fact be traced back to the very fact of its non-prescriptiveness. He contrasts non-native English speakers' usage of English (grammatically correct if not necessarily appropriate in level or style) with the fluidity and flexibility of the language used by advertising copywriters and graffiti artists. He writes, 'Only in the UK are people encouraged to think that in language, as in many other areas, anything they do is perfectly all right.' With every typescript I edit, I become less confident about my own instincts of what can and can't be done. Hyphenation is one problem area, commas are another. One of my real bugbears is the comma after short phrases - usually(,) I don't think it's necessary. This week(,) I attended Valerie Elliston's 'Brush up your grammar' course(, here's one I would definitely keep) but I'm none the wiser on the comma issue. Does anyone else have any words of wisdom on this? I usually try to go with the rhythm of the sentence, placing commas to give the reader some help with understanding the sense. Where would you put commas in the following sentence (from a speech that is to be published in printed form)? A very large percentage of the young unemployed are black youngsters with less hope and less possibilities than younger white folk but both together have so few prospects and phoney training schemes and things of that kind have been brought in to mask the degree and extent of real unemployment. Answers on a postcard... ----------------------- Date: Tues, 29 Oct 1996 From: Mandy Macdonald, 100754.3643@compuserve.com > Is 'mid' an adjective? Yes, according to Butcher p91 (1981 edn): "Some authors prefer to hyphenate 'mid-fourteenth' in the noun 'mid fourteenth century', even though there is no such century; others prefer to omit the fits hyphen in the adjective 'early-fourteenth-century'." This would back up Judith Wardman's client's hunch (for want of a better word). But then what about, e.g., 'She was in her mid forties when she remarried'? +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ [2n] Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 From: Rosemary Anderson, 100735.1311@compuserve.com Subject: Punctuating quotations I would be grateful if anyone could help me with the following query: I am proofreading a book on Shakespeare and it is necessarily full of quotations. When the author puts quotations in a sentence starting with an explanatory piece of text, he has, in most cases, ended the sentence with a quotation and put the quotation mark outside the full stop. Hart's Rules says this is bad practice, but in another place, says that if the quotation ends with a full stop it is OK. There are hundreds of quotations like this as the book is quite long. I would rather not have to change them all but the author might know whether his quotations are followed by a full stop. Has anybody else had experience of this? +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ [2o] Date: Wed, 30 Oct 1996 From: Merle Read, MRead43273@aol.com Subject: Spacing abbreviations How should, say, 214.5 million Chilean dollars be expressed when abbreviated? Butcher has 'US$' and '2m' so logically one would expect 'Ch$214.5m' but this looks quite a handful. Can anyone keep me right? --[3] FYI ---------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 1 Nov 1996 From: Iain Brown, 100131.3564@compuserve.com It has been a long week, and so I was in need of some light entertainment---which came in the form of an article on the Net. I quote from this week's "Connected" ("Daily Telegraph", 29/10/96): American speaker and author Patrick Comb responded to a junk mail letter he received by depositing the fake $95,000 cheque in his bank account. To his amazement the money cleared and he was able to draw a banker's draft for nigh on a hundred grand. The next few months took out hero on a rollercoaster ride through the minutiae of banking law which, hard though it is to believe, makes quite an interesting read. Take a look at < http://www.dnai.com/~pcombs/ventures.html > (but note that you'll need some time to read the entire story ...) And if you feel you would prefer to exercise your ears rather than your eyes, I cross-post the following message from Humanist: In the light of the recent discussion on the future of the book, can I put in another plug for my radio programme, A History of Reading in Five Volumes? This goes out on Radio Four at 4.00 on Saturdays and 8.30 on Sundays (repeat): the first programme last week dealt with the medieval and early modern periods, with Marilyn Deegan, Michael Clanchy, Tony Grafton et al.: this week it is the politics of reading with Nigel Smith, David Norbrook and others on the English Civil War, Milton etc, then women and reading with Kate Flint etc, steam trains and presses with Simon Elliot etc in week four, and the internet and the future in week five with Marilyn coming back. Plus lots of contemporary vox pops about the experience of reading each time. Compulsive listening if you can ignore the dreary voice of the presenter! Don Fowler --[4] Business matters --------------------------------------------- [4d] Date: Sun, 27 Oct 1996 From: Jane Kerr, bywater@zetnet.co.uk Re: Just payment for work performed If you've got an accounting system of the shoebox variety, you can do things like this, simply by tearing up your copy of the original invoice. In my system (which meets with the approval of my accountant), nothing gets entered in the books until the cheque has landed on the doormat. The accountant simply prepares my accounts from the cash book (which contains a record of money received) and the file of invoices sent out. ---------------------- Date: Sun, 27 Oct 1996 From: Josephine Bacon, 100270.3224@compuserve.com As for buying a translation "as seen", the publisher has a perfect right to make corrections to mistakes, that is always part of a standard rights deal. Very often a translation is better than the original, especially when it is bought in from countries with much lower publishing standards. For instance, I know a literary translator who had to translate a prizewinning novel and discovered that a character who had died in chapter two turned up alive and kicking in chapter nine! The author, fortunately, had *not* kicked the bucket and some tactful negotiations with her caused the name of the character in question to be changed in chapter nine of the translation. I have since contacted the Society of Authors about this job and they agree that the contract I was offered makes the one which Dr. Faustus signed look positively generous! I must warn all fellow editors/ translators/writers against this new and dangerous trend for publishers to expect translators and writers to do all of the artwork which by rights ought to be produced in-house and to do so for free. It seems that scientific publishers are the worst culprits in expecting vast amounts of work for no pay. The economics of publishing may well dictate that they pay very little for jobs, and furthermore many books are heavily "padded" (as was this one) and could have been twice as good if it was half the length, but that is not the translator's fault. I have complained to STAG as a matter of principle and to warn other members of the problem. In this case, they will probably be powerless to help me. As it is, the publishers have now come back and told me that those illustrations which were supplied by the author in the wrong size (too big for the page) must be resized - by me! ----------------------- Date: Tues, 29 Oct 1996 From: Mandy Macdonald, 100754.3643@compuserve.com Why not, on the model of our own dear banks when a cheque is re-presented, show the extra as 'administrative costs'? --[5] Bookmarks ---------------------------------------------------- "Web Assisted Self-Publishing" at: http://www.hkbu.edu.hk/~ppp/WASP.html Bookhistory timetable: http://www.xs4all.nl/~cremers/timetab.html catalogue books-on-books: http://www.xs4all.nl/~cremers/catalog.html Information Website Books on the WWW: http://www.xs4all.nl/~cremers Our catalogs: http://www.xs4all.nl/~cremers/catalog.html collection of search resources and information http://www.abacon.com/compsite/research/index.html --[6] Administration ----------------------------------------------- SFEP Editorial provides the opportunity for a weekly online discussion of matters editorial. * POSTING MESSAGES TO THE LIST All messages to be posted to the list should be sent to Iain Brown, at: 100131.3564@compuserve.com Include as the subject line, "SFEP-ED-L [topic]", where [topic] is the subject under discussion. 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Quoting from previous messages: quote as much as you need to make the context of your reply clear, but no more. * Administration All messages of a subscription or administrative nature should be directed to Jane Kerr at: bywater@zetnet.co.uk with "SFEP EDITORIAL ADMIN" in the subject line. * To subscribe to SFEP Computing Online To subscribe to SFEP Computing Online, please e-mail Eddie Kent at: EDDIE.KENT@mcr1.poptel.org.uk * SFEP homepage < http://www.sfep.demon.co.uk/ > =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= END OF SFEP-ED-L 1.9 Next issue: 10 Nov 1996 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=