=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= EDline Vol. 2, no. 19 (11 May 1997) Editorial mailing list Published by the Electric Editors =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Contents: [1] Editorial Q & A---Previous queries [2ll] Chinese currency Q & A---New queries [2mm] Design guidance [2nn] Do we edit for computers to read? FYI [3xx] British Library catalogue [3ad] NewJour: reports on new electronic journals [3ae] Project Gutenberg: update Business matters---Previous threads [4n] Per page/per word rates of pay [5] Bookmarks [6] Just for fun [7] Administration =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= ---[1] Editorial ----------------------------------------------------- With this issue we introduce a new section, 'Just for fun', as well as a slight re-design. The popular _Faux pas of the week_ item has been moved to the "Just for fun" section, and will be accompanied by other items to relieve the stress of the slow hours on a Monday morning. Designing for e-mail transmission introduces a lot of variables: fonts, sizing, spacing and layout. I have had a number of discussions with on-line users about the design of messages for transmission. Some suggest that the design can be left flexible, with little consideration given to the formatting, as people can search the mailing for the text they are interested in. Others say that a list of contents---much like a book---is important in that it allows one to see immediately if there are any messages of particular interest. Of concern to me here is the use of spaces in the mailing to create the design. In some mailing software (those that do not use non-proportional fonts) the spaces used are not aligned as intended. Hence I have adjusted the design to make it easier to read. Your comments would be welcome. Finally, if anyone receives two (or more) copies of the mailing, please do let me know, so I can amend the mailing list. Iain Brown Moderator ---[2] Q & A --------------------------------------------------------- ** [2ll] Chinese currency Date: Wed, 7 May 1997 From: Sue Lightfoot, 71461.465@compuserve.com > Can anyone tell me the correct symbol for the Chinese currency, > the yuan. The Economist Style Guide gives the symbol for the Chinese yuan as Y i.e. plain capital letter with no extra strokes. +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ ** [2mm] Design guidance Date: Sat, 10 May 1997 From: Lane Lester, llester@athens.net I've enjoyed reading EDline from the sidelines, but now it's time for me to get off the bench! In a few months I'll begin taking over the production of a quarterly scientific magazine, and a facelift will be a first priority. The current design is ugly: Helvetica and Times the only faces, all caps for article titles, minimal leading, etc. I've got the tools and techniques for producing the product, but I need some guidance about the design. The result needs to be attractive, but dignified; it shouldn't look like _Wired_. Can you point me in some direction (preferably online) for dealing with questions about typefaces, number of columns, ragged vs. justified, etc.? I know these things make a difference, but I don't know what the differences are! +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ ** [2nn] Do we edit for computers to read? Date: Sat, 10 May 1997 From: Iain Brown, i_brown@compuserve.com The following is cross-posted from Humanist, but in light of Lane's query above, and my redesign of the mailings, I thought it might be of interest to EDline readers. I will keep you informed of the responses to Humanist. > From: Ian Lancashire > > Recently at a meeting of an editorial advisory committee, an earnest > colleague stated that we must edit etexts so that a computer can read > them. > > I think we should edit etexts so that people can read them. > > E.g. (what may have risen rise to the remark), if a poet numbers > stanzas with roman numerials, are editors of etexts obliged to convert > them to arabic form? or should the writers of software be obliged to > make software that can read roman numerals, as people can? > > Pre-computing editors "tagged" texts in many ways--by assigning > line numbers, variant readings, commentary, titles, etc. Should > we not ask for browsing software that recognizes human tagging > conventions, rather than require humans to recast such "tags" in > a "computer-readable" form? [Source: Humanist, Vol. 11, No. 18.] Comments? ---[3] FYI ----------------------------------------------------------- ** [3xx] British Library catalogue Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 From: Richard Harris, 100131.3564@compuserve.com Following the recent interest in on-line access to the British Library catalogues, this week's "Bookseller" reports that OPAC '97 is now available for browsing: < http://opac97.bl.uk > The on-line catalogue, according to the "Bookseller", contains over 8.5 million records for items dating from 1450. Access to the London and Document Supply Centre catalogues is possible. +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ ** [3ad] NewJour: reports on new electronic journals Date: Sat, 10 May 1997 From: Iain Brown, i_brown@compuserve.com It is so easy to miss information on the Internet, because of the breadth and volume of information generated. Anything which helps keep one abreast of new developments is welcome. NewJour is a mailing list that reports news of new electronic journals. The subscription details appear below, together with the Web address which lists the 3,700+ items currently available for searching, browsing and general "marveling at" (as the Co-moderator, James O'Donnell, puts it). To subscribe to NewJour, send an e-mail to: majordomo@ccat.sas.upenn.edu Put nothing on the Subject line and in the message space type *only*: subscribe NewJour DO NOT put your name or address in the message: majordomo prefers to extract them from the header and in case of even a small disparity will reject the message. The list is a busy one. You may prefer to subscribe to the "digest" option, which sends one message with a whole day's messages gathered together under on header. To subscribe to that list, proceed as above but say: subscribe NewJour-Digest The archive (searchable by title or full text) for all past NewJour messages is available at: < http://gort.ucsd.edu/newjour > thanks to the generosity of James Jacobs of the library of the University of California at San Diego. For list business, please write to nj@ccat.sas.upenn.edu. Editorial questions may go to newjour@ccat.sas.upenn.edu or to ann@a.cni.org (Ann Okerson, Co-moderator, Yale University). +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ ** [3ae] Project Gutenberg: update Edited posting of Michael S. Hart, hart@prairienet.org The 900th Project Gutenberg etext was uploaded on Tuesday, 6 May. The Project Gutenberg team is now working on Dante's _Divine Comedy_ to publish it as etext #1,000 ... in both English and Italian. Copyright Germany, Italy and Great Britain have each extended their copyright to "life + 70 years," as opposed to the "life + 50 years" of "Berne" copyright conventions. Residents of those areas will have to be an extra bit careful, as a million items that used to be Public Domain in those countries reverted to copyright status, even though a vast majority of them are no longer for sale. Rumor has it that the United States is pushing through HR604 & S505 [House Resolution #604 and Senate Bill #505] which comprise what is called "The Copyright Term Extension Act of 1997" which will remove 20 years of what would be Public Domain information from our future libraries. We strongly suggest you call AND write your congressmen to avoid removing a million books from what is already becoming the "Information Rich Versus Information Poor" in a nations in which an illiteracy rate is virtually equal to the literacy rate, in adults, aged 16 and over, as per the 1994 US Literacy Report. Proofreading Our official accuracy level that we try to maintain has been 99.9%, for our first release, which is usually raised to 99.95% before the vast majority of people ever see them. What we hope you realize is that any serious effort to get an Etext to 100% accuracy should take MORE effort than to create an entirely new Etext with an accuracy level of 99.9% to 99.95%. While many, even most, of the Project Gutenberg Etexts are accurate to an amazing degree, even more amazing when you compare then to an entire world of Etexts prepared by both the scholarly or commercial Etext enterprises, we do not feel that the additional doubling of a more than massive effort, to possibly reduce the errors, by another .02% perhaps, would have anywhere near the value of the preparation of an entirely new Etext with the same amount of effort. Nevertheless, even the most famous universities of the world have a collection of Etexts, many of which have vastly more errors that in our collection. This is also true of the commercial Etexts. In addition, there are many volunteers who would prefer to have an Etext or at least an author selected for them to work on. As some of you already know, _I_ have been reluctant to choose for anyone, not wanting to bias the formation of our collection with my choice of what are the great books of human history. I have promised to do several things once we reached Etext #1,000, one of which is to provide more guidance to those who seek it, and that guidance will be coming from Dianne Bean, true librarian, who is also working on the cataloguing project I also promised will be forthcoming once we reach Etext #1,000. We could also use people who know how to use DIFF or similar programs that point out differences between two files, even programmers that might only be able to search our files for matched and unmatched quotes. [Remember that when quoting many paragraphs, each internal paragraph gets only an opening quote.] Our proofreading is a never-ending story. . .we run spell-checkers, and other varieties of programs, on our Etexts, and have real human proofreaders go over them in pretty incredible detail, but we would be remiss if we did not tell you that over 99% of the books we work from have their own errors, and that while we catch some of those-- we undoubtedly introduce errors of our own, and even though we will gladly keep updating our editions, ad infinitum, the odds that this will catch ALL the errors in the near future are virtually 0%. ---[4] Business matters ---------------------------------------------- ** [4n] Per page/per word rates of pay Date: Mon, 5 May 97 From: Hilary Powers, 72120.1324@compuserve.com > I have been receiving queries as to my rates on a per page or per > word basis and to be honest I have no idea what the average going > rate is. Can you help me, or refer me to someone who can? For your own rates, start by dividing the actual rates for a few projects you've done by the number of pages involved. Is there a pattern? Are you making what you need to make? I find that it works for me to use a sliding scale based on the level of edit (from mechanical grammar-and-spelling correction to substantive rewrite), the difficulty of the job (how much of whatever-level-it-is there is to do), and how fast the client wants the job back (100, 200, 300+ pages per week). Light, easy, and relaxed jobs start at US$3/page; heavy and hard jobs start at $6 and can easily go to $8 or $10 - and fast turnaround is probably under 200 pages per week; 300 is unattainable. (I figure a page at 250 words - not whatever the genius doing the writing can squeeze into 10-pt Times Roman with no margins.) Sometimes I guess wrong - just wound up making about 2/3 of my usual hourly minimum on a book that should have been medium and easy, but the subject turned out to be more alien and harder to relate to than expected. The project editor had described it fairly, however, so I ate the loss; I'll renegotiate the price if a manuscript turns out to be a different job from the one I agreed to do. Mostly this system works pretty well for me. I work only on electronic media and am always looking for ways to use the computer to shave time out of a job without reducing quality, and it adds incentive to have a specific dollar target to meet or beat on a job. Looking forward to other comments on the subject! --------------------- Date: Tue, 6 May 1997 From: Joy Burrough, burrough@wnet.bos.nl Judging by the results of SFEP surveys, tariffs in UK are much lower than those in Europe, but then the work editors do in UK is different. The copyeditors are expected to copyedit, not to do substative editing/ language revision. Those of us working in Europe end up doing work that tends towards translation/revision. Being a native speaker with experience as an editor/translator is worth extra too! For what it's worth, I reckon the hourly rate for language revision/ editing of science texts in the Netherlands is round about 80-90 guilders (there are currently 3.1 guilders to the pound). SENSE (the Society of English-Native-Speakers in the Netherlands, which I helped set up and was chair of until recently) surveyed its members in 1995 to find out what they charge. There wasn't an overwhelming response (only 37 people replied), but all of them used an hour tariff. The minimum was 25 guilders per hour, the maximum 165! The mean was 71. We asked about the rate agencies paid: the mean was 69 per hour. If you are editing science texts, then I suggest you join the European Association of Science Editors. This will keep you abreast of the issues affecting L1 and L2 editors. Look at their home page: < http://www.compulink.co-uk/~ease-eurscieditors/ > They have a very interesting conference coming up shortly in Finland. You'll have to wait 4 years for the next one - which will probably be in France, as that's where the current chairman is based. If you are going to translate, then join a professional translators' society! This gives you credibility and support. For starters, look at the Institute of Translation and Interpreting. It's based in UK and has an active French Network. Their web site: < http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/ITI> Then also join the professional translators' organization in the country you're working in. They will have recommended rates - and again provide the backup and contacts you will need. The Dutch translators' society, for example, holds workshops, has regional groups, provides access to fellow translators, puts out a directory, arbitrates in the case of client problems, offers advice on insurance, electronics, etc etc. ---[5] Bookmarks ----------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 11 May 1997 From: Alison Burton, 100131.3564@compuserve.com Useful (yet understandable) information on law and the Internet, and copyright, can be found at: < http://www.crl.com/~philip/law/ilaw.html > Latin place names: < http://www.lib.byu.edu/~catalog/people/rlm/latin/names.htm > The Latin Place Names File, sponsored by the RBMS Bibliographic Standards Committee and the Harold B. Lee Library at Brigham Young University, Utah, is now available for examination. This file contains most of the Latin place names contained in the imprint field of pre- 1801 books in the catalogs of the University of Chicago, Yale University, the Huntington Library, and Brigham Young University, together with their modern English equivalent. There is also appended a short glossary of other Latin terms found in imprints. This is expected to be an expanding database. ---[6] Just for fun -------------------------------------------------- "Worst analogies ever written in a high school essay", no. 1 He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it. [Source: withheld, to protect the culprits---but they are all true!] +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ A word a day Date: Wed, 7 May 1997 From: Petra Kopp, Petra_Kopp@compuserve.com I can't remember whether A Word A Day has been included in EDline. Sounds like a fun one for editors and langauge lovers to subscribe to! Features a different word each day, with an overall theme for each week. Here is an example mailing, with subscription details at the bottom. > Subject: A.Word.A.Day--tenebrous > > ten.e.brous aj [ME, fr. MF tenebreus, fr. L tenebrosus, fr. tenebrae: > 15th c] > 1 : shut off from the light : DARK, MURKY > 2 : hard to understand : OBSCURE > 3 : causing gloom > > "The poet's dream stole over him like sunlight > And passed into the tenebrous thickets." > Simon Haydon, Irish poet Seamus Heaney wins Nobel prize, Reuters, > 10-05-1995 > > > This week's theme: telling tenacious from tenuous, and other ten* words. > > ................................................................... > The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make heaven of Hell, > and a hell of Heaven. -John Milton > > Send your comments about words to anu@wordsmith.org. > > To subscribe or unsubscribe A.Word.A.Day, send a message to > wsmith@wordsmith.org with "Subject:" line as "subscribe " > or "unsubscribe". > > Archives, FAQ, gift subscription form, and more at: > > < http://www.wordsmith.org/awad/ > ---[7] Administration ------------------------------------------------ EDline provides the opportunity for a weekly online discussion of matters editorial and editorial business. * POSTING MESSAGES TO THE LIST All messages to be posted to the list should be sent to Jane Kerr, at: bywater@zetnet.co.uk Include as the subject line, "EDline [topic]", where [topic] is the subject under discussion. Topics might include areas such as Grammar, Spelling, American English or Punctuation. Messages should be pertinent to the basic premise of the list; they may be withheld, or redirected if more pertinent to one of the other mailing lists. The spelling and grammar of messages will *not* be corrected, but some editing of length may be undertaken. 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 Iain Brown at: i_brown@compuserve.com with "EDline ADMIN" in the subject line. * To subscribe to Grapevine To subscribe to Grapevine, the discussion list concerned with matters computing, please e-mail Electric Editors at: ElectricEds@bigfoot.com with [Subscribe Grapevine] in the subject line. * To subscribe to LANGline To subscribe to LANGline, which discusses modern languages, translation and editing in non-English languages, please e-mail Electric Editors at: ElectricEds@bigfoot.com with [Subscribe LANGline] in the subject line. *Homepage and back issues: Visit the Electric Editors at: < http://www.ikingston.demon.co.uk/ee/home.htm > Back issues of all three mailing lists are available on the Mailing Lists archive page. --------- ** The views expressed in this mailing list are strictly those of the individual contributors, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the moderators or of the Electric Editors. ** Articles (c) 1997, by individual contributors Design (c) 1996, 1997 Iain Brown =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= END OF EDline 2.19 Next issue: 18 May 1997 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=