=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= EDline Vol. 2, no. 33 (17 August 1997) Editorial mailing list Published by the Electric Editors =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Contents: Q & A---Previous queries [2am] "God save the Queen!", etc. [2an] On-screen proofreading? [2ao] Learning on-screen editing Q & A---New queries [2ap] Translation rights [2aq] Dracula [2ar] Guides to punctuation and grammar? FYI [3aq] "Penguin Guide to Punctuation" [3ar] Search and replace tool for Word Business matters---New query [4x] Pages per day [5] Bookmarks [6] Just for fun [8] Administration =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= ---[2] Q & A --------------------------------------------------------- ** [2am] "God save the Queen!", etc. Date: Sun, 10 Aug 1997 From: David Ibbetson, ibbetson@idirect.com The trouble with the earlier practice was that during the interregnum between the death of a king and the naming of his successor there was no king's peace and no king's laws. Prior to the Norman conquest English kings were "elected" the choice going to the strong man who could keep the kingdom together. To show their strength the candidates brought their (armed) households to the election. This practice ceased but the succession wasn't automatic. Robert of Normandy, William I's heir at law didn't succeed him to the throne of England. Instead, William I died on 9 Sep 1087 and his 2nd son was crowned as William II on 26 Sep. Up to and including Henry III, tables of English regnal years runs from the date of Coronation. Henry III died on 16 Nov 1272, and his successor Edward I was *proclaimed* on 20 Nov 1272, from which date his regnal years run. Edward I died on 7 July 1307 and Edward II's dates run from 8 July 1307. Even this overnight gap disappeared in 1485 in which year Richard III died on 22 Aug and Henry VII dated his regnal years from that same 22nd. (I've omitted some gaps during the barons' wars.). +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ ** [2an] On-screen proofreading? Date: Sun, 10 Aug 1997 From: Hilary Powers, 72120.1324@compuserve.com Ian Kingston writes of an an on-screen 'proofreading' test that included misspellings, poor grammar, poor punctuation, inconsistent hyphenation, incorrectly calculated figures and faulty cross- references. He asks: > Am I alone in thinking that dealing with the above consitutes > copy-editing, not proofreading? Would I be justified in > suspecting that the term 'proofreading' was being used in order > to impose a lower rate of pay...? Some of that sounds like copyediting to me. On the other hand, proofreading of electronically edited manuscripts seems to be expanding in scope - there's no dead copy, so proofreaders look at everything. I've recently worked with proofreaders on two different jobs who both asked questions that seemed to involve not just editing but fairly heavy editing at that - to the point where I had to say, "If I'd thought of that I'd have queried the author, but it's too late in the day now." Maybe the would-be employer simply expects that level of awareness from proofreaders - but figures there won't be much to catch and therefore the job should pay less than editing? Who knows? ---------------------- Date: Mon, 11 Aug 1997 From: Josephine Bacon, 100270.3224@compuserve.com > Am I alone in thinking that dealing with the above consitutes > copy-editing, not proofreading? Would I be justified in > suspecting that the term 'proofreading' was being used in order > to impose a lower rate of pay (GBP11.00/hour in this case)? " In a word - yes. An old ploy. Incidentally, we linguists are often asked to "proofread" a translation from a foreign language, which actually means edit it, rewrite it, and check it against the original English to see if they match. As for Simon De Pinna's contribution, I agree with him 1000 per cent. In fact, I have often dreamed of becoming a crotchety old lady with lots of money (from a lottery win, not from editing!) and taking up most of my time going through the job ads in various newspapers and writing to the prospective employers and telling them what cheapskates they are. As I recall, one of the worst culprits was Mary Glasgow who always offered the most paltry wages to linguists. Of course, being a linguist I have lots to complain about. Nowadays, thank goodness, linguists are in such short supply and the demand has grown so much that they are treated better but in the 70s I remember telling my mother that linguists actually got paid *less* than people doing the same job who were monolingual. She didn't believe me, so she went into an employment agency to ask. They said, yes, that was quite right, because the low pay reflected the fact that linguists got more job satisfaction! +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ ** [2ao] Learning on-screen editing Date: Tue, 12 Aug 1997 From: Martyn Yeo, wordwise@cix.compulink.co.uk Sophie Richmond raises a fundamental issue in asking for advice on how she can learn on-screen editing: is what we do when work on screen essentially different from what we do when we work on paper? If on Sophie's next job she accepts a word-processed file from the client, completes the copy-editing on paper, opens the file and makes all the changes required, checks them, and returns the amended file and a clean printout, is this on-screen editing? Or is she just doing (for probably very little extra reward) extra work that would probably have been carried out by the client or by another supplier such as a typesetter? When copy-editing is carried out on paper we need to carry out at least a basic set of tasks to make sure that we produce a clear, complete, consistent and well organised document ready for typesetting. There will probably also be specific requests from the client and we will have a list of queries to go back. Is on-screen editing different from this because we have to deal with technical matters as well: the author's files were written using an old version of a rather obscure word processor and need to be converted to a format we can read; the alignment in the tables was achieved using spaces rather than tabs or a proper table; accented characters appear as garbage; the typesetters want the file in Word 5 for the Macintosh format (and on a Mac disk)? Or is it special because we can make sure we take advantage of the features in our word processor: find-and-replace, spell check, word count, strikethrough, version compare, plus any macros we have written to automate regular tasks? What is it that we are offering our clients when we work in this way? Is the best response to Sophie's question about training "don't lose sight of your basic skills"? +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ ** [2ap] Translation rights Date: Mon, 11 Aug 1997 From: Yves LeLoup, yvesleloup31@hotmail.com I am in contact with a (British) publisher. I want to translate a book (obscure book) published in 1930. To do that, my first step is: to request that the publisher grant me translation rights. there is a good chance that it will happen. It is a labor of love, etc. Now, is there anybody out there with such experience: what specific form/phrasing should I use? Are there sample forms [sometimes there are]? What I do not need is sby who explains: without an agent, blabla ... or if you are not on the publisher's list, blabla. I know that. It's been done. "When there is a will, there is a way". [The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly.] +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ ** [2aq] Dracula Date: Mon, 11 Aug 1997 From: Josephine Bacon, 100270.3224@compuserve.com I wonder if you can help me. I would like to know if there is any way I can trace foreign editions of Dracula by Bram Stoker through Oxford Libraries, or in any other way. I have found three editions so far, Italian, Greek and Icelandic, but I need to know what other European editions there are and if they are out of copyright. Can you give me some advice as to where to look? +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ ** [2ar] Guides to punctuation and grammar? Date: Sun, 17 Aug 1997 From: Iain Brown, i_brown@compuserve.com Having just spent the last week copy-editing a book on pensions and life assurance, I feel the need to brush up on my punctuation and grammar, especially on the usage of commas ... Can anyone recommend some good books on punctuation and grammar for one who has almost lost the ability to edit a comprehensible piece of text?! Does anyone have any thoughts on the "Penguin Guide to Punctuation"? ---[3] FYI -------------------------------------------------------- ** [3aq] "Penguin Guide to Punctuation" Date: Sat, 16 Aug 1997 From: Iain Brown, i_brown@compuserve.com [Source: "That's a hyphen, dash it", Derwent May, _The Times_, Friday, 8 August 1997, p.16] [...] Some of the [...] mysteries of punctuation are described in a new _Penguin Guide to Punctuation_ by R.L. Trask (6.99 pounds). Mr Trask considers some of the problems of punctuating with modern technology -- dashes, for instance, are always difficult, and on word-processors that cannot produce them at all, he recommends using a double hyphen. But the main point that emerges from his book is that the old, classic forms of English punctuation are just as sound as they have ever been. He demonstrates again and again that if commas and colons and apostrophes are used correctly, they are an infallible aid to clarity. Some of the errors he picks out are ones that have been annoying me lately. One is the tendency to put inverted commas around words just for emphasis, which you often see on advertisements outside shops. He gives a good example of this: _We Sell "Traditional Pub Food"_. This has exactly the opposite effect to what was intended, because quote marks like this are properly used to indicate that something is nor what it seems. The pub, says Trask, "is unwittingly suggesting it is serving up microwaved sludge". Another misuse that causes mirth is the placing of hypens. He cites "antiseal-killing campaigners" or "our postcold-war world". "Who are these campaigners who kill _antiseals_?" he asks. "What is a _war world_ and what is special about a _postcold_ one?" I have noticed two deplorable tendencies recently. One is the abandonment of the comma before the noughts in "2,000". No doubt in the days when it came in, thousands of anything -- pounds, people, cows -- were not often encountered by many people, and perhaps that comma before the three noughts was more like a gasp of astonishment. Nevertheless, it is still practically helpful when you write "3,000,000' or, even more, if you write "3,000,000,000". It should be kept in good use when writing out thousands. I also dislike the way that the American use of a capital letter after a colon is creeping in, as in "President Clinton is foolish: He laughs too much." Either the last four words explain why the President must be considered foolish, in which case they are an integral part of the sentence, and the capital "H" is misleading, or his laughing tendency is something additional to his being foolish. Mr Trask delivers proper blasts against very common errors such as "The bull lowered it's head", but he does not perhaps allow enough for the possibilities of original punctuation. Mr P.N. Furbank, the biographer of E.M. Forster, tells me he likes to put a dash sometimes before the last sentence of a paragraph, indicating that this is a new reflection prompted by what has gone before, but one he does not particularly want to expand here. He finds that editors usually cut it out. The great original punctuator was James Joyce, and he is at the centre of a tremendous controversy at the moment. A new "Reader's Edition" of _Ulysses_ has just come out (Picador, 20 pounds), in which the editor, Danis Rose, has changed some punctuation to make it easier to read. Mr Rose is under fierce attack from Joyce's grandson, who calls it "The Rape of Ulysses". Joyce's main innovation was actually to take out the punctuation, in order to convey the impression of thoughts and feelings slipping and sliding into one another in a person's mind. Mr Rose has put a lot of it back. For instance, when Leopold Bloom is ruminating on aristocratic women he thinks "Lady this. Powdered bosom pearls. The elite." Mr Rose wants "Powdered bosom, pearls". But surely Joyce wanted the sensation of the bosom and the pearls running into each other? Mr Rose's approach seems like taking the spices out of a curry and asking us to eat them separately. But commas in other places are vitally necessary. I saw in a paper the other day that a record had "sold two million copies more than any other single released that year". There should have been a comma after "copies". It makes a difference. +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ ** [3ar] Search and replace tool for Word Date: Tue, 11 Aug 1997 From: Veronica Yuill, archetype@compuserve.com Archetype Information Technology Ltd House Style: Search and Replace tool for Word We have developed for our own use (in academic typesetting) a bulk search-and-replace tool based on Word 6 macros, which we have been using for some time. It works on the basis of setting up tables of search and replace pairs which can be saved, edited, and re-used. The program allows you to select multiple source files and processes all of them through the search-and-replace table, creating new copies of the files so that the originals are unchanged. A beta version of the software, and full documentation in Word 6 format, is now available free from our website: < http://www.archetype-it.com > If you use Word 6, please feel free to give it a try; feedback is welcomed. ---[4] Business matters ---------------------------------------------- ** [4x] Pages per day Date: Wed, 13 Aug 1997 From: Reinhard Sonntag, sonntrc@alpha.unisa.ac.za I wonder if you can help answer a question from darkest Africa? I work in the Editorial department at the University of South Africa, a distance university, which distributes its study material in print form to students all over the world. Most of our study material is produced in two languages, English and Afrikaans. Now many of our students study through the English medium although this is not their mother tongue and we have to take this into account when editing. We should like some views on how many pages an editor should be able to produce per day. Yes, I know manuscripts vary but what I'm looking for is an average figure. Let's consider the following: (1) copy editing - straightforward with not too many hassles (2) substantive editing - where the author may also have English as a second language and so the work needs heavy editing and reworking (3) what we call a "skunk job" - virtually a rewrite, content has to be rearranged and the original can be pretty incoherent We work on screen mainly, redlining in WordPerfect 6.1 and calculate one page of double spacing to consist of 300 words. Our working day is 7,5 hours and we work in individual offices. Another question too, do you think a person working at home who can avoid interruptions should be more productive? Please reply direct to Reinhard Sonntag at: sonntrc@alpha.unisa.ac.za [And don't forget to copy the message to EDline!---IDB] ---[5] Bookmarks ----------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 13 Aug 1997 From: Iain Brown, i_brown@compuserve.com Contact details for the Editors' Association of Canada (EAC/ACR): 35 Spadina Road Toronto, Ontario M5R 2S9 CANADA Phone: +1-416-975-1379 Fax: +1-416-975-1839 E-mail: editors@web.net Website: < http://www.web.net/eac-acr > ---[6] Just for fun -------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 13 Aug 1997 From: Merle Read, ReadMA@aol.com The menu (laminated, unfortunately) of my local cafe offered the following starter: Beef, tomato and cheese salad Luckily for me it was easily converted to a vegetarian dish by picking out not the offending meat but the offending comma... +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ Date: Sat, 16 Aug 1997 From: Jane Kerr, bywater@zetnet.co.uk A music club offers the opportunity to purchase "Sounds of Relaxation", CDs of "the therapeutic and deeply inspiring sounds of nature". Among its titles is Cry of the Wolf: The haunting howling of the wolf creates an atmosphere of total peace and tranquility. A sense of profound relaxation fills your mind and body. Whatever next? The Roar of the Lion? The Snapping of the Alligator's Teeth? +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ "Worst analogies ever written in a high school essay", no. 14 Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph. [Okay, so what I want to know now is where exactly in the US will the trains meet. Answers on a postcard ...] ---[8] 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 either Jane Kerr, at: bywater@zetnet.co.uk or Iain Brown, at: i_brown@compuserve.com 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 2.33 Next issue: 24 August 1997 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=