=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= EDline Vol. 3, no. 16 (19 April 1998) Editorial mailing list Published by the Electric Editors =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Contents: Q & A---previous queries [2de] Writing of dates [2dh] Land management terminology [2di] Word breaks [2dj] Length of an index [2dk] Favourable edit reviews [Offshoot of [2dg] Barzun reference] FYI [3cd] The last book [3ce] The new Oxford Text Archive site Business matters---previous postings [4aj] Irritants [4al] Expenses [5] Bookmarks [6] Just for fun [8] Administration =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= ---[2] Q & A --------------------------------------------------------- ** [2de] Writing of dates Date: Mon, 13 Apr 1998 From: Josephine Bacon, 100270.3224@compuserve.com Jane Lyle wrote in an example "leaving on May 5th", and not "5th May". The Chicago Manual of Style may well have changed its mind as to what is correct, if I americanized a British text (something I do at least once a month) leaving the dates with the number first and the month second (where the month is written out in full) and it were sent to the publishers in the U.S., they would immediately count it as an error. As to month coming after day when the date is written all in figures, all I can say, is that all the immigration attorneys for whom I woked in California as a translator/interpreter used to get mad as hell if anyone left the date the European way round and in *many* cases immigration attorneys were forced to go to court *in person* to petition a judge, when a date in a crucial document had been written the European way, in order to swear the true date of the original document, since the court assumed that, say, 3/4/98 meant the date 4th March instead of 3 April. So you can see how vitally important it is that there be one standard for all dates. +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ ** [2dh] Land management terminology Date: Mon, 13 Apr 1998 From: Josephine Bacon, 100270.3224@compuserve.com Kathy Stackhouse wrote: > I'm working on a translation of new land laws in the former Soviet > Union. Can anyone recommend a reference (hard or electronic) for > English-language terminology on land management and urban planning? Probably the best for technical Russian dictionaries is the Russo Publishing House, Room 325, 15 Leninski Avenue, 117071 Moscow, Russia. Write to Galina Zakharova, the President. They are very nice people. You will probably have to pay in US dollars. +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ ** [2di] Word breaks Date: Wed, 8 Apr 1998 From: Harold Orlans, horlans@erols.com > I've been looking for some information on the history, psychology, > and theory of word-breaks (i.e., when and where you split a word that > overruns the end of a line of justified text. Is there a standard > work out there, or does anyone have any suggestions? Some word breaks observed (not recommended!) by John Murray in "A Gentleman Publisher's Commonplace Book" are: mans-laughter, not-iced, the-rapist, the leg-end of King Arthur's Table. --------------------- Date: Wed, 8 Apr 1998 From: Roy Johnson, roy@mantex.demon.co.uk For a start, you could go to the best works on typography and look under 'hyphenation'. It's certainly discussed in the highly-acclaimed Robert Bringhurst, *The Elements of Typographic Style*, Hatley & Marks, 1996. --------------------- Date: Wed, 8 Apr 1998 From: Gene Freeman, genefree@speed.net For the history, older printer's manuals contain sections on the use of hyphens. Also the front matter of older dictionaries often discuss "word division." --------------------- Date: Wed, 8 Apr 1998 From: MAMcCorison Not long on theory, but strong on practice: _Word Division; supplement to Government Printing Office Style Manual, 5th ed., 1952_ Washington: Supt. Docs. De Vinne, Theodore Low, _Correct composition: a treatise on spelling, abreviations of words, the compounding and division of words, ..._ N.Y.: Oswald Pub. Co., 1916. A later ed. of De Vinne's own ed. of 1901. Did you look at the Chicago Univ. Press, manual of style? ---------------------- Date: Mon, 13 Apr 1998 From: Mark L. Levinson, mark@memco.co.il It might be worth looking at HYPHENATION, by Ronald McIntosh, "a discussion of the changing principles of word-division, now implemented by computers, in British English and American English, with notes on hyphenation of 39 other languages." I will immediately admit that I haven't read it cover to cover, though it is less than a hundred pages long and much of its space is given over to sidebars such as "No really satisfactory theory of how the syllable is produced or how it is perceived has so far been put forward." - Professor David Abercrombie Elements of General Phonetics Edinburgh University Press 1967 ---------------------- Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1998 From: Lyn Imeson, lyn@imeson2.prestel.co.uk When in doubt I always refer to _The Oxford Minidictionary of Spelling and Word Division_ (word division being the OUP jargon for word breaks), which also has a section in its prelims about word division. There is a section on division of words in ODWE (_Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors_) and this refers to _Hart's Rules_. The rules/recommendations are rather complicated but the idea is to make the division as natural and unobtrusive as possible to facilitate recognition of the divided word. This is the OUP view of the issue. However, ODWE says _American printers divide strictly according to pronunciation._ I'd be interested to know what rules are used by word processors when breaking words. +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ ** [2dj] Length of an index Date: Sat, 18 Apr 1998 From: Richard Raper, indspec@pavilion.co.uk Question of Laura Pomeroy. Length of an index? How long is a piece of string? Suggested criteria on density of an index are: type of readership; level of scholarship of target audience; type of publication; requirements of the publisher; space available and cost. A rule of thumb guide might be 3 to 4 entries per page of text, but some books can get away with 1 to 2 enties per page while others with text in two columns at post graduate level may require up to 20 entries per page or even more! Then a separate Author or Names index may be necessary. For legal works, separate Tables of Statutes, Statutory Instruments and Cases may be necessary in addition to the Subject and possibly Author indexes. I hope this helps, but this is the danger of looking under the flagstones! +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ ** [2dk] Favourable edit reviews [Offshoot of [2dg] Barzun reference] Date: Fri, 3 Apr 1998 From: Alice Falk, afalk@cais.com Simon Cauchi wrote: > Can any others offer references to FAVOURABLE comments about > copyeditors? The nicest compliment I received (alas, it was spoken > to my face) was that I had robbed one of my authors of their* chance > of winning the annual bad writing prize. Jonathan Yardley, a sometimes-obnoxious columnist for the _Washington Post_, wrote a piece devoted to praising the work of copyeditors (and ridiculing John Sayles, whose recent contract had stipulated that he not be copyedited). It's from 6 Aug 1990. --------------------- Date: Sat, 4 Apr 1998 From: David Gordon, dgordon@interaccess.com There was an article in the NYTimes (I think) about two or three months ago (weekday not weekend) in praise of an older woman (whose name I have forgotten) who had served for decades as a copy editor at the New Yorker. I'm sorry that I cannot be any more specific, but perhaps someone else out there will recall (or have clipped) the article and be able to point you more specifically. --------------------- Date: Fri, 3 Apr 1998 From: Merle Read, ReadMA@aol.com Simon Cauchi wrote > I was taken aback to find "elegaic" in print in an earlier publication > I had copyedited. Blame the proofreader, Simon! ;-) --------------------- Date: Sun, 5 Apr 1998 From: Simon Cauchi, cauchi@wave.co.nz > There was an article in the NYTimes in praise of an older woman (whose > name I have forgotten) who had served for decades as a copy editor at > the New Yorker. Barbara Yerkes, who sent me a private message in response to my previous posting mentioned this article. She wrote: "Eleanor Gould Packard is a legendary copyeditor, credited with having shaped the style of the New Yorker magazine, for which she worked for fifty years. An article in praise of her appeared in the NY Times newspaper, February 4 of this year." ---------------------- Date: Sun, 12 Apr 1998 From: Christine Shuttleworth, ChristineShuttleworth@compuserve.com Simon Cauchi wrote: > Why, I wonder, do copyeditors get such a bad press? Not only Barzun > but John Gross, Kingsley Amis and others have recorded their low > opinion of the service they received. When I think of some of the > authors (usually academic) whose ignorance, carelessness, incoherence, > etc., I have successfully hidden or disguised, I think I deserve a > medal. Which is not to say that copyeditors can't themselves make > mistakes. I was watching an old episode of Men Behaving Badly on cable TV the other night, and was amused when Gary berated his secretary for spelling "professional" with only one f. When she timidly showed him the spelling in the Concise Oxford Dictionary, he proceeded to dictate a letter to the publishers complaining about the misprint. But then, he's not a copyeditor. Now, "Copyeditors Behaving Badly" would make a good series - or would it? ---------------------- Date: Sun, 12 Apr 1998 From: Hilary Powers, HPowers1@compuserve.com Pet peeves are fun, but do let's share some of the good stuff! Can you top this unsolicited testimonial, from *The Future of Staff Groups* by Joel P. Henning (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 1997): "Hilary Powers taught me about good will, clarity, and gentle persuasion in editing this book. She brought to the task a deep understanding of the subject matter, the mind of the reader, and the heart of an author. She is superbly suited to do her work and I have been honored by her service." You can plough through a lot of difficult text on the strength of that sort of fuel ... ---------------------- Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1998 From: Katie Lewis, katie@farnfilm.demon.co.uk I think the problem with general tributes is that editing is one of those jobs which is invisible when done well. Judith Butcher (1992, p. 44): "Good copy-editing is invisible: it aims to present the book the author would have written if he or she had had more time or experience". Fortunately many authors are very appreciative of individual editors' efforts, and increasingly they mention those editors by name in their acknowledgements. ---[3] FYI ----------------------------------------------------------- ** [3cd] The last book Date: Wed, 8 Apr 1998 From: Richard Harris, 100131.3564@compuserve.com According to the "New York Times", the Media Laboratory at MIT is attempting to create a portable computer "that will closely resemble a book, complete with leather binding. It will contain the text of thousands of books." This article by Christopher Lehmann-Haupt is available online: < http://www.nytimes.com/library/arts/040898book.html > +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ ** [3ce] The new Oxford Text Archive site Date: Thurs, 16 Apr 1998 From: Iain Brown, i_brown@compuserve.com [Cross-posted from Humanist] The Oxford Text Archive is launching a state-of-the-art web service later in the year, reflecting our new status as a Service Provider for the UK's national Arts and Humanities Data Service. Before this web site goes live, we need feedback from all types of user. So whether you are new to electronic text or an expert in the field, we invite you to visit our site and use our feedback form to tell us what you think. < http://ota.ahds.ac.uk/ > but throughout this period of testing, users will have the option to visit either our current site, or our new experimental service. (In order to fully appreciate this service, we recommend that you use either Netscape Navigator 4 or IE 3 (or better).) Features of the new OTA site include: - an online catalogue of all our texts, whether online or offline - a facility to create a corpus of texts - a download facility for TEI encoded texts that allows you to choose from a variety of different formats - online tools to help you preparing your texts in SGML - a listing of future events, as well as papers from previous workshops and conferences. - a FAQ, based on the OTA's 22 years of operation. - a search tool and site map to help you find your way around the site - an SGML software repository - "Guides to Good Practice" on the creation and documentation of electronic texts (in preparation) ---[4] Business matters ---------------------------------------------- ** [4aj] Irritants Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1998 From: Naomi Laredo, naomi@smallprt.demon.co.uk Slow payment Roger Jones suggests that "freelance workers are different from companies" and that our in-house contacts should > talk seriously to the bean counters about establishing a payments > system that differentiates clearly between freelances and others I'm not sure that this is the right approach. We are not employees; we are (very) small businesses. Asking for special terms reinforces the impression that we are 'just poor freelancers', scraping a living and in a position of dependency on our customers. All I ask for is to be paid *on time* according to the terms agreed between one business and another. This is the right of every creditor, large or small. +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ ** [4al] Expenses Date: Sun, 12 Apr 1998 From: David Ibbetson, ibbetson@idirect.com Sara Hulse writes > I wonder if anyone can give me some advice on charging for expenses > such as postage, telephone calls, e-mail, printing, etc. I have > always charged postage, and usually telephone calls, but increasingly > now I am using e-mail to send and receive work, and often have to > download files and print them out. As a result, these expenses are > becoming more significant, and I would welcome any advice about what > I should be charging clients. Over the year your charges for e-mail should, pay your fees to your ISP and, outside North America, the cost of the local calls involved, all with appropriate mark-up. in the same manner as your charges for postage, telephone calls etc. Now, whether these items should be separately itemised as in a solicitor's bill, or included in some more general heading, is a matter of judgement. You might want to do it differently for different customers. Remember: "To attending on you, for further instructions re your will, but you were dead". ---------------------- Date: Sun, 12 Apr 1998 From: Hilary Powers, HPowers1@compuserve.com I charge for courier service and occasionally for phone calls (when the client has requested extensive hand-holding at long-distance rates), but not for ordinary letter postage or for e-mail. Postage seems like an incidental business expense -- nobody else sends bills postage-due -- and my e-mail is a flat-rate monthly service. As to printing, I don't do it, except for the odd page that I absolutely have to see on paper. "My poor little printer isn't up to a job like that," I say sadly when someone asks me to print out a manuscript, without adding that I have no intention whatsoever of correcting the situation. This policy may have cost me one client who claimed to be pleased with an edit but never called back, but I don't grieve for it -- there's plenty of business of the type I prefer, which is to say all online, no paper output required. Thanks for posting the query -- it'll be interesting to see what others do in this area! ---[5] Bookmarks ----------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 18 Apr 1998 From: Iain Brown, i_brown@compuserve.com Society for Scholarly Publishing: < http://www.edoc.com/ssp/AnnualMeetingF.html > ---[6] Just for fun -------------------------------------------------- "Lines from the slushpile", no. 30 "Why am I like this? What am I like this? I'll tell you why I'm like this! Because those people at the party are all brittle, shallow people and I cannot see their souls!" +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ "Beguiling ideas about science", no. 1 Date: Mon, 13 Apr 1998 From: Jo Fletcher, JoFletcher@compuserve.com The beguiling ideas about science quoted here were gleaned from essays, exams, and classroom discussions. Most were from 5th and 6th graders. They illustrate Mark Twain's contention that the "most interesting information comes from children, for they tell all they know and then stop." Q: What is one horsepower? A: One horsepower is the amount of energy it takes to drag a horse 500 feet in one second. ---[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 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. 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