=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= EDline Vol. 3, no. 50 (13 December 1998) Editorial mailing list Published by the Electric Editors =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Contents: [1] Editorial Q & A---previous queries [2ga] Dummy telephone numbers [Offshoot of [2fy] 555] [2gb] Resources for Editors FYI [3dn] "Horrors of the ugasp" Business matters---previous posting [4bt] Rates of pay Business matters---new posting [4bw] Job opportunity [5] Bookmarks [6] Just for fun [8] Administration =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= ---[1] Editorial ---------------------------------------------- This week's issue of EDline is the last for 1998, and the last issue for Volume 3. Don't forget to send all contributions to Volume 4, no. 1 (10 Jan 1999) to Jane, at bywater@zetnet.co.uk Any EDline administrative matters should be sent to Iain. Finally, we would like to wish all our readers a very merry Christmas and a peaceful New Year. Jane Kerr and Iain Brown Moderators ---[2] Q & A -------------------------------------------------- ** [2fy] 555 Date: Tues, 24 Nov 1998 From: Ian Kingston, ian@ikingston.demon.co.uk Thanks to Ruth T-C and Deborah Shaw for confirming my suspicions about the 555 exchange in US telephone numbers. Not long after I posted, I saw another example in a children's book (555 1234 - obviously intended to be a fake), so I was pretty sure that I was on the right track. +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ ** [2ga] Dummy telephone numbers [Offshoot of [2fy] 555] Date: Thurs, 10 Dec 1998 From: David Ibbetson, ibbetson@idirect.com John Woodruff wrote: > I have just come across this problem in a book I'm editing. > All the replies in EDline 3.48 concerned US numbers and the > use of 555. Since there is a 555 exchange in the London area, > if not in other large UK cities, I contacted BT's customer > services. Their answer: there is no equivalent dummy exchange > number in the UK. The only solution for the UK would therefore > seem to be to use a number-string that obviously isn't a > telephone number -- but that's not going to be satisfactory in > many contexts. I think your contact at BT was a trifle disingenuous. If I remember correctly 100 is operator in the UK, so something like 100 2345 would be pretty safe. For a London number 0181 will shortly be followed by 0281, but something like 0581xxx yyyy should be safe for a few years. Or an 0900 number that let the caller in for large charges, but perhaps not. Many years ago Dorothy Sayers used the registration number OI 0101 for a murderer's car. Since UK car registrations don't use leading zeroes (Ontario ones do) that was suitably impossible. ---------------------- Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 From: Judyth Mermelstein, judyth_mermelstein@babylon.montreal.qc.ca My suggestion would be to use a telephone number but choose one which will not inconvenience anybody if some idiot phones it. The "speaking clock" springs to mind, but any phone number which provides a pre-recorded message would do. Also, if you used the number of a pay- telephone set up not to receive incoming calls (most pay telephones in Canada are like that now), you'd have a real number that wouldn't bother anyone. ---------------------- Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 From: John Woodruff, jwoodruf@globalnet.co.uk The problem with David Ibbotson's suggestion of say '100 1234' for a 'dummy' phone number is that all three- digit 'exchange' numbers are well known to be operator services, and we want something that looks at least half convincing. Equally, numbers beginning '05XX' are used for e.g. mobile phones. (Mind you, if the real owner of such a number were to be dialled by nutters and turned out to be one of the pretentious morons who spoil my train journeys with loud phone conversations, that would be no bad thing). Any other ideas? +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ ** [2gb] Resources for Editors Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 From: Kathleen Lyle, Kathleen@klyle.demon.co.uk Rachel Spungin wrote: > Are there any resources on-line or paper that give guidance > for editors on (highly interesting) subjects such as > capitalisation and punctuation. This is related to the work > I'm doing for a multi-media company at the moment. They don't > seem to have any idea what the formal protocols are for text > editing. I suspect there is not much of this kind of thing online (which may be why the multimedia people don't know about it) but there is a substantial literature in hard copy. Unfortunately there is no one standard, rather a variety of house styles which vary in minor details. Your best bet is to settle on one and use it consistently. For general copy-editing principles, your best bet for UK style is Judith Butcher's Copy-editing (CUP), along with the Oxford standards (Hart's Rules and the Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors, or whatever they are calling it this week). For US style, the Chicago Manual of Style (Chicago UP) is the bible. The larger London bookshops ought to have at least some of these in stock so can have a look and se of they are the kind of thing you want. ---------------------- Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 From: Roger Jones, Roger.Jones@rjpc.demon.co.uk In response to your EDline query, there's a wealth of material in print. The following are the more obvious ones to start with: Copy Editing by Judith Butcher (Cambridge University Press) The Chicago Manual of Style (University of Chicago Press) Hart's Rules for Compositors and Readers (Oxford University Press) Collins English Spelling Dictionary (HarperCollins) -- for correct word division, among other things ---------------------- Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 From: Nancy Holland, nholland@edplus.ca Rachel Spungin asked the EDLine readers for some resources. By now you've seen what happens when floodgates open: the deluge is thick and terrible! I'm sure others have mentioned most of these references, but I'll throw my 2p* worth into the mix. (no point sending you 2 cents Canadian, they're not worth the copper they're minted on!) All editors have at least one dictionary. I have three, my dad has two. If you can afford it, get the Oxford Shorter. If you edit documents for the US market, get a copy of Merrion-Webster 10th ed. Canadians have flexible spelling, but we do have a few conventions non-Canadians have problems with. If you edit Canadian work, a copy of Nelson, Gage or Oxford Canadian is essential. You'll need a thesaurus. Roget is okay, but I prefer Oxford. A grammar book is a life saver. Browse amazon.com or ChaptersGlobe.com (Canada's not-quite-so-big response to amazon) for ideas. I still have my grade 6 grammar book (I'm a believer in the KISS principle, too), "Grammar Without Grief", "Harbrace College Handbook for Canadian Writers", and "The Everyday English Handbook". Fun books, like "The Transitive Vampire" make grammar easy to relearn. You'll need a style book. You've probably heard of "The Chicago Manual of Style", the US standard for book publishing. Depending on the type of work you edit, you'll have to dig around for a style book to suit. I have "The Canadian Style", which is our federal govenment's standard and "The Globe and Mail Style Book", one of the standards for journalists. The other is put out by the Canadian Press. Again, I suggest browsing a really good book retailer and checking what is out there. Now you can get in to the styles suggested for your industry. Software development, civil engineering, education, armouries, retailing, sports, music, manufacturing, forestry, you name it, all have their own style manuals. Get one. Or two. Then you need a few editing how-to books. "Copy Editing" by Karen Judd, "Technical Editing" by Judith Tarutz, "Elements of Editing" by Arthur Plotnik spring immediately to mind. These are all US publications, however. I'm sure British equivalents exist--and I'd love to hear about them. Online resources abound. Pick a search engine and go crazy! Many writing pages are more helpful than editing pages. My current favourites are techwiting.miningco.com (The Mining Company's technical writing page)www.contentious.com (Web writing) www.stc-va.org (Society for Technical Communication) Literacy Education Online Editing & Proofreading Strategies leo.stcloud.msus.edu/acadwrite/editing.html Jack Lynch's Grammar and Style Notes at www.english.upenn.edu/~jlynch/grammar.html The Editorial Eye www.eeicom.com/eye/ (I susbscribe to their journal. An extravagance to be sure, but so useful) Niva at www.niva.com I could go on. I have 3, 3-inch binders full of dowloads and URLs and two smallish bookcases full of references. DTP and document design, interface design, online writing, software manuals, Simplified English manuals, newsletter production manuals, manual writing manuals, HTML guides, Web design manuals, typography manuals, dictionaries, style guides, grammar books, abbreviations dictionary, Fowler 2 (hoping for Burchfield's "Fowler 3" for Christmas), MLA Handbook... Good luck. ---[3] FYI ----------------------------------------------------- ** [3dn] "Horrors of the ugasp" Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1998 From: Iain Brown, i_brown@compuserve.com As I was performing my pre-Christmas tidying routine, I came across a letter from "The Times", dated 9 Sept 1998. I found it interesting enough to warrant reproduction here. Horrors of the ugasp From Mr Neil Sheldon Sir, The use of the ugasp -- ungrammatical gender-ambiguous singular pronoun -- which pollutes our language in the cause of political correctness reaches new depths of absurdity in your report of September 5 ... on a case of unfair dismissal. You quote the employer as saying: "... the applicant does not have to tell us they are pregnant". A charished ugasp of a similar type comes from a magistrate I heard addressing a defendant: "You kicked your victim in the testicles and went on to break their nose." [Copyright, 1998, The Times.] ---[4] Business matters --------------------------------------- ** [4bt] Rates of pay Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 From: Victoria Wicks, Wicks@Springer.de The comments about pay for on-screen work that appeared in EDline 3.49 promted me to write from the point of view of an in-house editor. It is true that on-screen editing cuts out some of the further work on the article/book. For example, the typesetter does not have to implement the copy-editor's corrections. Our statistics show, though, that on-screen copy editing can take up to 30 percent longer than hard-copy editing and therefore costs more (we still pay by the hour). Also, the error rate can be higher and we therefore have an increased amount of in-house work. We also have the extra costs of the infrastructure involved (databases, servers, and so on) as we use on-screen editing as part of an 'electronic' workflow. For our journal articles, the whole thing adds about 20 pfennig per page to the production costs. But an electronic workflow is vital these days, so this must be accepted. I am always prepared to pay more for on-screen editing, not so much to compensate for the extra cost of the hardware and software involved, but to reflect the extra skills I demand of the freelancer. Nowadays, a computer and Internet connection are the normal tools required to do the job and I expect freelancers to have the tools and know how to use them before they offer their services. I apply this assumption to my own freelance work. However, we do make allowances when we ask our current hard-copy editors to train for on-screen editing (or lose the work). We often supply the tools, train them, and compensate them for the increased costs. There is a general move to paying a fixed amount for a project or per page. But in working out how much this should be, I first estimate how many hours would be involved and base the project / page rate on that, or I ask the freelancer to give me a quote. I need to control the project costs but I do not want to lose the good freelancers I rely on. It is a balancing act. ---------------------- Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 From: Josephine Bacon, bacon@langservice.com The real saving with working on screen is when the book is poured into the DTP program and edited. On-screen editing saves very little as opposed to hard copy editing, and some publishers prefer editors to work on their page layout hard copy as then they can see where the corrections are. +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ ** [4bw] Job opportunity Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 From: Fiona Dix, alan@hiraeth.u-net.com I received the following by email a couple of days ago and though I can't pursue it myself, not having enough knowledge of the subject area, there may be someone on the list who would be interested, or might know someone to pass it on to. The contact is "Emmett Power" < Media.Intelligence@btinternet.com > The MIB Group Title Fact Sheet Description of the title Title: The Electronic Commerce Briefing Launch date: October 1997 Readership: European electronic commerce implementers, solutions vendors, and venture capitalists Frequency: 12 times a year Format: A4 Newsletter, 14 pages an issue Page making system: Adobe Pagemaker V5 for IBM or Microsoft Publisher Editorial model: The editorial focus of the ECB is the tracking of developments in European business to business ecommerce, online finance solutions and the integration of ecommerce and enterprise resource systems. Brief description of the proposed role of the Editor The Editor will monitor online sources of news and comment about ecommerce and enterprise application solutions every month. He will select the breaking stories of most relevance and interest to the readership of the ECB and write them up, adding an element of overview, comment and analysis. Ideally, the editor will edit onscreen directly into the page- making package; failing which he will edit in Word for Windows 95 or a compatible word processing package. To coincide with the appointment of the new editor, the ECB will be relaunched with a new format and a new mixed editorial model. The number of news stories will be reduced to twenty news stories an issue of 6,000 words in total. As well as news stories each issue will carry two externally-generated articles each of 1,000 words. These articles sourced by the Publisher and the Editor working in partnership. The total editorial duties including editing onscreen are expected to take about 24 hours a month. ---[5] Bookmarks ----------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1998 From: Iain Brown, i_brown@compuserve.com The Role of a Web Editor: In October Brian Kelly, from UKOLN, sought views on the role of a web editor from another mailing list. He has written an article on this subject which has been published in Ariadne issue 18: < http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue18/web-focus/ > [Cross-posted from website-info-mgt@mailbase.ac.uk with thanks.] ---------------------- Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1998 From: Debbie Ridpath Ohi, editor@inkspot.com I thought you might be interested in the following resource: < http://www.inkspot.com/bt/craft/newsletterinfo.html > How To Start An Online Newsletter ---------------------- Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 From: Keta Hodgson, keta@global-edit.com Saw this interesting thread in a discussion group at Salon Magazine (< http://www.salonmagazine.com >) and thought some in this group might like to join in. The discussion area is called Table Talk, the topic is Books, the discussion group is "Where have all the copy editors gone?" and the link is as follows: < http://tabletalk.salonmagazine.com/ webx?13@248.1PBCa6p1aIL^6@.ee8c6de/0 > ---[6] Just for fun ------------------------------------------- "Beguiling ideas about science", no. 35 A monsoon is a French gentleman. +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ "It CAN be done", no. 19 The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C,' the idea must be feasible. --- A Yale University management professor in response to Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service. (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.) ---[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 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. The sections of EDline are as follows: [2] Q & A -- questions and answers [3] FYI -- items of general interest [4] Business matters -- items of a business nature [5] Bookmarks -- useful Web pages [6] Just for fun -- time for letting hair down! [7] Miscellaneous -- odds and sods * 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/ > 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) 1998, by individual contributors Design (c) 1996, 1997, Iain Brown Compilation (c) 1998, The Electric Editors =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= END OF EDline 3.50 Next issue: Vol. 4, no. 1, 10 January 1999 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=