=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= EDline Vol. 4, no. 10 (14 March 1999) Editorial mailing list Published by the Electric Editors =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Contents: [1] Editorial Q & A---previous queries [2gn] Berks and other insults [2go] US English [2gt] Data base/database [2gv] International English [Offshoot of [2go] US English] [2gw] Millions and billions [Offshoot of [2gp] Decimal points] [2gx] 'Problematising' Q & A---new query [2gy] Over-reliance on spelling checkers FYI [3dy] International English dictionary Business matters---previous posting [4cg] Expanding one's client base Business matters---new posting [4ch] Illustrators wanted [6] Just for fun [8] Administration =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= ---[1] Editorial ----------------------------------------------- I'd like to offer a big global thank-you to all the people who have send contributions and messages of encouragement relating to the International English Dictionary project announced in EDline 4.9. Thanks also to those of you who have passed the message on to other mailing lists and discussion groups: my mailbox is already starting to fill up with peculiar terms and expressions from around the world. My next challenge for you is to come up with a suitably pithy and amusing title for this opus: I'd though of "US and them", but it doesn't quite capture the international flavour of this project, so I'm hoping that someone will be able to improve on that. Future developments on the dictionary will appear in the thread [3dy], which kicks off in today's issue. So - keep those contributions rolling in. Jane Kerr Moderator ---[2] Q & A --------------------------------------------------- ** [2gn] Berks and other insults Date: Thur, 11 March 1999 From: Virginia Catmur, Virginia_Catmur@compuserve.com Sorry to be rather behind-hand with this comment (just surfacing after a particularly heavy workload): Travellers ('Gypsies') pronounce 'Derby' to rhyme with 'herby', so I'll bet they say 'berk' to rhyme with 'jerk'. The 'outdoor' element of the hunt ties in with their influence too. +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ ** [2go] US English Date: Wed, 10 March 1999 From: Josephine Bacon, bacon@langservice.com Nancy Duin wrote: > Not only do I not think that anyone who has not lived in the > US should attempt Americanization (and vice versa as far as > Anglicisation is concerned), I also believe that you (the > expatriate American) lose the ability to do the job properly if > you are away from the States for longer than two years *and* > you are not Americanizing as a fulltime job. But even then you > can run into problems. Thanks for your moral support Nancy. I go back to the U.S. once a year, but that is not always enough. When in doubt, I email the text to my colleague and co-worker in Santa Clara, California. But what about regionalisms? The Brits don't even realise they exist. I remember laboriously changing "one quarter" in a cookbook I wrote into "one fourth" as this would be California style. My New York editor changed them all back again! +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ ** [2gt] Data base/database Date: Wed, 10 Mar 1999 From: Josephine Bacon, bacon@langservice.com Bernard Taylor wrote: > I was reviewing a ms last week (in English) originating in > Israel that consistently speaks of "data base." ... is it two > words elsewhere? My instinct is to force it to one word ... > but I want to be sensitive to other standards. Database is always one word, but you were reading what we used to call Pinglish when I lived in Israel, meaning Palestine English. In fact "data base" would have a different meaning from "database". The mistake is probably due to the fact that the word "database" is actually spelled as two words in Hebrew. +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ ** [2gv] International English [Offshoot of [2go] US English] Date: Mon, 8 Mar 1999 From: David Ibbetson, ibbetson@idirect.com Rich Cutler wrote: > has anyone noticed that some publishers seem to be insisting on > 'Mid-Atlantic' English, even if the book is aimed at a British > readership? Oxford prefers "ize" and some UK publishers follow them. I think the majority prefer "ise". There's been an attempt to standardise medical terms. This may be the reason for dropping the diphthongs in various medical terms. In Canada some publishers use UK spellings, some use US spellings, but most use their own mixtures. So it's essential to discover the house style before starting work. ----------------------- Date: Tue, 9 March 1999 From: Liz Goodman, fullmeasure@bigpond.com Rich Cutler mentions that words such as 'analyze' are used as the American form. My use of words such as realize and emphasize has been commented on, when all I was doing was following the publisher's request to use The Concise Oxford Dictionary. ------------------------ Date: Wed, 10 March 1999 From: Josephine Bacon, bacon@langservice.com Kay McBurney wrote: > So, what I would really welcome is some sort of fairly > rudimentary guide highlighting the main differences between > British and US usage (and all the other Englishes for that > matter), without going into every nuance. If one doesn't already > exist - and I'm sure at least one EDliner will know if one does - > then here's a business opportunity just ready and waiting for > Josephine Bacon or others of her ilk - how about writing us the > guide we've all been waiting for? I have indeed, as David Ibbetson knows, been contemplating writing a really up-to-date American vocabulary and style guide, but as usual, have become bogged down in translation work. When I have some more free time I will get started on it again. BTW, I suspect I will not find a publisher for it. A colleague who decided to write such a guide purely for cookery terms and measurements, which is a whole book in itself, was told by publishers that they'd be happy to buy a copy but not to publish it! She had to produce it herself! ---------------------- Date: Wed, 10 Mar 1999 From: Judyth Mermelstein, Judyth_Mermelstein@babylon.montreal.qc.ca Rich Cutler wrote: > has anyone noticed that some publishers seem to be insisting on > 'Mid-Atlantic' English, even if the book is aimed at a British > readership? ... The reason for this escapes me, but it seems > to be instigated by the commissioning editors' and authors' > preferences. ... Personally, it really irritates me! Hello...! It's called *Canadian English*, and it doesn't bother us at all since it means more work for Canadian editors. Seriously, though, that Transatlantic English is something of a myth except insofar as it means pruning out the kind of problem represented by UK suspenders=US garter belt vs. US suspenders=UK braces. We Canadians deal with it all the time because there is no single universal standard for when British conventions are followed and when to follow American styles. Typically, our style sheets will say something like "use Gage (or Nelson or Oxford or MW10 or whatever) except..." followed by 4-5 pages of specifics: "-our" rather than "-or", "-yze" or "-yse", serial commas or not, etc., etc. There are two standard books on the subject, both widely used but generally not followed slavishly. 1) _The Canadian Style_. Originally published at the behest of the Canadian government to standardize its own publications. Now available as _The Canadian Style: A Guide to Writing and Editing, Revised and Expanded_. Published by Dundurn Press Limited in co-operation with Public Works and Government Services Canada Translation Bureau. Toronto/Oxford, 1997. 311 pages. ISBN 1-55002-276-8. No price on my copy (bought on sale at Chapters) but probably around $30 CDN. You can try the Web site: mentioned on the cover, which is also the source for the Government of Canada Linguistic Databank, available on CD as "Termium". and 2) _Editing Canadian English_ by the Freelance Editors' Association of Canada (now the Editors' Association of Canada) published by Douglas & McIntyre in 1987 and out of print since about 1995. A new edition is in the process of preparation but probably won't be out for a year or two. [I will certainly let you know when you can order it.] Unfortunately, this was prepared before Web sites so you can't just get it on-line, but you might want to look at: < http://www.web.net/eac-acr > anyway for some examples of how we write here. Anyway, Canadian is usually intelligible to all English-speaking people (as long as we stay away from poutine and skidoos and such regional stuff), and most Canadian editors are used to swapping dictionaries and style sheets with each project to comply with the "house style" of a particular client. There is no guarantee people won't be irked to see some unaccustomed spellings, and I can well understand why people would prefer books in their own favourite flavour of the common language, but it just isn't going to happen. When you consider the costs involved in producing separate editions of an ordinary book for UK and US distribution, especially in this era of cost-cutting and international on-line bookstores, there IS a reason why publishers look for an acceptable compromise. Some things do need to be localized for each market, but many just need to have specific regionalisms weeded out so everyone can read them, and surely we would not be happy about paying twice as much for our books because they could only be sold in a particular market. (The price of French-language books for the Quebec market is my guideline here, and I say "ouch" every time I buy one.) +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ ** [2gw] Millions and billions [Offshoot of [2gp] Decimal points] Date: Mon, 8 Mar 1999 From: David Ibbetson, ibbetson@idirect.com Ronne Randall wrote: > I long for the day when Britain decides, once and for all, > whether a billion is a thousand million or a million million > (and similarly for a trillion). ... More than once, I have > encountered "billion" used both ways in the same book--it drives > me NUTS! I believe The Economist started this. The confusion is so bad that I avoid billion, trillion, etc as hopelessly ambiguous. Depending on the context and audience I use "thousand million", "10^9", or the metric prefix "Mega" for the smaller meaning. I've yet to pluck up courage to use "milliard", though I've been sorely tempted. For the larger meaning I use "million million", 10^12", or "giga". ------------------------ Date: Wed, 10 March 1999 From: Josephine Bacon, bacon@langservice.com I sympathise wholeheartedly with the "billion" problem, and when I am interpreting consecutively, as happened only last week, I had to stop the proceedings and ask the speaker whether they meant a million million or a thousand million! It was extremely important as I was interpreting for a high-level meeting at the Department of Social Security and we were referring to budget figures. Imagine if the interpreting had been simultaneous! That is how serious mistakes creep in. ------------------------- Date: Thur, 11 March 1999 From: Kathleen Lyle, Kathleen@klyle.demon.co.uk I believe the 'British' billion is in practice virtually extinct although still a potential source of confusion. Most scientific authors express themselves in powers of 10 anyway. Economists etc. always expect the billion to be a US one and think you are being very pedantic if you even query it. I suppose the problem is most likely to arise with an older UK author, or an author citing material published some time ago, or an non-English native speaker who is translating te term into British English. +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ ** [2gx] 'Problematising' Date: Wed, 10 Mar 1999 From: Michele Clarke, Michele.Clarke@btinternet.com Robert Wood wrote: > What guidance is there on dealing with prose where terms have > inverted commas around them, but not because they quotations? I often have to reword medical MSS for the layperson. When a medical word is introduced, e.g. gastroscopy, I italicize it; if a slang word is used or word that has recently been made up (like Robert Wood's 'real-world' situation), then I use the single quotation marks. ------------------------- Date: Thur, 11 March 1999 From: Kathleen Lyle, Kathleen@klyle.demon.co.uk Robert Wood wrote: > What guidance is there on dealing with prose where terms have > inverted commas around them, but not because they quotations? This is a horrible habit and people do it far too much. My rule of thumb would be that if the meaning is clear without the quotation marks, they should be omitted. If the term is slightly unusual, it's probably OK to use quotation marks when it is first introduced and defined, but not subsequently. I like the term problematizing - it could be useful. +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ ** [2gy] Over-reliance on spelling checkers Date: Sat, 6 Mar 1999 From: Paul Brians, brians@mail.wsu.edu [Cross-posted from Humanist Discussion Group] I maintain a site called "Common Errors in English": < http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/ > which attracts a lot of correspondence. Recently a fellow named Sean Sligo sent me an intriguing little list of words which are commonly misspelled in ways that prompt spelling checkers to offer further misspellings rather than the correct spelling. Often these mistaken suggestions are automatically and unthinkingly accepted by the writer, resulting in odd results. Here's an example from a brief essay on the topic he wrote at my request: 'For instance, my spell checker will easily catch and correct "definately", returning the correct result. If, however, the word supplied is "definantly," a common Web word-mangling, the only word the spell checker can suggest is "defiantly." Hence the occasional assertion of the form "Lincoln is defiantly the best president America ever had."' Take a look at his short list at: < http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/spellcheck.html > I would appreciate a few more examples of common words which get mangled this way. ---[3] FYI --------------------------------------------------- ** [3dy] International English dictionary Date: Wed, 10 Mar 1999 From: Josephine Bacon, bacon@langservice.com The dictionary of international English is a great idea. There are several Australianisms which I know exist (having been there) but cannot for the life of me remember the actual word. There is a special word for a grass verge alongside the pavement and there is a special word for the school sportsground. The latter word was used in an advertisement for an Australian educational establishment which appeared in a directory we translate into various languages and while it seemed perfectly reasonable to Australians no one outside the Antipodes could possibly understand what was meant. Fortunately, I have a lot of family over there and had it translated from "Strine" to English. ---------------------- Date: Wed, 10 Mar 1999 From: Ronne Randall, ronne@ronne.demon.co.uk Plaudits to Jane and Iain for launching this project! As you say, it has the potential to be a godsend for those of us who regularly work in various forms of English. ... I look forward to seeing the final article when you feel it's ready (if anything like this can be called "final"--by its very nature, a dictionary like this would have to be constantly evolving--but that should make it even more interesting). ---[4] Business matters --------------------------------------- ** [4cg] Expanding one's client base Date: Tue, 9 Mar 1999 From: Elizabeth Murphy, emmurphy@ozemail.com.au Ann Shildneck Redmon wrote: > I'm hoping someone there might have some advice as to how to > expand one's client base The Canberra Society of Editors produces annually a little wallet sized booklet called "Freelance Editors in Canberra". Most of the members are listed in it, with their contact details, specialisations, experience etc., and the booklet is distributed free to every government department and other entities in Canberra that are likely to need editorial help. Being the capital of Australia, Canberra is full of government departments, and the public service here is by far the largest employer. I can't tell you the number of times I've been phoned to ask me to do some editing or re-writing work. I've had to turn down most of it because I'm so busy. I suggest you join your local Society of Editors and get them to produce a similar booklet. ----------------------- Date: Tue, 9 March 1999 From: Beth Macfie, macfie@atreide.net Ann Shildneck Redmon asked how to expand her base of freelance copyediting clients. These are the ways that have worked best for me: --Network with other editors. Some freelancers subcontract, and some work for organizations that hire freelancers. A good way to demonstrate your skills and personal suitability is to volunteer with your editors' association. --Network with neighbours and acquaintances. Many people in my community are connected with organizations that produce documents and so contract with freelance editors. My approach is to let people know I'm a freelance editor. Every now and then someone looking for an editor calls me. --Read the display and classified job ads in the newspapers. They provide good ideas about organizations to cold-call. Many ads include a Web site address, so you can research the organization, and perhaps get a contact name, before calling. This method hasn't produced as many contracts has have the personal connections, but it does work, and it gives you a way to keep up the hunting activity. Good luck! ----------------------- Date: Tue, 9 March 1999 From: Hilary Powers, HPowers1@compuserve.com The FAQ at < http://www.FreelanceOnline.com > has some good advice. Mostly, it's a matter of slogging through lists of publishers -- Writer's Market, Literary Marketplace, whatever local lists you can find -- and phoning them to ask who's in charge of hiring freelance editing help. Pick out the ones that publish a good-sized list -- say, over 50 books a year -- on subjects you could bear working on. Most publishers do use freelancers these days. When you get a name and phone number, call and find out whether they need help and what the preferred procedure is for getting on board -- test, resume, references from other publishers. It's a lot of work, but you only need to find three or four publishers (two hungry ones will do, but it's a little scary thinking about their prospects for staying in business) to keep working full time. Good hunting! ---------------------- Date: Wed, 10 Mar 1999 From: Michele Clarke, Michele.Clarke@btinternet.com Do be careful about working only for 1 client. Your self-employed status is probably at risk. If you are working on mainly electronic documents, it might be a good idea to get yourself a web page! +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ ** [4ch] Illustrators wanted Date: Fri, 12 Mar 1999 From: Denyse O'Leary, oleary@interlog.com Illustrations required for a commercially-published 20-volume history of Christianity to be published over the next seven years. Each volume will include approximately 100 conceptual illustrations of historical events, from 12x-18-inch double-page spreads down to spot drawings. Publishers assume 8 to 12 illustrators will be involved. Work must lay strong emphasis on characterization, especially faces, and depict the literal, real people as we are and were. Historical accuracy as to dress and background essential, but all necessary research material will be provided. Rates run from $300 [U.S.] for a spot drawing to $1,800 [U.S.] for double-page spread. Applicants should send photocopies of past work to: Moira Calder United Western Publications 17324 106A Avenue Edmonton Alberta Canada T5S 1M7 ---[6] Just for fun ------------------------------------------- "The ones that didn't get away", no. 2 Date: Wed, 10 Mar 1999 From: Michele Clarke, Michele.Clarke@btinternet.com This is one for our medical readers: 'A more long-term arrangement is to have a PEG (percutaneous endoscopic gastronomy)...' +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ "Education, education and education", no. 5 Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice. They killed him. Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock. +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ "How to write good", no. 3 Avoid cliches like the plague. (They're old hat.) ---[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: iain.brown@ucl.ac.uk 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) 1999, by individual contributors Design (c) 1996, 1997, Iain Brown Compilation (c) 1999, The Electric Editors =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= END OF EDline 4.10 Next issue: 21 March 1999 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=