=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= EDline Vol. 4, no. 32 (29 August 1999) Editorial mailing list Published by the Electric Editors =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Contents: [1] Editorial: Getting quick replies Q & A---previous queries [2ij] Spelling of internet-related words [2ik] Gender: general statement [2il] New flag for Japan? [2im] Citing preprints [6] Just for fun [7] Miscellaneous A complex march Journal redesign [8] Administration =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= ---[1] Editorial ----------------------------------------------- Getting quick replies Date: Sun, 29 August 1999 From: Ian Kingston, ian@ikingston.demon.co.uk Following the recent correspondence about the length of time between posting a message and getting a response, we've been considering ways in which we might be able to solve this problem. The obvious one (switching EDline, Grapevine and LANGline to an automated list server) is not particularly attractive, since it would result in a large volume of messages. The tendency would be towards more chat and less solid information - a decrease in the signal to noise ratio. We would also be duplicating services available elsewhere on the Net, which would be pointless. Instead, I'd like to suggest the creation of a new list specifically for questions needing a rapid reply. It would work like this. * The list would be automated, with messages arriving one at a time, not in digest format. * The new list would (initially) cover the subject matter of all three mailing lists. * Only *questions* would be posted to the list. Replies would be sent *to the questioner*, not the list. * Questions posted to the list would also appear in the next issue of the relevant weekly list. * Those posting questions would summarize the responses and post their summaries on the appropriate weekly list. I think this should provide a suitable mechanism for getting quick replies. However, before setting this up and asking people to join the new list, I'd like people to comment on whether or not they think it's a good idea. Are there any obvious drawbacks? Is it really needed? What should the new list be called? Please send your comments to me. I'll collate the views expressed and we'll decide whether or not to go ahead based on what you have to say. Ian Kingston ---[2] Q & A --------------------------------------------------- ** [2ij] Spelling of internet-related words Date: Fri, 20 August 1999 From: Ann Bone, ann.bone@btinternet.com Karen Scott raised the question of the spelling of internet- related words for 'A Writer's Guide to the Internet' - my allied problem is to know whether there is a standard copy-editing style for citing pieces of text from webpages, particularly where it is useful to cite the wider subject within which it is embedded, and even the still wider subject within which that is embedded, etc. i.e. is it reasonable to use 'within' as in: 'Title of the extract' within ' Title of wider extract' - using article style all the way back? A hugely long web address to get you to the final destination may not be helpful enough. (In this case for notes to an academic book about the internet.) ------------------------- Date: Fri, 20 August 1999 From: Nancy Boston, nancyb@bostons3.demon.co.uk Russell Walton wrote: > I suggest you refer to *Wired Style: Principles of English > Usage in the Digital Age*, edited by Constance Hale; available > from Amazon if hard to track down. Bookshops like "The Works" are selling the 1996 edition of Wired Style for 99p, so I bought one. This recommends the Internet, email, emoney but e-zine, together with the advice "when in doubt, close it up". +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ ** [2ik] Gender: general statement Date: Fri, 20 August 1999 From: Kathleen Lyle, Kathleen@klyle.demon.co.uk Norman Grossblatt wrote: > It's too late for such statements to be acceptable. A good way > to avoid the problem is to use plurals--"they", "those", > "people", "persons", and the like. If all else fails, use "he > and she" and the like. (And more and more people are going along > with "they" and "their" as gender-neutral singular pronouns.) Unfortunately it can be very difficult to do this kind of gender neutral editing and get a result that is agreeable to read. It depends a great deal on the authors's original approach. This may seems blindingly obvious for any kind of editing, but what I mean in this context is that some authors are trying to achieve this effect anyway (explicitly or implicitly) and just need a little help. Others (esp. old fogies of all ages and probably of both sexes) sprinkle their text so liberally with 'he' and 'him' that it is major surgery to remove them and inevitably you will end up annoying the author a great deal because you have ruined his (their?) beautiful style. It's something that should be borne in mind by commissioning editors at an early stage, especially if they have a house style that demands inclusive language as many do. Just fixing the pronouns mechanically at the copy-editing stage is really not the answer. ------------------------- Date: Fri, 20 August 1999 From: Rosemary Anderson, r.anderson@lancaster.ac.uk As a woman I find it impossible to get exercised about whether books use 'he', 'him', 'his' etc. I really don't care! I know I'm included if it's a reference to the human race! I've just been reading a book which uses in every other sentence the phrase 'she or he', I suppose to avoid this 'problem'. All I've felt is irritation at the constant reiteration of this unfamilar and uneuphonious phrase. ------------------------- Date: Mon, 23 August 1999 From: Mandy Macdonald, 100754.3643@compuserve.com I'm amazed that we're still having to trot out the arguments for not designating the whole human race as 'he'. (Well, I'm not amazed, really, but it does provoke a sigh of 'How long, O Lord, how long??') As an editor who also works on promoting gender equality and gender sensitivity in institutions, I often find myself giving advice on gender-neutral language in publications, reports, teaching materials and promotional materials. I'd like to suggest that the problem is not, in the first place, one for copyeditors but for writers. Publishers should routinely include, in their house style notes and guidelines to authors, instructions on using gender-neutral language, and should insist on their being observed. (I can prepare such guidelines on a short consultancy basis!) As Norman Grossblatt says, it's too late for disclaimers. Using gender-equal language really isn't all that difficult! And although 'he/she', 's/he' and the singular 'they' may seem clumsy today, it's astonishing how quickly regular usage will sanctify them. We now seem to be expected to stomach barbarisms such as 'womenswear', 'bored of', and the like on a daily basis, as well as (to me) more acceptable evolutions such as 'alright' for 'all right' or positive advances such as the gradual overthrow of Hyphen the Terrible; so surely using 'they' to denote 'he and/or she' isn't a very bitter pill to swallow. (That said, I hold no brief with the kind of PCness that uses 'they' to denote lactating mothers or -- for the present, at least -- Catholic priests.) I suppose we should be grateful we don't have to deal with gendered articles like speakers of so many other languages. In Spanish I have found myself arguing, e.g., for the use of 'los y las campesinos y campesinas' to express the simple 'the farmers', on grounds of justice at the expense of prose style. Some Latin American organizations have begun using @ here, as in 'l@s campesin@s', which is fine on paper, but how do you say it? +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ ** [2il] New flag for Japan? Date: Mon, 16 August 1999 From: Darlene Davidovic, davidov@sanynet.ne.jp Stephen Hales wrote: > Could a fellow EDliner confirm or deny a small, solitary > newspaper snippet that the national flag of Japan is to be the > Hinoman ("the Rising Sun")? Saw your message this morning before going to work. The flag is called the Hinomaru. It's not a new flag design, the red dot on the white background. Instead, the national government recently passed a law to declare it the national flag (previously no formal recognition by the government). The law came about in response to increasing numbers of schools refusing to display the flag and sing Kimigayo, the now official national anthem. I have the vague notion that the "Rising Sun Flag" mainly referred to the earlier version, the one with the red circle and red lines radiating out of it, which people tend to avoid referring to because of its history. ------------------------- Date: Sat, 21 August 1999 From: Lynn Hall, Lynn@quill-eluned.demon.co.uk My friend in Tokyo sent the following reply to this query. 'I think it is the same flag - it just became official. Hinomaru (a red round in the middle of the white background is the sun). Also the national anthem was not official until few days ago. I did not know that they were not official until they recently announced it! I think that is what happened.' ------------------------- Date: Sun, 22 August 1999 From: Eddie Kent, eddie.kent@MCR1.poptel.org.uk Stephen Hales asked for confirmation of 'a small, solitary newspaper snippet that the national flag of Japan is to be the Hinoman ("the Rising Sun")?' According to The Times a new national flag has been designated by law in Japan. It is called Hinomaru and consists of a red circle on a white background. No rays! +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ ** [2im] Citing preprints Date: Fri, 20 August 1999 From: Philip Weston, phil.weston@btinternet.com Kerry Munro wrote: > If an item has merely been *submitted* for publication, and > not formally accepted, then it should NOT appear in the > reference list; instead, if should be noted, for example, as > '(unpublished data)' in the text. That's all very well, but in a numbered reference list, if it occurs as reference 1 in a list of 200, it means renumbering the whole lot (time! cost!!). And then what happens -- on the proofs, surprise surprise, the author has now found it is either in press or published, so do you put it back again and renumber the whole lot again on the proofs (time! cost!!)? That will make your publisher weep as the typesetter also rings up the shekels for all the corrections. I see no reason to set rigid rules on what should or should not be included: a reference list (I think, **usually** entitled that, and not literature references or some such) is simply a list of pointers to other relevant sources of information, whatever they may be -- the whole point of having a reference list is to get all that subsidiary stuff out of the text to somewhere where those few who actually need to refer to it can find it, so why try to think up reasons to put some of it back in the text again! -- ESPECIALLY unpublished material that is the least likely to be of interest to readers and just clogs up the flow of text. And what is the horror in having the word **unpublished** in the reference list? -- if it has an author, a title maybe, a year maybe, and an organization, then the desperate reader has something to go on to track it down if it is vital info for him/her: if it is consigned to the text as just **unpublished**, with or without a name, then it is useless and totally lost. One should think about what the readers want and what the purpose of such material is rather than setting up or obeying pedantic rules. Finally, many references are now to electronic sources of information, which surely cannot be considered as literature, yet they obviously go in the reference list with "normal" references, even if the section happens to be entitled "Literature". My conclusion: be flexible -- anything should be put into the reference list that is a flag to another source of relevant information, whatever its format. ---[6] Just for fun ------------------------------------------- "Modern phrases", no. 7 hipatitis, n: Terminal coolness. ---[7] Miscellaneous ------------------------------------------ A complex march Date: Fri, 20 August 1999 From: Helen Juden, helen@juden.demon.co.uk Mark L. Levinson wrote: > Eddie Kent explains the March March march (which is marched > from the town of March in the month of March). He asks if > anyone can top a series like that The example circulating when I was at school had a slightly editorial flavour. Smith, where Jones had had 'had', had had 'had had', 'had had' had had the teacher's approval. I regret that I can credit no source; anyone else remember this? +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ Journal redesign Date: Tue, 24 August 1999 From: Yateendra Joshi, yateen@teri.res.in Know of any recently re-designed journal? If you were involved, either as an editor or as a designer, in re-designing any journal during the past few years, could you please write to me---I am preparing a paper on trends in the design of science journals in the 1990s, and any relevant info. would be very useful. Even if you were not involved but know of a journal that was re-designed recently, please let me know. And I'd be delighted to have a copy each of the before/after version, if at all possible. The mailing address is simply Yateendra Joshi, T E R I, New Delhi - 110 003 / India. The same message was posted to EASE-forum (European Association of Science Editors), Copyediting-l, Typo-l, and Unipublish. My apologies for the cross-postings. ---[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 4.32 Next issue: 5 September 1999 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=