 | | Editorial Eye, The 62 found. Page 1 of 3. |
#24012
Apocalypse? Not Now: Three Myths of New Media
The Internet explosion has spawned quite a few popular myths, and some Eye readers may not know what to believe. I'd like to offer my dismantling of what may be the top three misperceptions.
Raymond, Eric S. Editorial Eye, The (1996). Articles>Cyberculture>Multimedia
#20028
Beware: Generic Words Can Indeed Be Trademarked
In article by Sabra Chartrand in the New York Times (March 13, 1995), makes it clear that the name of electronic products — books, photos, music, and titles — can be a bone of contention. Did you know that the Microsoft Corporation owns the rights to use the word bookshelf as applied to any CD-ROM product? In 1991, the software giant trademarked the term to cover its collection of reference books, Microsoft Bookshelf.
Editorial Eye, The (2003). Articles>Intellectual Property>Trademark>Writing
#24015
Editing must change for the Web, but perhaps not so much as you think. In paper publishing, different documents require different rules and procedures: An annual report requires more editing and more attention to detail than an office memo. Similarly, not all Web documents are equal.
Ivey, Keith C. Editorial Eye, The (1996). Articles>Web Design>Editing>Writing
#24016
#20006
Can You Edit a Direct Quotation?
A TV network would never put words in a person's mouth, of course, but print journalists take this liberty all the time.
Walsh, Bill and Linda Jorgensen. Editorial Eye, The (2003). Articles>Editing>Journalism
#24018
Catching Errors in Internet Addresses
Internet addresses have been proliferating in publications, and they're not going to go away. Editors unfamiliar with the Net may see these addresses as incomprehensible blocks of characters that can't be understood or analyzed into components. But learning a little about their structure can help prevent you from publishing erroneous addresses.
Ivey, Keith C. Editorial Eye, The (1997). Reference>Style Guides
#19999
Citation styles for Internet publications are still evolving. Printed style manuals offer little guidance, and few even mention the World Wide Web. But that's no excuse for failing to credit your sources.
#20025
In this introductory paragraph to a column by the Washington Post's Stephen S. Rosenfeld, the subject seems to be paddling helplessly against a strong undertow of contradictory wording in the complement: To look in on current official and expert thinking about the world population problem is to become aware of a disappearing act that has transformed and mooted much of the common public understanding of this issue. There's enough happening in this sentence to make parsing helpful. Nothing's grammatically wrong with the parallel infinitive phrases: the subject is to look in and the complement is to become aware -- no mixed construction here (for more about that, see Test Yourself). But some mixed-up thinking is tugging the adjective-heavy prepositional phrases away from the infinitives they modify. And what's being equated is sunk by the fact that the complement is itself qualified by a paradoxical statement.
Editorial Eye, The (2003). Articles>Editing
#24019
Cookies: Just a Little Data Snack
To read the New York Times Web site, you must open a free user account and log in each time you visit. That means yet another user name and password to remember. Fortunately, if you always use the same computer, you can set up your account so that you're logged in automatically whenever you connect to the site. The site does that by using cookies -- another of those silly-sounding bits of programmers' vocabulary that have crept into mainstream coverage of the Internet. But over the past year or so, this practice has become controversial because some people view it as an invasion of privacy. Others have bought into rumors or read inaccurate press reports suggesting that cookies threaten the security of their hard drives.
Ivey, Keith C. Editorial Eye, The (1998). Articles>Web Design>Privacy
#24020
A Copyeditor's Adventures in Multimedia Land
Publication in the 1990s encompasses worlds that most copyeditors never dreamed of when, with a mixture of delight and mistrust, we cautiously approached the first spell checkers. At least we could relate to the idea of mechanically checking spelling. The whole idea of multimedia is a little more unnerving.
Whalen, Elizabeth A. Editorial Eye, The (1998). Articles>Editing>Multimedia
#20027
Crossing a Bridge of Shyness: Public Speaking for Communicators 
Americans in general are more afraid of speaking in front of others than they are of snakes, heights, or death itself. That's the finding of one widely cited survey and, asked to step outside the written word, many writers, editors, and publications managers certainly would say they share that fear. Communication expert Nusa Maal Gelb says there is 'a culture of fear' surrounding public speaking. It's almost as if we believe we're supposed to be afraid. Yet it's clear that effective interpersonal communication -- and that mostly means speaking -- correlates highly with personal and professional success.
Ullius, Diane. Editorial Eye, The (2003). Articles>Rhetoric>Presentations
#24033
Several years ago, four new prefixes, for representing very large and very small measurements, were introduced into the International System of Units (Système International d'Unités, or SI): yotta, zetta, zepto and yocto.
Ivey, Keith C. Editorial Eye, The (1996). Articles>Style Guides>Standards>Scientific Communication
#20026
The year 2000 is a big duh for computers. But 2020 is when today's kids will rule the universe, as they already seem to rule the language. We'll have a State of the Union address consisting of 'duh!' with a rebuttal of 'DUH-uh' followed by the analysis, 'Excuse me?' I'm not sure whether this is a bad thing, given the present state of adult rhetoric and the occasional charms of juve-talk, or kid-lish. Concise and animated, the sardonic/ moronic idiom of school kids can slice through our stale officialese. Some of it -- the more cuddly terms, not the hard-edged hip-hop -- tickles that laugh-spot recently located in the brain. Yet, when millions of grown-ups, even those who communicate for a living, start aping little people in baggies, one has to fear for the range of human expression.
Plotnik, Arthur. Editorial Eye, The (2003). Articles>Language>Editing
#24047
I'd like to assume that most of us find ourselves having to edit a moving target only occasionally, but from the horror stories I've been hearing, it seems that more and more people are being expected to edit well in a ridiculously short time.
Stoughton, Mary. Editorial Eye, The (1997). Articles>Editing>Collaboration
#24046
Editing All the Legalese the Law Allows
Strictly speaking, legalese isn't intended for use outside a judicial context, but quasi-legalistic writing, with its officious tone, wordiness, and complex terms, percolates into business, government, and public interest documents. It's a parroting of the real thing -- which is already hard to swallow -- and there's a lot of it around. That kind of legalese demands to be edited, because people will do almost anything to avoid reading it.
Mayhew, Paul and Elizabeth McBurney. Editorial Eye, The (1997). Articles>Editing>Legal>Writing
#10796
This morning I woke up in a cold sweat -- which was odd, because I usually wake up in bed. In my dream, or rather nightmare, I was reviewing a manuscript that was due to be returned to a client that very morning. As I recalled the dream, I realized why I was sweating -- the manuscript had been edited by someone who combined the worst characteristics of every copy editor I'd ever known.
Mickle, Lee. Editorial Eye, The (1997). Humor>Writing>Editing
#20022
Test your knowledge of a range of writing, editing, and publishing topics.
Sutcliffe, Andrea J. Editorial Eye, The (2003). Articles>Editing
#10811
The Eye is a resource for writers, editors, designers, project managers, communications specialists, and everyone else who cares about contemporary publishing practices. Any aspect of effective printed, electronic, visual, or spoken communication is likely to appear as a topic in the Eye.
#20005
Most people sending e-mail nowadays take no steps to prevent their messages from being intercepted. That's fine for many types of messages, but just as there are written messages that you wouldn't want to put on a postcard and would prefer to have protected by an envelope, there's a need for encryption in electronic communication. Besides, encryption can do more than keep things secret. The concepts on which encryption is based can be difficult, and most of the complication is handled behind the scenes by software. Nevertheless, it's useful to have a general understanding of how encryption works. Encryption software (often part of a Web browser or server, e-mail client, or other program) is built around the use of a special number, called a key, to convert information into a form that can be read only by someone who has the key needed to decrypt it.
Ivey, Keith C. Editorial Eye, The (1997). Articles>Writing>Email>Security
#24048
Every home page should display certain key information -- an e-mail address and full identification of the publisher/author of the Web site -- that can appear at the bottom of the page, where it's easy to find but doesn't interfere with the main content.
McAdams, Mindy. Editorial Eye, The (1998). Design>Web Design
#10813
Estimating Editorial Tasks: A Five-Step Method
Everyone would agree that publications work is subject to many unknowns, but it's still possible to pin down key aspects of a project, apply educated guesswork, and calculate a relatively accurate time estimate. Here's a five-step method for arriving at that elusive number.
Cormier, Robin A. Editorial Eye, The (1997). Articles>Editing
#24052
How can a homograph be the same as a heterograph? And how can heterograph, which comes from roots meaning 'different writing,' be applied to a word that differs in every way except the way it is written?
Ivey, Keith C. Editorial Eye, The (1997). Articles>Language>Diction
#24057
One of the original ideas behind the Web is that readers should have control over how things look, since only they know what color combinations, point sizes, and so on they find easiest to read on their particular combination of hardware and software. That said, there's a difference between designing for the World Wide Web, where your documents can be read by anyone, and designing for an intranet, an internal network that's accessible only to people within your organization. On an intranet, you can (theoretically) know exactly what hardware and software your readers are using, so you can control the look to a much greater extent.
Ivey, Keith C. Editorial Eye, The (1997). Design>Typography>Fonts>Web Design
#19998
Foolproof Your Files, Part 1: Proofing
After weeks or months of preparation, review, and production, it can be cathartic to package up a job and send it to the print shop. If files have been too quickly or carelessly assembled, however, sending that final disk to print means crossing your fingers and hoping that nothing goes wrong.
Lenihan, Amy. Editorial Eye, The (1999). Articles>Software>Prepress
#24043
Review: Free Guide to Color Printing
3M Imaging has come out with a pamphlet that explains these color anomalies and more. And best of all, it's free.
Dahlman, Gayle. Editorial Eye, The (1996). Resources>Reviews>Prepress>Color
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