Editorial Eye, The

Fonts on the Web

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.

Handling Internet Addresses in Text

How to present complete and intelligible Internet addresses and where to break long strings of letters, digits, punctuation, and symbols on the page.

How Careful Should Editors Be?

Three recent incidents prompt me to ask, How careful do editors have to be in checking facts? Is it possible for publications people to be too careful?

How Do Editors Do It?

Do you ever feel you'd like a second opinion on a particularly miserable paragraph you've been editing?

Keeping Things Consistent When You're the 'Guest' Editor

Consistency is the cornerstone of intelligent editing. In these days of leaner staffs and smaller budgets, however, many organizations don't employ full-time editors and depend on contract or freelance editors to make sure their publications are written in a consistent — and thus coherent — manner.

The Key to Mayo's Successful Publications? Dave Swanson

Mayo wants to give people actionable, not merely interesting, information.

Links: What's Kosher?

If your organization has a Web site, it can be useful to see who else has made links to your site. By tracking down those links, you can find out what people are saying about your site, what pages are particularly useful, and how people are finding your site.

Total Immersion Editing

In 1977 Judith Tarutz, author of Technical Editing: The Practical Guide for Editors and Writers, rebounded from teaching into her first editing job. She soon discovered that she was having fun. Like many editors, Tarutz learned editing by total immersion.

The Curse of Yocto

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.

Editing a Moving Target

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.

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.

Essential Home Page Details

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.

Figuring Out the Definition

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?

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.

The Front Door

First impressions count for a lot online. What users see when they arrive at your front door can determine whether they ever open that door and step inside. Realizing this, many Web publishers seem to have concluded that it's best to hang everything they've got on that front door — their home page. The aim, apparently, is to make sure users see it all, but the effect may be the opposite of what the publisher intended.

Hand-Picked Descriptive Words

Writing a good description is fun, but it's delicate work. We recognize vivid writing when we come across it, and we know the bad stuff, too -- it makes us squirm instinctively. Here are some types of descriptions the world can do without.

Necessary Transition

As writers and editors, we understand instinctively that readers need transitions, but we also work at getting rid of unnecessary words.

Scientific Style Manual Aspires to International Scope

Despite what some U.S. editors may see as flaws or debatable recommendations, sooner or later anyone who edits scientific writing will consult Scientific Style and Format. Some may disagree with its style conventions, but they can be defended as serving the editors' stated goal of achieving a uniform international style for scientific publications.

SGML: The Chameleon of Publishing Technology

SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language) is an international standard publishing technology that's increasingly being used in government, industry, and academia. Despite this growth, SGML is perhaps the most misunderstood technology around.

Taking Stock of Paper

Paper stock makes a big difference in the appearance of a product, and even though prices have come down recently, it's probably the most expensive element in your print run, so you need to make it count. Though budget is probably the biggest factor in choosing stock, here are several other considerations.

Verbs with -ize: Efficient or to Be ... Ostracized?

A discussion of whether neologisms such as 'prioritize' have 'arrived' yet.

Web Site Sections: Art and Practice

On a Web site with very few pages -- as in a small art gallery -- what you see as you enter can reveal all you need to know to successfully navigate the space. If the home page acts as a front door, then it can display hypertext links to all or most of the pages (up to 10, say) on a small site. Web sites have a way of growing larger, though, and not many sites stay under 10 pages for long. If visitors can't see everything from the front door, how will they know what you have to offer? How will they find what they're looking for?

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.

Beyond Gutenberg

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.

Black Eyes

Humorous malapropisms taken from various popular locales.

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.

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.

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.

A Handful of New Style and Usage Guides

Style and usage guides seem to have proliferated, and it's not always easy to discriminate between the valuable and the less so at a glance. Here are three that have come to hand recently and deserve mentioning for different reasons.

It's Not Fowler

The debate over The New Fowler's Modern English Usage has the potential to become more interesting because there are personalities involved.

Of Robots and a New Search Engine

On July 1995, shortly after the EEI Web site opened, it began to be accessed by a computer named scooter.pa-x.dec.com . At first I thought that someone at Digital Equipment Corporation had an extraordinary interest in editorial subjects, but it soon became clear that Scooter was a robot, a computer program set up to retrieve Web pages. In some months, Scooter accessed more of our pages than any other visitor. I was curious, but since it wasn't doing any harm, I never investigated it. On December 15, 1995, the AltaVista Web site opened, and we finally got to see what Scooter had been up to.

Taking Words to the Bank

Lexicographers call a collection of writing and speech samples used to analyze words, meanings, grammar, and usage a corpus. Since 1991, Cobuild (a special division of HarperCollins Publishers in Glasgow) and the University of Birmingham, England, have been working together to assemble an electronic corpus. The intent was to acquire contemporary (post-1975) samples that illustrate the everyday English most people read, write, and speak.

Telecommuting: Practical Option or Management Nightmare?

Telecommuting can be a wonderful benefit for your editors and can save your department money -- as long as you set clear terms and carefully monitor the results. It doesn't have to be the management nightmare you may be imagining.

When You and Your Employee Clash: Clarifying Expectations

Will you have to fire this employee? Maybe. First make sure that she understands your expectations and the requirements of the position. Start fresh, and give her the opportunity to perform the duties you define to the level you require. Set specific, measurable goals for her to accomplish, and set a date to evaluate her progress. If she still doesn't meet your expectations, accept the fact that this was simply not a good match and give her — as an applicant once described his termination — 'the green light to pursue other opportunities.'

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.

Complementary Undertow

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.

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.

Did Somebody Say 'Duh'?

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.

Editorial Esoterica

Test your knowledge of a range of writing, editing, and publishing topics.

Leaving Copyediting for Computing

A copyeditor for a computer publication wants to change careers. She's thinking of taking a few computer language courses with an eye toward moving into UNIX system administration -- a wide-open field. As someone who has changed careers once or twice, I'll offer a coaching session.

Loose Ends: Standards and Styles

Several readers have sent me e-mail comments and questions recently that might be of interest to others. (Even Eye readers who don't spend much time on the Web tell us they're interested in picking up this kind of information.)

Seven Habits of Highly Perfect Writers

For a long time, I've thought English to be far too wordy. Indeed, precious forests have been slaughtered in the name of printing dictionaries and -- of all the useless things in this world -- thesauruses. But it goes beyond the sheer number of words.

Unicode: Making the Web Safe for Furriners

I think that Internet and World Wide Web are capitalized because they are proper names. Many names are capitalized common nouns: the White House, the Ninth Circle of Hell, the Heritage Foundation, the Civil War. I've heard arguments for lowercasing Internet and World Wide Web from people who compare them to things like the telephone system, but lowercase is certainly not the predominant style for these terms. At least 90 percent of the time, they're capitalized, and I don't think you should ignore actual use completely.

Usage Experts Change Their Minds, Too

Many terms and constructions frowned on a generation ago have been admitted, like many new words, into mainstream parlance and have gained wider acceptance than before. An example is tycoon, in the sense of a wealthy businessman, labeled 'informal' in the first edition of AHD but accepted in the third. Another example is balding, called 'entirely vulgar' in a usage note by panelist Katherine Anne Porter in the first edition but entered without stigma in the third.

Using Editors Where and When It Counts, Part II: How to Edit Instructions

When I teach courses on editing, I devote about one-third of the sessions to editing instructions. Why? True, there's always a demand for someone who can edit technical manuals or cookbooks, but my real reason is that working on instructions gets you into editorial shape. It hones your ability to keep readers and their needs always in mind, to weigh each word for accuracy, and to be sure that every sentence means what the writer intends.

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.

Encryption Basics Decrypted

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.

The Reference Book That Editorial Eye Built

About three years ago we were asked whether we would be interested in writing a new and different kind of style manual: * In addition to covering all the traditional style topics, such as capitalization and punctuation, it would have chapters on grammar, confusable words, usage (including bias-free language), and all aspects of production, from design and typography to desktop publishing and printing. * Its audience would be the vast majority of working writers and editors, not just those who work with scholarly manuscripts. * It would be written and organized in a friendly, easy-to-read style and reflect the impact of the computer on every aspect of the publishing process. Although we were a bit cowed at the thought of tackling such a big project -- it turned out to be 836 pages -- we didn't see how we could turn down the chance to create a guide that was truly useful.

Shifty Adverbs

Decide where to place the adverb in parentheses in these sentences to best advantage -- for the sound of it and for best sense. That is, place it near the word in the sentence you wish to emphasize. One sentence doesn't involve a decision about placement next to the verb at all.

The Struggle for Gender-Free Language: Is It Over Yet?

All current style manuals address in one form or another the need for bias-free, inclusive language. Most writers and editors deal with this issue regularly — we've installed mental alarm systems that go off when we sense bias or something that can be construed as bias. In fact, some commentators say we've gone too far toward what social commentator Christopher Cerf calls, with grave facetiousness, 'content-free writing,' lest language offend anyone, anywhere. Does gender-free writing still present problems, and if so, how are most of us resolving them? After all these years of practice at being evenhanded, consider several litmus tests.

Citing Internet Sources

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.

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.

Half the Truth and Something Like the Truth

As an art director, I'm an avowed secret handshake guy from way back. They teach it to us in design school when they make us swear on a stack of Pantone color selectors and old type specimen books that we'll never reveal the secrets of the design world, especially to editors and writers (word people). Early reviews of Type & Layout have been ecstatic, so I had wondered whether someone had finally sold the secret handshake to the enemy. I shouldn't have worried. This is not really a design book, and it is not a book that most designers are going to care for. What worries me is that nondesigners won't know that.

Humor in the Workplace?

Over the years, I've been accused of not taking life seriously enough. Although life certainly is no joke, it's not all Sturm und Drang or Weltschmerz, either. Mostly, I think, it's like Mozart: exhilarating and joyous except when it's not.

Open-Source Software: Gaining Ground

Have you ever run across a bug in your word processor that interfered with your work? Or perhaps you've wished that your graphics program had a certain feature that would make your life easier. With most commercial software, you're at the mercy of the company that created it. All you can do is call the technical support line, explain the situation, and hope that there's a work-around or that your issue will be addressed whenever the next version is released. With proprietary software, the company owns the software and doesn't allow anyone else to modify it or even see the source code -- the human-readable (well, programmer-readable) instructions used to create the executable file that the computer runs. Some people have likened such software to a car with the hood locked shut so that only the manufacturer can service it. But with open-source software, you have other options because you have the source code. If you have the knowledge, you can modify the program yourself. If not, you can hire a programmer to make the changes you want.

Untangling the Web: Hoaxes, Scams, and Rumors

If you've had an e-mail address for long, you've probably received a message (forwarded through a long chain of people) warning you about some dangerous computer virus that can infect your computer through e-mail. Some warnings even say that the virus will physically damage your hard drive or monitor. But they aren't true.

The Editorial Eye

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.

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.

Getting Ducks in a Row: The Rules for Displayed Lists

When is a list not a list? When it's not recognized as such by the reader. A good displayed list is the mental equivalent of a line of cheerful ducklings behind their sensible mom on their way to an invigorating dip. A short series of items can often be run smoothly into text, but lists longer than eight lines or so tend to stray in the reader's mind from the preceding thoughts. A run-in list that becomes estranged from its lead-in context is worthless.

One Last Look: The Final Quality Control Review

Virtually everyone in the publications field has a story to tell about 'the one that slipped through' -- a horrible, glaring, embarrassing error that went undetected and made it into print. My personal worst was the time the company I was working for was sending a proposal to the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon, only our proposal cover said 'Joint Chefs....' There is always plenty of blame to go around when these errors occur, but usually it is the error-prevention system that is faulty.

The Editor from Hell

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.

Going International

For many people, setting up a Web site is their first experience with publishing documents for an international audience. It's true (for now) that most of the computers on the Internet are in the United States, but the Net includes computers in more than a hundred countries. If you put information on the Web, people from all over the world can read it. At least 15 percent of the visitors to the EEI Web pages are from outside the United States. In the first few days of the new year, pages were viewed by people from two dozen countries, including Croatia, Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela. It's not called the World Wide Web for nothing.