#24049
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.
McAdams, Mindy. Editorial Eye, The (1997). Design>Web Design
#10814
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.
Jorgensen, Linda B. Editorial Eye, The (1997). Articles>Editing
#10724
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.
Ivey, Keith C. Editorial Eye, The (1996). Articles>Language>Translation>Localization
#19995
Review: 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.
Fleshman, Steven D. Editorial Eye, The (1995). Articles>Reviews>Graphic Design
#24034
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.
Dahl, Elisabeth. Editorial Eye, The (1996). Articles>Style Guides>Diction
#24013
Review: 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.
Taylor, Priscilla S. Editorial Eye, The (1996). Resources>Reviews>Style Guides
#24062
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.
Ivey, Keith C. Editorial Eye, The (1996). Articles>Style Guides
#24058
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?
Taylor, Priscilla S. Editorial Eye, The (1996). Articles>Editing
#24063
Do you ever feel you'd like a second opinion on a particularly miserable paragraph you've been editing?
Editorial Eye, The (1996). Articles>Editing
#19996
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.
Tyler, Craig. Editorial Eye, The (1999). Humor>Workplace>Editing
#24017
The debate over The New Fowler's Modern English Usage has the potential to become more interesting because there are personalities involved.
Boston, Bruce O. Editorial Eye, The (1997). Reference>Dictionaries
#24061
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.
Goode, Judith. Editorial Eye, The (1996). Articles>Editing>Publishing
#24059
The Key to Mayo's Successful Publications? Dave Swanson
Mayo wants to give people actionable, not merely interesting, information.
Smith, Sally. Editorial Eye, The (1997). Articles>Scientific Communication>Publishing>Biomedical
#20021
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.
Zuchero, John. Editorial Eye, The (2003). Careers>Editing>Programming
#24056
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.
Ivey, Keith C. Editorial Eye, The (1997). Design>Web Design>Hypertext
#20029
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.)
Ivey, Keith C. Editorial Eye, The (2003). Articles>Style Guides>Editing
#24042
As writers and editors, we understand instinctively that readers need transitions, but we also work at getting rid of unnecessary words.
Dahl, Elisabeth. Editorial Eye, The (1996). Articles>Writing>Style Guides
#24011
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.
Ivey, Keith C. Editorial Eye, The (1996). Design>Web Design>Search
#10818
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.
Cormier, Robin A. Editorial Eye, The (1997). Articles>Editing
#19997
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.
Ivey, Keith C. Editorial Eye, The (1998). Articles>Software>Open Source
#20002
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.
Sutcliffe, Andrea J. Editorial Eye, The (2003). Articles>Style Guides>Writing
#24031
Review: 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.
Ivey, Keith C. Editorial Eye, The (1996). Resources>Reviews>Style Guides>Scientific Communication
#20020
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.
Mayhew, Paul. Editorial Eye, The (2003). Articles>Writing
#24045
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.
Donovan, Truly. Editorial Eye, The (1996). Articles>Information Design>Standards>SGML
#20004
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.
Stoughton, Mary. Editorial Eye, The (2003). Articles>Language>Style Guides
