Next meeting: Digital offset printing by direct imaging
Making editors visible: the launch of the freelance register
The President's column
Thusly did. . .
In the beginning are the words
Book review
News and notes
Training news
New member
Family history course
Dates for your diary
Copyright notice and deadline
How much do you know about digital printing, particularly the direct imaging variety? Well, if you come to the society's April meeting, you will be able to find out some more.
Mr Simon Longden, Marketing Sales Manager of Trendsetting Pty Ltd, will talk to us about his company's new Heidelberg Quickmaster DI (direct imaging) printing press. This press is said to be able to print runs of between 200 and around 5000 copies in full colour, very quickly and beautifully.
The product can be any size between business card and A3, and from one page to a brochure, on stock ranging from 0. 06 mm label paper to board 0. 3 mm thick. Mr Longden will explain the advantages and disadvantages of this kind of printing compared to traditional offset or other forms of digital printing.
According to Australian editing standard A6, editors should be familiar with these kinds of printing matters. So come to the Friends' Lounge of the National Library of Australia on 24 April, at 6 for 6.30 p.m. as usual, to chat and munch delicious finger food and then listen to the talk. This time, there will not be a gathering for dinner afterwards.
The seventh print edition of the society's freelance register was launched with champagne and a stimulating talk by Associate Professor Pam Peters, Director of the Dictionary Research Centre at Macquarie University. Around 60 people, including a number of invited guests from other areas of publishing, enjoyed networking in a party atmosphere before and after the talk.
'This evening we celebrate the publication of a small blue book which makes visible the large amount of editorial talent available through the Canberra Society of Editors', said Pam Peters, 'and the talents range across many fields. '
Outlining the register's display of freelance skills on offer, Pam mentioned our editors' capacity to deal with such diverse subjects as horticulture, psychology, health, science, literature, and arts in general. Many kinds of documents can be edited locally, from annual reports and business plans to theses, manuals and even tenders. The register records skills in various media - print, electronic (web design and Internet) and speech writing - and several languages, including French, German, Italian … and plain English.
As Pam said, this register makes all that expertise so visible. She was reminded of Beatrice Davis's famous comment that good editing is like invisible mending - unobtrusive, painstaking work that's vital for holding the fabric of text together. It is the art of patching the new with the old, so as to leave no sign of the intervention. For Beatrice Davis, that was the ultimate in professionalism, and nowadays we can only agree. But … if your best work is invisible, there is a certain risk that you will be too. What a dilemma!
Editors keep a low profile generally, with natural modesty. They are people who help to cultivate other people's words, without their own voices showing. The editor's right to be identified with a publication, by being named in the prelims, is relatively new. Contrast this with the credits shown at the end of a movie, in which every last person associated with the production is mentioned, down to the one who empties the director's waste paper basket, it seems!
The problem - editors having no clear identity - is that people begin to think almost anyone can do editorial work. Editing begins to be seen as less important than design and marketing. It does seem significant that while publishers farm out their editing, they keep their production and marketing inhouse. Are they undervaluing editing? With the current emphasis on new technology, there is also the continuing danger that the essential technical skills can overshadow the importance of an editor's work on the digital text. It is just as important as ever.
Therefore we need to raise the profile of editors, highlight their skills, identify them, make them more visible.
Editors' visibility has been helped by two recent publications featuring the work of Australian editors: the biography of Beatrice Davis by Jacqueline Kent, A Certain Style, and the autobiography of Hilary McPhee, Other People's Voices. Both Davis and McPhee have been key figures in the establishment of Australian literature over the last 60 years. The books give amazing lists of Australian writers whose work they edited, advised on and published to create the contemporary literary canon. Only now, through these studies of editors, is the importance of editorial work beginning to be obvious.
Douglas Stewart (poet) said of Beatrice Davis:'As much as anyone else, she kept Australian literature alive over the middle decades of the twentieth century'. And in her book, Hilary McPhee describes her work with the generation of authors that followed - a Who's Who of Australian literary talent. McPhee's work subsequently earned her a place on the Australia Council's Literature Board.
The two editors contrast in that while Beatrice Davis worked in the ranks of the old established publishing firm Angus and Robertson, McPhee established her own niche publishing outlet, McPhee Gribble, and shouldered the financial management of publishing and literary projects in ways not unlike those of freelance editors who act as project managers.
McPhee Gribble's publishing ranged quite widely into non-fiction, for adults as well as children. One of its claims to fame was that series called Practical Puffins, aimed at children aged 7 to 12 who were thinking independently of their parents and were ready to choose their own pastimes. McPhee took great pains to discover what things interest 7-12 year olds and make them curious. This going-straight-to-the-source is a remarkable application of McPhee's training as a historian.
McPhee's creative use of her historical training in editing and publishing is like that of a great many editors who put their Bachelors degrees to professional use in fields quite removed from the obvious ones. 'Being an editor gives you scope to apply your academic training and all the other knowledge you acquire, to the enhancement of the manuscripts you work on,' Pam said.
The editors registered in this small blue book come from a great variety of disciplines - the humanities as well as the sciences. Add to those academic skills all the technical knowledge and skills noted here; plus the people management skills (not listed here, but to be deduced between the lines of projects successfully completed). All are part of the resources of a professional editor. Beyond even those, editors work with more senses than the average person; it definitely takes a sixth sense to know how words come together.
Editors are infinitely sensitive to the nuances of language. Kent's title, A Certain Style, for example, can be read with at least three meanings, to challenge our thinking. (And what editor would have let pass a recent headline, 'Insurance hikes strangle country culture at the roots'? What a tangle of metaphors!) A finely tuned sense of the subtleties of language is among the repertoire of skills for which editors should be recognised.
It may be asking a lot that Australian editors achieve the high profile of an editor like Jackie Kennedy Onassis for her 14 years work at Doubleday in New York. She had a head start, but tributes from grateful authors are still flowing in. Yet Australian editors can hope to match her professionalism. It is a matter of pride to the Canberra Society of Editors that their members have taken a leading role in CASE (the Council of Australian Societies of Editors), forging the new national standards in editing, and in the writing of the new, totally revised,Australian Govern-ment Style Manual. The impact of both of these on Australian publishing and all forms of government writing will be enormous.
'Therefore', Pam said, 'it gives me great pleasure to launch this new register of freelance editors associated with the Canberra Society of Editors. Definitely cause for celebration!'
Ann Milligan
(A few of the photos taken at the launch are up on the web - to find them click here.)
My thanks to all who came to the launch of the seventh edition of our freelance register on 29 March, helping to make it so successful an evening for the society. They included freelances listed in the register, other members of the society, and invited guests. For the launch itself, we are indebted to Pam Peters from Macquarie University, who spoke eloquently on the importance of the work of editors. Pam noted, among other things, that for the profession to move ahead, editors needed to become much more 'visible' and that documents such as our freelance register and the national editing standards are important ways of raising our profile. A digest of Pam's talk appears elsewhere in this issue.
Who else helped to make the evening a hit? Not quite a cast of thousands, but there are so many people to thank that I hope that I do not inadvertently overlook anybody. Here goes anyway. The idea of having a new edition of the print version of the register, and of making listings in it free, belongs to the 2000-2001 committee, headed by Lee Kirwan. There was some discussion about whether or not a print version was needed, given that up-dated information appears on our web site. The committee decided that there is still a role for the book by one's hand.
Margaret Pender took on the substantial task of soliciting, receiving and editing entries for the register, and preparing preliminary material and the index. She told her story in the February newsletter. You can read it at our web site <www.editorscanberra.org>. At the launch: Pam Peters, Peter Judge and Loma Snooks Helen Topor and Ed Highley Louise Oliver did the checking and proofreading, and I did the typesetting, some index revision and looked after the printing. We thank Panther Printnet, in particular Andrew Scargill, for printing the register at a special price to the society.
Almost 200 invitations to the launch were sent out by mail and email. The task of compiling the mailing list, preparing the invitations and sending them out was undertaken by our indefatigable secretary Ann Parkinson, with assistance from other committee members. We were also lucky to be able to engage the services of Annette Holden, a person with experience in PR affairs such as our launch. Annette drafted a media release and backgrounder, and helped with the mailing list and in many other ways.
The catering and other hospitality for the event was masterminded by a partnership of Jenny Cook and Ann Parkinson. And what fine fare we had, provided by Jenny, Ann Parkinson and Ann Milligan, with a little outside assistance. As it turned out, and very unfortunately, something unexpected kept Jenny away from the actual launch but, being a true professional, she turned up afterwards to make sure that everything had gone to plan.
At 6 p.m. I was at another place collecting our guest speaker so I was not able to witness the efforts of Roger Bacon, Nigel Biginell, Peter Judge, Kerry McDermott, Pete Martensz, and others in turning - within five minutes - the Friends' Lounge from a place in which it looked like nothing was to happen at any time in the near future to a place in which things were swinging. Within five more minutes, Peter Judge was doing a grand job dispensing the bubbly stuff. Our publicity and hospitality coordinator Helen Topor was busy welcoming guests and making sure that they got a name tag. Claudia Marchesi, Cathy Nicoll and Margaret Pender were at large with trays of food goodies. From then on, it was plain sailing all the way. We even had a roving photographer. Our thanks to Ann Milligan's son James for taking pictures, some of which can be seen in this issue. More of them will be on the web site where there is more space - click here to see them.
Now begins the task of distributing the register further, to users and potential users of the services offered by freelance editors. We have the core of a mailing list that could be expanded with suggestions from members of the society and other readers of the newsletter. Let's have them please. An interesting spin-off from the launch is that the society now has its first application for corporate membership - from Defence Publications, which took up our invitation to attend.
Hope to see you at the next meeting at which we will, among other things, be raffling a copy of the new Style Manual. Tickets will be $2, so the winning of a $40+ book would be good value.
Ed Highley
On 19 March, in an article 'Political advisers should be protected' by Maria Maley of the ANU, a quotation was introduced as follows:'In the US, the doctrine of ''executive privilege'' has been expressed thusly'. Professor Basil Johnson of Stirling was not willing to let this unusual word pass without discussion. He checked the dictionary to confirm that it actually existed, and wrote a humorous letter to the editor, published under the Canberra Times' heading:'What is it like to be thus?'.
I phoned Professor Basil Johnson to see whether we could be permitted to quote his letter in the newsletter or reprint it in full, and he said 'no objection at all', so here it is:
It is always a delight to read, resurrected from Lewis Carollian jocularity or wherever, words that send one diving to the Oxford English Dictionary for confirmation of their existence. Thus Maria Maley (CT March 19, p. 11) writes, 'In the US, the doctrine of ''executive privilege'' has been expressed thusly' and goes on to quote her authority. Thusly, I discover (OED) is an adverb associated with the noun thusness, and I quote the noun's definition: 'the condition of being thus'. Is this an admirable or a shameful condition? Is there a cure? Is it catching? I suspect Zarathustra had it and Hiawatha departed with it. Artemus Ward had it badly when he wrote:'Why is this thus? What is the reason for this thusness?'. Is there a philosopher out there who can tell us what 'being thus' is like? Basil Johnson, Stirling
Sadly, no philosopher responded, but we did hear next from Maria Maley herself. A few people had asked her about her use of the word and she was obliged to write to the Canberra Times to tell us that the word was not in fact her word: 'It was substituted by an adventurous sub-editor for the word I used, which was ''as''. '
Maureen Wright
The making of a historical dictionary was recently brought to life in The Surgeon of Crowthorne by Simon Winchester. This wonderful book tells the story of James Murray's creation of the Oxford English Dictionary.
How do you write a dictionary? Where do the words come from for it, and who decides what to include?
Though they are regarded by some as near-biblical in their authority, dictionaries, like any other form of writing, are created by people who have their own idiosyncratic preferences. Historical dictionaries follow a simple and slow technique: first, you must accumulate enough quotations for every word that is a candidate for inclusion. This means, of course, that you will collect far more quotations than you ever use. I would like to explore this process by using as an example the dictionary I have recently published, The Antarctic Dictionary (CSIRO and Museum Victoria 2000, http://www.publish.csiro.au/books/bookpage.cfm?PID=2536).
I had two criteria for the words I collected for my Antarctic dictionary: they must have some significance in the region, and they must also be words whose meaning was unknown, or at least uncertain, to a moderately educated general reader. This general reader, as you might imagine, was the most convenient person to hand - me. Many of the words I accumulated quotations for were names for the animals, birds, fish and other creatures living in the southern regions; others were words for the snow and ice formations on sea or on land, or the meteorological phenomena which can be seen there. Yet others were words brought south by explorers with northern experience, so terms like sastrugi and nunatak, and words for cold-weather clothing such as mukluks and finnesko, were all gathered for this dictionary.
In 11 years of research, I collected about 25,000 quotations. Some were a single sentence, some a good half page long. These were eventually stored on a Microsoft Access database. In this format, I could search the whole body of each quotation, looking for a particular word. Because the database was arranged alphabetically using the word which was a candidate for inclusion in the dictionary - the 'headword' as dictionary-writers call it - as the main mechanism for ordering it, I could quickly scan the quotations and see how many quotations I had accumulated for any word or phrase.
How do you know you have enough quotations to start analysing and writing? Like so many events in life, this happened by chance. In 1997 I moved to the equator, to live in Kenya, where my supply of Antarctic references, magazines, documents and other sources dried up completely. I had over 20,000 quotations by then, and the moment was right. I began sifting through the quotations, deciding what to include and what not to include.
This is the most enjoyable part of writing a dictionary, and it is done at the same time as creating a definition for those words that will be included in the final text. Choosing which words are included takes thought. In the case of Antarctic English, the rather unusual subject matter meant that it was very much an individual decision. I wanted the dictionary to be more than just definitions - to be a sort of handbook, where someone interested in Antarctica could find anything related to the place. As a result, the words defined in it are as inclusive as possible. And because I wrote the dictionary on my own initiative, I had no publisher to guide or constrain me, or, while I was doing all this, to guarantee its eventual publication!
A good example of the difficulty of deciding which words to include is the term katabatic wind. A katabatic wind can occur anywhere there is a large drop in altitude, where an airmass simply falls from the higher to the lower place. The phenomenon is not only Antarctic - it's worldwide. But Antarctica is the highest continent, and the coldest, and for these two reasons, it has by far the most remarkable katabatic winds on earth. If the dictionary hadn't included katabatic, then it would have been harder to explain the title of Douglas Mawson's twovolume classic, The Home of the Blizzard, where he describes life at Commonwealth Bay in Antarctica, amid daily (katabatic) winds.
Other decisions were easier: emperor penguins and Adelies live only in the Antarctic, and breed on the continent itself. There wasn't any choice here, the animals of the region had to go in. So did the Arctic tern, a traveller from the othermost end of the earth, because this bird flies from the Arctic to the Antarctic each year, summering in both polar regions (though it breeds in the Arctic).
How much evidence of a word's use does one need to include it in a dictionary? I have included a number of words with a single quotation (snotsicle and dogloo are two which come to mind). The very act of including a word in a dictionary means it immediately becomes more likely that such a word will endure, but it also chronicles its use in the language, one of the prime roles of historical dictionaries.
Writing definitions is excellent discipline for anyone who wants to write. I had had three years of doing so for the Australian National Dictionary (OUP 1988) and relished the chance to use that skill again. These definitions were then sent (mostly still from Kenya, by email) to experts on seals, whales, seabirds, penguins, ice, auroras, plants (of the subantarctic), insects and the many other specialised disciplines which covered the language of the South. Like so many projects, especially those done by independent researchers, it depended heavily on the knowledge and goodwill of experts in many fields. I incorporated their comments, moved back to Australia, finalised the text and found a publisher.
Once the manuscript had left my hands, I was completely despondent. The cure for this, naturally, is a second edition, which will be both Arctic and Antarctic. If you come across a word that should be in it, let me know.
Bernadette Hince
This is a book about ideas. It is about how 'other people's words' generated ideas that formed part of a major change in Australian society - the generational changeover that took place during the 1960s, 70s and 80s casting aside the staid conservatism of the post-war years and replacing it with a vibrant, contemporary and cosmopolitan society.
It's a history of the development of an idea about an Australian publishing entity, freed from the yoke of British colonialism that saw Australian authors paid a 'colonial royalty'. (The royalty was about half the royalty an author would receive had the book been published solely in Britain, and was intended to absorb the cost of supplying readers who lived at the bottom of the world. ) It's a history, in passing, of the growth of ideas about Australian pre-history, the emergence of an Australian archaeology, a recognition that human occupation of Australia was considerably older and very much more complex than had previously been suspected by all but the few working in the field.
Along the way, there are personal details, but these, apart from a fairly lyrical account of a 'word child' childhood, and incidents like falling in love again, and discarding one husband for another and the birth of children, are covered with casual brevity.
More important are the various events that recur almost as leitmotivs throughout the book, like images reflected in a mirror, spinning off from the original image. For example, there are McPhee's early encounters with Penguin books as a child - her grandmother possessed every Penguin paperback from No. 1, first published in the 1930s, right through until the 1960s - followed later by working at Penguin Australia as an editorial assistant in 1969. And there is the success of Practical Puffins, a series of books for children, commissioned by Penguin from Hilary McPhee and Diana Gribble at their newly formed publishing house, McPhee Gribble. Then there is the successful publishing partnership between McPhee Gribble and Penguin.
So, too, the account of life at McPhee Gribble - not exactly an antipodean Hogarth Press - reflects an earlier image of life at the literary Meanjin. There, a part-time student job had introduced McPhee to the writer's centre of the day, 'full of passionate talk about writing and criticism, politics and place'. The workplace of McPhee Gribble itself was initially a single rented room in South Yarra, expanding to a large and seedy Carlton terrace with a nursery on the ground floor - a combination of children and office that continued to enlarge and flourish. It reflected the tempo of the 1970s and 1980s. Here new writers, new voices, such as Helen Garner,Tim Winton and Drusilla Modjeska, provided new perspectives about Australian life and history.
Hilary McPhee's account of her development as an editor, from the practical knowledge of type faces and the 'look' of a page, gained at Meanjin, through to the meticulous attention to design and production detail that prevailed at Penguin, will delight most editors. So will her account of managing to displace the ugly boomerangs that formed part of the Penguin Australia colophon.
The development of McPhee Gribble, from a book production house making good-looking books for established publishers to sell, blossoming into a 'real' publishing house, is a fascinating account of an idea taking form. The firm acquired the capital and confidence to develop contracts with authors, license their copyright and edit, design, print, market and distribute books, and it developed into a successful entity, indeed an Australian icon. It was brought down by developments in international publishing and that spectre at the feast of all small businesses - insufficient capital.
Margaret Pender
According to Lloyd's List, the prestigious British shipping newspaper, as of April 2002 ships are to be known as 'it' and not 'she'. The editor of Lloyd's List says the decision is a reflection of the modern business of seafaring; ships are commercial assets that do not have characters that are either male or female. But will the mariners agree?
Heard on The World Today, ABC Radio, by Lindy Shultz
On 23 April,Writers at Tilley's will feature Paul Lyneham, A Memoir, with the editor Dorothy Horsfield and some of Paul's colleagues. For further information contact The Word Festival on 6249 7068.
The Project Management course that was to have been on 23 March (but was postponed) will now be on Monday 13 May at 9.30 a.m. A preference has been expressed for a weekday.
So, if it was the Saturday that was putting you off this course, you may like to think again. See the March newsletter for details of the course itself. It will run from 9.30 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Canberra Business Centre, Bradfield St, Downer (the old primary school).
To book, contact Cathy Nicoll or phone 6259 2984, and send $50 (members of the society) or $90 (non-members) to PO Box 3222, Manuka,ACT 2603.
This month the society welcomes Karen Deighton-Smith as a new full member. Karen has 17 years experience working in book publishing, producing both educational texts and general trade titles.
Starting on 29 April for six Mondays, 'Writing Your Family's History' with Gillian Polack, 7 to 9 p.m. This course gives you basic skills for investigating and writing your family's history. Bring a notebook, a pen, an item of sentimental value to your family, and available photos and family details. Cost: $132 for members of the ACT Writers Centre and concessions, $176 for nonmembers. Payment can be made in two equal instalments. Bookings on 6262 9191.
23 April: Writers at Tilleys
24 April: 'Digital offset printing' at the society's April meeting
29 April: Family history course at ACT Writers Centre
13 May: Project Management course
29 May: Dinner to celebrate the new style manual
The Canberra Editor is published by the Canberra Society of Editors, PO Box 3222, Manuka ACT 2603. © Canberra Society of Editors 2001. ISSN 1039-3358
The deadline for the next regular issue is
30 April.
Mail contributions on a 3.5 inch disk, using Word for Windows
(essential) or email (preferable) to:
Ann Milligan
Science Text Processors Canberra
PO Box 3161, Belconnen MDC, ACT 2617
phone/fax: (02) 6259 3080
email: scientex@actonline.com.au
If mailing, always provide a printout as well.
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