Do they? Come to the society's quiz night, on Wednesday 28 August, and find out - 6.30 pm at the Friends' Lounge of the National Library of Australia. Kerry MacDermott and a team of helpers have assembled a set of challenging and amusing questions & answers for us to enjoy. There will be the usual fine finger foods and opportunity for chat beforehand, from 6 pm, and soups and breads will be served during the quiz. Please bring a soup mug, or a bowl and spoon, whichever you prefer. No dinner outing afterwards, this month.
Our quiz night is for members and guests only. Come along and be stimulated in good company. See you there.
It's USUALLY the last Wednesday in the month, so the next two should be on 25 September and 30 October. But life is uncertain and next month is the AGM, which may be linked to a dinner somewhere, so check this page in case of force majeure...
The next meeting: Wednesday 28 August
The President's column
Welcoming the Design manual
E-publishing issues for editors: a conference report
New member
News and notes
Report on an indexing workshop, 5 August
Dates for your diary
Copyright and deadline
Nomination form for election of members to the management committee for 2002-03
In his latest novel, Thinks, David Lodge brings together, in more ways than one, Ralph Messenger, 'Professor and Director of the prestigious Holt Belling Centre for Cognitive Science', and Helen Reed, a successful novelist taking some time out to teach at the, mythical, University of Gloucester, UK.
As far as electronic communication goes, Helen's a bit behind the times, so the professor introduces her to the wonders of email so she can communicate with her daughter who is physically far off in Australia, but just a click away through the ether. Actually, the professor has other motives in connecting her; he's taken a bit of a shine to her and he reckons the email is a great medium for inveiglement. But that's another story.
Of immediate interest, here, is that Ralph (curiously, given his hidden agenda) tells Helen that you don't have to worry too much about punctuation, spelling and that sort of stuff in email messages: as long as the message gets through. He says 'speed is the essence for instance dont bother with caps because they take up time unnecessarily, two keystrokes instead of one and dont bother correcting typos.'
One is thankful that Helen is true to her craft as a writer and, while cognitive Ralph is murdering the language, her messages are paragons of grammatical and syntactical rectitude. Hallelujah!
Why am I telling you this? Because it mirrors my own experience of the appalling lack of care that many people take in their email writing. I'm sure that many of you will have noted this too. To highlight how serious the problem can become, I want to share with you the following email message I received recently:
i would greatly appreciat it if you would asscept the atrtached revised manuscript form me (figures allso attached, but htey have not changed) and please dicard the version I sent earlier and also hand delivered in ******.The earlier verison had many errors.
I think that might almost be one for the Guinness Book of Records. Why should we allow lower, sometimes abject, standards to apply to what might now be approaching the most common form of communication? How long will it take for slovenliness in email communication to spread to other forms of writing, and perhaps even to straight thinking? Maybe we need to start pushing the notion of linguistic responsibility in email communication before it's too late.
I recently spent a few weeks in the UK and am sorry to have to report that even in its mother country, the English language is often on the rack. We saw an elaborate sign on an Edinburgh coffee house proclaiming 'You're daily cup'. At a large provincial university in England, we learned that the building maintenance section is called the 'Directorate of Facilities Management'. Wow! That probably paved the way for a doubling of salaries. We stayed at a college in the same university. Along the path from the college to a conference centre, someone (perhaps from the Directorate) had put up several temporary signs telling us that we were on a 'Pedestrian Walkway'. What were they trying to tell us? That walkways need not be restricted to pedestrians? Surely not. That it was a rather ordinary path, and not to get too excited about it? Well, perhaps.
I wrote here last month that we will be needing a new secretary, newsletter editor and catering officer following the AGM in September. These are the positions that we know with certainty will become vacant, but it was remiss of me not to also remind you that all committee positions can fall vacant at AGM time and nominations are welcome for any or all of them. Think about it.
Ed Highley
(Note: a nomination form is included at the end of this newsletter.)
At our July meeting, the author of the Design manual, David Whitbread, spoke about the conception, gestation and birth of his 'baby', with a special emphasis on the editing.
In 1983, David began work at AGPS as a designer, where he valued the practice of allowing new designers to design immediately. He found himself commenting on missing editorial changes very early on, to his manager, Janet Wyatt, which may have been the start of his proactive style. Among other things, he commented on the use or misuse of em- and en-rules, which Wyatt then explained carefully. The explanation has been incorporated into the Design manual. He feels that many designers don't learn enough until they've worked with editors, and he said that working at AGPS has saved him from making many mistakes.
These days David does many jobs that combine writing and designing. He is lead writer on Made In Australia magazine, published by Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry - Australia (AFFA). It showcases projects and themes in the new industries development program.
The original plan was for the 6th edition of the Style manual and the Design manual to be companion volumes, published by AGPS. After that organisation closed down, it looked as if there would be no Design manual, despite much work having been completed. David Whitbread successfully arranged for the publication rights to revert to him and got a contract with UNSW Press to publish the book. Given the fewer people involved, he considers that the Design manual better reflects his views than his sections of the Style manual.
UNSW Press commissioned Jan Whelan from Queensland to be what David called a 'style editor', rather than a substantive editor. I had the impression that he saw this task as a mixture of a broader manuscript review and copy editing. It was a lively experience for them both. When David received Jan's suggestions, he sought clarification on only five points, which pleased Jan immensely (since there were so many possible differences of approach). Jan pointed out one paragraph that could have three meanings, and David agreed, once it had been shown to him, though he had not previously realised it. He found her suggestions led to great improvement and appreciated her picking up inconsistencies that were 200 pages apart.
The Design manual itself has a broader range of content than the design sections of the Style manual (which deal only with government publishing design). It includes notes about corporate identity, stationery, advertising, the design of some forms, multimedia, and design tips for catalogues and posters.
The first stage of writing was to define 'good design', which he set as 'appropriate design', but that was still a problematic definition so the initial section is labelled 'Purpose' to address these issues. It is clear that the use of design for text is critical for David.
David aims to design with Australian eyes and is particularly appreciative that Ken Done gave permission for one of his illustrations to be used without payment. David has made use of Australian images. He feels it is possible to be environmentally conscious in approaches to design.
The second section of the Design manual is called 'Projects'. It starts with the publications section and moves through others, including advertising. It is intended to be thorough, for readers who are novices (David mentioned that one student had not known what letterhead was).
Rather than using a bibliography, David has included sections called 'read more about it' as a list in the text, instead of footnotes or side-notes that make the reader jump from the text. Disliking more usual citation methods involving family names then initials, he uses given names then family names, with minimal capitalisation, adding the ISBN and a full stop. David also doesn't put the references in any sort of alphabetical order. Jan accepted this approach since the sections are not called bibliographies.
The third section, 'Production', deals with design. It starts with layout: the details rather than the 'big picture' - for instance typography giving the wrong impression, appropriate eyeflow for single or doublepage spreads and placement of pieces within a layout. There is a full explanation of 'what is a font', including the names of symbols, such as 'commercial at' for @. David pointed out that for display typesetting, punctuation can be reduced in size and repositioned, especially in advertising. There is a onepage version of proofreading marks, setting out margin mark then text mark then correction as it would appear. David feels this would be very useful for designers.
There is more detail than in the Style manual on matters such as print processes. The Design manual shows the Australian terminology and then explains US and UK differences. It defines terms such as lpi and dpi. There is a section of 'document quick fix' approaches, for use when there is not enough time to design properly. This section includes four golden rules, three picture formats, examples of typography and suggestions for typefaces.
In response to questions, David said that an attractive book cover is essential for enticing readership to the book. He therefore needed to explain potential audiences to the designer.
One challenge is that people today read less at one go than previously. There are examples in the text, shown as 'try this now' which entice readers to continue. Lots of 'busy' images appeal to youth, David said, but older readers find them distracting. On the other hand, images can help people keep reading, and set up a pace so they 'turn the page'.
David feels it is valuable for editors to do a design course, particularly to learn about typography. In talking again about editors, David ended where he began - putting the work of design and the Design manual into the context of our work as editors. This interweaving enhances our work and we thank David for his presentation.
Alexa McLaughlin
I recently attended OpenPublish 2002: the 2nd Annual Conference for Standards and Process in Publishing, which was held in Sydney. This was a wonderful opportunity for those working in the production or management of print and electronic media to hear about developments in information technology and see demonstrations of new products for publishing-related industries.
The four-day event focussed heavily on the 'exploding' growth of the Portable Document Format (PDF) and how its integration into publishing processes is significantly changing workflows and creating efficiencies. It also examined:
I will discuss here the presentations and issues raised that were of most relevance to editors.
Keynote speaker Michael Mangan, from Australian Consolidated Press (ACP), delivered an insightful case study of his company-wide move to digital advertising and computer-to-plate (CTP) production. Before 2001, all editorial and advertising pages were sent to the printer as analogue film and proof with several valuable days in the production cycle spent awaiting proofs, correcting, awaiting corrected proofs and so on.
CTP is the process of transferring digital data from computers directly onto printing plates. This process eliminates the need for film and chemical proofs by utilising Portable Document File technology (PDF). Contract quality digital proofs are produced for colour matching.
Michael discussed the software and infrastructure changes ACP implemented, including a staged move to Adobe InDesign, which he says has greater functionality for designers, such as multiple 'undo and redos', easy table creation and importation of styles from Word and Excel, as well as tighter integration with Photoshop and Illustrator, and one-step PDF creation. As well as these changes, he said a 'revolution' had taken place in ACP, in the grouping of design and editorial staff together on the same floor.
The main workflow changes resulting from the CTP implementation are:
Michael said that ACP's advertising has also 'gone digital': designers deliver advertisements in PDF format directly via the Internet. A rapid transition took place because of industry partners' compliance. Similarly, ACP's photography department now largely works digitally. The challenge, he said, was to convince traditionally-based photographers that digital photography is cleaner, sharper, simpler and cheaper. The full roll-out of CTP technology into all ACP publications was carried out within six months.
Because CTP eliminates the traditional steps in the production cycle - production of film; production of chemical proofs; film stripping and planning; and exposing film to plates - the benefits, Michael said, are:
Michael referred interested parties to the website for Digital Data Delivery for Australian Publications <http://www.3dap.com.au/>, which I found provides clear and simple explanations of digital proofing and CTP printing. In summary, a document or potential publication is prepared in, for example, Quark Xpress, InDesign, PageMaker or even good old MS Word. It is then converted to PDF either directly, as some software offers this as a 'Save as' function, or by 'printing' to a postscript file and running that through a conversion filtering product called Distiller (part of Acrobat full version).This PDF file (output with high quality equipment) is the proof.
As many of you will be already be aware, a PDF file can be emailed to all stakeholders in a publication, who can easily view it, print and proof it, simultaneously, regardless of location. It has all fonts and images embedded, so stakeholders don't need to have font families installed on their machines. Digital proofing for colour jobs demands that organisations purchase high quality colour printers and high quality monitors. Colour integrity is an important factor and unless this infrastructure is available to stakeholders, what they see is not what they will get. Specifications of machines and conditions to meet digital proofing standards can also be found at the aforementioned 3dap website.
At the risk of sounding like a convert resulting from the abundant product 'evangelising', I must say I was very impressed by Enfocus Pitstop Professional, an Adobe Acrobat plugin that enables 'preflight' changes. If you are charged with incorporating editorial changes as well as markup of them, this is probably a good investment and certainly printers should have it. I have edited text and graphics and printed successfully using the full version of Acrobat 5.0, but as the manual says, 'editing large sections of text can be a slow and laborious task'. So if your printing company tells you they can't amend PDF documents, well now you know they can.
Gerard Reid, of New Zealand company Egan Reid, and longtime Executive Director of the Book Publishers Association of New Zealand, stressed in his presentation 'New Tricks for Old Dogs' that publishing must still provide an effective means of communication between a writer and readers, and that in a digital environment we must not forget the vital ingredients of a good publication.
Typography rules and principles developed 150 years ago still apply today despite the tendency to throw old standards out because of new media, he said. Also, people are avoiding indexing and indexing professionals. 'But,' he said, this 'intricate, complex and delicate task shows up more in digital media'. Digital publications can contain too many links as a result of automated processes, he said.
Quality editing - thorough structural and copy editing, he said, is another one of those vital ingredients. 'Many people still think proofreading is editing', he said. Through a quality control process he had discovered that there were 15 to 29 steps in correcting a single comma at proof correction stage, yet in his industry 'the goal is to avoid these steps and get the client to deliver high quality material in the first place'. 'How?'. 'Through training for editors in changing internal organisational processes', he said. With a large client base Gerard's publishing company has implemented the ISO 9000 standard for quality control and has achieved an 80% drop in correction rate.
In a changing industry environment, no one should be beaten up over mistakes, he said. As a result of his quality control implementation, he realised mistakes are made out of poor processes or poor or no training.
'Software', Gerard said, 'is a sledge-hammer or a scalpel depending on how you use it'. He said users should never trust default settings of software, 'because the designers of it aren't expert typographers'. Gerard said we are part of a digital evolution not a revolution. After all, it is 550 years since Gutenberg's press, and the change has been a slow process. By way of example, he amusingly told us how, until recently, he would 'fake galley proofs and paste-ups' to please some clients because they would not be convinced of the validity of digital proofing.
John Murphy from Fuji Xerox gave a background to the business side of traditional book publishing and compared it with emerging digital book production. He said that Fuji Xerox is taking an active role in assisting publishers in creating sustainable business opportunities in e-book and print-on-demand (POD) publishing. In his overview of the book trade he said that offset printing breeds the 'magic $20' book price, which factors in 25% of that amount to be production costs. So publishers currently believe $5 is the average cost per book for production. John said this calculation is flawed, because sales projections are made 18 months in advance; distributors have 12 months for sale or return; on average 50% of books aren't sold - they are warehoused for two years - therefore publishers are unable to confirm profit for 18 months to 2 years. Also, often the warehousing cost isn't taken into account when considering profit and production costs. So the $5 is unrealistic and the cost is actually higher. With all things considered, he said, 30 to 50% of a book's costs are in its inventory risks and distribution costs.
This model isn't good business practice or suitable for all types of books, he said, so POD should at least be considered for short-run academic titles.
With POD the average print run is 150 to 350 units. John suggested that publishers (large and small) should consider what he called 'layered POD'. That is, offset printing for all covers and POD for the inside/text of the book. This requires the publisher to predict the number of covers needed for one year, but even if this is overestimated and the publisher is left with excess covers, it would be a much smaller loss to bear than printing the whole book offset in larger numbers. At about $10, the print price per item is actually higher than with traditional methods, but it works out more economical because you will not be left with large numbers of copies unsold, in storage. A variety of bindery options is not available with POD but, John stressed, booksellers say fancy presentation and binding are not important factors in selling the book.
John predicted an eventual move by all printers to digital proofing and urged all stakeholders to work with their printing company in this evolution.
An understanding of digital proofing technology and POD is important even if as an editor you do not use the associated software, or are only involved in marking up proofs; you are part of a bigger process, one that is changing, and an understanding of it enables you to work 'smarter', as they say. Understanding Acrobat Distiller options for PDF creation can allow you to leap hurdles in the transition to digital proofing. Take for example embedding font sets. Designers often instruct the system to embed only a 'subset' of the whole font set - only the characters actually used in the text - for the advantage of a smaller file size. This can cause problems when attempting to edit text in the PDF file and add a character not originally used. Your knowledge of this can help avoid problems emerging in the process.
I believe that a 'tighter', less staggered prepress process could mean an increased emphasis on editing. There will be fewer opportunities for errors to be detected in text before going to press, and this will empower us to convince copy owners, clients, managers, etc., that engaging an editor can avoid costly printing errors.
There are other issues for all of us in the move to CTP: reluctance on the part of some members of the printing industry, educating clients, software and equipment costs, training time and costs, and understanding PDF technology. On the latter, without training or understanding of the technology, I know that one can grapple with PDF creation, or have to deal with the end result of bad PDF creation and end up wasting time and getting frustrated. Fonts not embedding can be a real bugbear. One important thing to know is that only Postscript Type 1 fonts should be used. A second point that may help when troubleshooting is that if a publication has been typeset by applying attributes such as italicising and bolding using a formatting toolbar, rather than with a full font family, this can cause missing or substituted fonts, or altogether strange results.
The first thing you should do, after training or familiarising yourself with the software, is to ask your printer for their Distiller Job Options specifications, because compatibility and other settings can vary between printing companies. Secondly, consider the settings needed for each piece of work - size, colour, fonts, images, etc.
I should make it clear that Adobe is not the only vendor of PDF-generating software and I don't wish to be seen to endorse one product in particular. Several others were discussed and demonstrated at the conference, but I think I'm safe to say that at present Adobe have market domination.
This conference would have provided a good opportunity for advocacy for, and advertising of, services offered by the editing and indexing professions. Many in the publishing industry need convincing of the integral part we play in the publishing process. The cost of inserting fliers or advertisements in conference packs at the same event in 2003 would be money well spent. I therefore urge a combined societies' marketing initiative for next year; I will advise the society when I become aware of the dates for the event.
Further information can be found at:
http://www.3dap.com.au/
http://www.planetpdf.com
http://www.adobe.com.au
Lindy Shultz
OpenPublish 2002: 2nd Annual Conference for Standards and Process in Publishing, 29 July-1 August 2002, Star City Hotel, Sydney. Convened by Allette Systems (Australia), <http:www.allette.com.au>.
This month the society welcomes Ms Tracy Harwood as a new Associate Member.
The Australian Chesterton Society will hold its national conference in Canberra from 13 to 15 September, with the theme 'What's wrong with the world - Chesterton in the third millennium'.
The venue is Blackfriars Priory and Conference Centre, corner of Antill St and Phillip Avenue, Watson. A gala dinner at University House on Saturday will feature NSW Supreme Court Judge Roderick Meagher. Sessional speakers include Editor-in-Chief of the Canberra Times, Mr Jack Waterford, and popular literary reviewer and broadcaster Emeritus Professor Ralph Elliott. All interested persons are welcome. Enquiries to Ray Finnegan, telephone 6288 5137 or <range@netspeed.com.au>. (Our own member Mary Newport is one of the organisers.)
A Style Council conference, featuring the theme 'The digital shift from print to electronic media', will be held in Brisbane, 22-24 November 2002 at Rydges Hotel on Southbank. It is the twelfth in a series concerned with professional uses of Australian English to be conducted by the Macquarie Dictionary Research Centre and Style Council Centre. It brings together issues such as Editing documents for the screen, Educational uses of the Internet, and The outlook for e-publishing - topics which should be of interest to a wide range of professionals and academics from such diverse fields as editing, publishing, teaching, journalism, linguistics and lexicography. Featured speakers include Richard Walsh and Peter Spearritt.
If you would like to offer a paper relating to any of the topics indicated, please send details of the proposed content in a 250-word summary by 30 August. Early bird registration for the conference is $250 (+GST), with full-and half-day rates available on request. For further details, or to submit an abstract for a paper, please go to <www.ling.mq.edu.au/style>, or email Adam Smith at the Style Council Centre on <asmith@ling.mq.edu.au>, phone 02 9850 8783.
The Society of Editors (SA) committee has unanimously endorsed the proposal for a national promotional campaign for editors. Members were especially attracted to the idea of awards and offered the following suggestions:
o positive awards appeal more to us than negative ones. If the latter, then they should be light-hearted,
o the categories for the awards should be very carefully defined,
o awards should recognise the collaborative nature of publishing and mention the publishing team even though the award is presented to the editor,
o editors who work on the web need every encouragement - there are too many web sites 'edited' by IT,
o author endorsements could be part of the assessment,
o could seals or stickers be devised for editors to use on their winning publications?
Overall the committee welcomed the ideas and the enthusiasm. Ambitious maybe, but well worth the effort!
On 4 September from 7 pm in the Link, Canberra Theatre, there will be an entertaining discussion about high art versus pulp fiction and the literary industry. Speakers: Marion Halligan, Jennifer Webb, Jennifer Moran, Rod Quinn, Annabel Scholes, Craig Cormick. Free.
As a writer and editor I have only ever had a peripheral interest in indexing. I've done a few simple indexes and proofed many more but have generally subcontracted out big indexing jobs. I went along to the Canberra Society of Editors' indexing workshop on 5 August with a view to improving my basic indexing skills, but perhaps more importantly, to learning about what to look for in a good indexer.
At the workshop Max McMaster demonstrated that indexing is much more about logical thinking and how people search for information than it is about lists and cross-references. He emphasised that a good index is only good if it works for the reader. This approach made me see indexing in a very different light and it made for a very interesting day.
Max's workshop covered different approaches to indexing, indexing styles, indexing software packages, editing indexes, evaluating or assessing indexes, and costing indexing services. The workshop was well structured and balanced with just the right amount of teaching on the one hand and practical application on the other.
Max was an excellent presenter. He shared his knowledge in a light-hearted way and was prepared to answer many, many questions from the group. During the tea breaks and lunchtime, workshop participants mixed freely and all had many positive things to say about the workshop content. I would urge anyone who has anything to do with books to attend an indexing workshop of this kind. It was one of the most worthwhile professional development days I've ever spent.
Elizabeth Bennett
28 August: Society's quiz night4 September: ACTWriters Centre literary discussion
13 September: Chesterton conference
23 September: Nomination forms due (enclosed)
25 September: Annual General Meeting
22 November: Style Council conference
The Canberra Editor is published by 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
31 August.
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.
We nominate …………………………………………………………………
for the position of …………………………………………………………….
on the Management Committee of the Canberra Society of Editors for 2002-03.
Nominated by: (signature)……………………………………………………..
Seconded by: (signature) ……………………………………………………..
I accept nomination: (signature) ……………………………………………..
Only full members of the society may stand for election or nominate and second candidates.
Under the society's constitution, the Management Committee comprises a President, a Vice-President, a Secretary and a Treasurer, as well as an unspecified number of other committee members. The constitution stipulates that office bearers may not hold the same office for more than two consecutive years.
Management Committee meetings are held on the Friday before each monthly general meeting of members. Candidates for election to the committee should therefore be prepared to allocate the time each month to attend the general meeting and the committee meeting, plus additional time for allocated tasks.
The election will be conducted at the Annual General Meeting, which will be held at 6.30 p.m. on Wednesday 25 September 2002. The venue for the meeting will be advertised in the society's newsletter, The Canberra Editor.
Please print this nomination form and mail it to Ann Parkinson, Secretary, at the society's mailing address, PO Box 3222, Manuka ACT 2603, by Monday 23 September 2002.
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