Our first general meeting for the New Year will be held on Wednesday, 23 February at 6.00 for 6.30 p.m. in the Friends Lounge of the National Library.
The Special Event, in lieu of a guest speaker, will be a behind-the-scenes tour of the National Library, taking in parts of the library that you wouldn't normally get to see. The tour will start at 6.45 p.m. and will last for between 45 minutes and one hour.
To make it easier for the Library, it would be useful to get a rough idea of numbers, so please let Ted Briggs know if you're reasonably sure you'll be coming: <tedbriggs@webone.com.au> or ring on 0407 018 433.
Don't forget - everyone is welcome to come to dinner afterwards at a nearby restaurant.
See you there!
- Next meeting
From the Editor's desk- The Christmas dinner
- 'Editing in Context' - conference update
- Minding my p's and q's … courtesy, cribbing and copyright
- Thinking about words: frogs and other amphibious matters
- Insurance, anybody?
- BELS certification
- CASE notes - the accreditation vote
- New members
- Copyright
- Deadline
Welcome to the first issue of the newsletter for 2005. On behalf of the editorial team, I wish you all the very best for the New Year (while it's still relatively new!) and look forward to bringing you even more interesting material to inform, amuse or edify.
As both our President Claudia Marchesi and our Vice-President Ted Briggs are on holidays - in Italy and Queensland respectively - there's no President's Report this month.
Last year plagiarism raised its ugly head - I cannot be accused of plagiarising a cliché fortunately! - which caused this editor and the committee considerable grief because we were threatened with legal action. From now on, all contributors to the newsletter and all speakers at general meetings will be asked to provide an assurance that the material they contribute to the newsletter or present at general meetings is their own work. Coincidentally, in her first article in the new series that she has kindly offered to pen ('keyboard' doesn't quite fit the bill as a verb in this context now, does it!) in 2005, Elizabeth Murphy talks about plagiarism and copyright. Elizabeth's new series is called 'Minding my p's and q's'.
The updating of the print version of the society's Register of Freelance Editors is in full swing. It will be based on the entries in the web version, so if you are a full member of the society and you haven't yet placed an entry in the register, or if you think you need to revise your entry, this is your last chance to do so. Send your new or revised entries to: <peter.judge@alianet.alia.org.au> before 15 March, after which date we'll be putting the finishing touches to the register. We intend to go to print in early April.
This is a free service to society members, so take advantage of this splendid opportunity!
The society's end-of-year Christmas dinner was a well-attended affair, as you'll be able to see from the many happy photos below . Delicious food, free-flowing wine and a cosy ambiance made for a highly enjoyable night for all at University House.
Local journalist, broadcaster, social commentator, author and raconteur, Ian Warden, was the guest speaker. He gave an entertaining and thought-provoking talk on the role of the media and his take on the 'dumbing down' of English.
Ed.
The Editing in Context conference organising sub-committee has been hard at work preparing for the next national editors conference.
Not only have we been seeking sponsorship, but we have also been securing our keynote speakers and brainstorming lots of exciting programming ideas.
Our activities slowed down a little over Christmas and New Year, but we will be calling for papers around April/May, and early-bird registrations will open around July. So watch out for the announcements of these important events.
Don't forget that all details are available on our website at <www.socedvic.org/editingincontext/>.
If you have any suggestions or questions, please don't hesitate to contact me at <editingincontext@optushome.com.au>.
Lan Wang, Conference Convenor
Happy New Year! This year I plan to write about some of the aspects of editing and writing that involve taking particular care, among other things - minding my p's and q's.
I was brought up to say 'please' and 'thank you'. For everything. No exceptions. It was common courtesy. 'Please may I have a drink?' 'Thank you for having me at your party.' 'Please may I borrow your book?' 'Please may I quote from your thesis?' and so on, with 'thank yous' extending to the courtesy of acknowledging authorship of quoted bits and pieces in essays, theses, journal articles and so on.
I was also brought up to do my own thinking, certainly based in part on other people's theories and experiences, and then to express myself in my own words as far as possible, in academic pursuits and elsewhere.
In some cultures that I have experienced, it has been common practice to copy the words of teachers and fellow students when it comes to answering examination questions - it's not called 'cheating' - it's called 'helping each other'. However, this is not the Australian way.
I recall many occasions while I was president of an independent examining body in commercial subjects having to work out a strategy for overcoming the 'helping' that was rife in some of the countries in which we examined, and where students were desperate to get an Australian qualification by any means available.
It took years of visiting various Pacific countries, but we finally succeeded, and students from those countries now top the list of prizes for excellence in examinations - and not a hint of 'helping' any more. Students excel on their own merit - not by copying from others without saying 'thank you'.
If you're old enough, you might remember what were called 'crib sheets' - explanations of Shakespearean plays to help one understand the significance of the language or the intricacies of plots. I used them and was grateful for them - but only as additional reference material. There were 'crib sheets' in many school and university subjects.
The word 'crib' in this sense surfaced just recently, when someone claimed to have spotted one of the US Presidential candidates reaching into his jacket pocket for something during their televised debate - it was asked whether he was reaching for a 'crib' of some sort? The rules of that debate clearly prohibited any notes. I only mention it here because of the use of the word.
'Crib' is a multi-defined word - the Macquarie Dictionary gives more than twenty meanings. The meaning that concerns us here is 'Colloquial to pilfer or steal, as a passage from an author'.1 It even made it into Kel Richards's Word of the Day on the ABC's Classic FM Breakfast in June 2002: 'Cribbing' meant 'an act of petty theft; or anything 'cribbed' or taken without acknowledgment2 from another's work (plagiarism, in other words)'.3
Ah, there it is - the 'p' word. So what really is plagiarism? A good definition and explanation appears on the website of the Presbyterian Ladies College, Melbourne. It describes plagiarism as 'using other peoples' words and ideas without clearly acknowledging the source of the information'.4 The Learning Centre of the University of New South Wales goes further: 'Plagiarism is using the words or ideas of others and presenting them as your own. Plagiarism is a type of intellectual theft. It can take many forms, from deliberate cheating to accidentally copying from a source without acknowledgment'.5
In that last definition lies an important point: 'accidentally copying'. It is perfectly possible for someone to have read something somewhere, absorbed it over time, and then included it in their own writing, as though it were their own. The author can firmly believe that the writing truly is their own and that no acknowledgment is therefore necessary. I would have to say, however, that this could only possibly be true for short passages - maybe a phrase or a sentence.
I had occasion once, while tutoring at the Australian National University, to be reading a student assignment on an aspect of child acquisition of language. I was struck by how knowledgeable the student was on a certain point, until I realised that I recognised the writing. The student had copied, word for word, without acknowledgment, a passage of several paragraphs from my own thesis on the subject! Needless to say, the student was expelled from the course because this was the punishment for plagiarism, regardless of how flattering it was to me to be quoted so freely!
Plagiarism on the grand scale has been made more and more tempting and easy for lazy students by people who provide whole essays on all manner of subjects on the Web. Teachers and supervisors have to be more vigilant than ever to make sure that they are reading their students' own work and not that of others. Plagiarism at academic levels can take many forms. The PLC Melbourne site lists these:
- buying a paper/essay from a research service or on-line papermill
- handing in another person's work with or without the author/creator's knowledge
- copying an entire source and presenting it as your own
- copying sections from a source without appropriate acknowledgment
- paraphrasing material from a source without appropriate acknowledgment6
They offer various ways of trying to prevent plagiarism, largely by being vigilant and prepared - visiting some of the sites where such material is available; including discussion of plagiarism in student study sessions; encouraging correct citation, rigorous research methods, inclusion of a number of different resources in writing tasks and so on.
Of course, plagiarism is not restricted to students or academia. It can occur anywhere. However, good habits can be encouraged at student level, and this was my own practice when I ran the Study Skills Unit at the Signadou (Canberra) campus of the Australian Catholic University in the mid-1990s. I tried to prepare students for professional and commercial writing and not just for university requirements.
I have encountered confusion in the minds of some people recently about what is and is not in the 'public domain' and what that term means anyway. I know people, including friends with lengthy academic, writing and even editing experience, who think it is OK to pass on emails to third parties without the permission of the author. The reason I have been given has been 'It's an email, therefore it's in the public domain'. That is not true. An email is no more public in its intent than a letter written on paper and mailed through the post. Even material such as government information papers, available for free copying from websites, while publicly available, still needs to be acknowledged if quoted. The same people have told me that they believe it is OK to print out and copy in bulk fact sheets from websites. No it isn't. If you read the fine print carefully, you will usually find a privacy statement or copyright information that prevents copying more than once for personal reference purposes only.
Which brings me to copyright. There are some excellent information sheets on the Web, put out by the Australian Copyright Council. I will reference the few I have consulted,7 but there are many more, and I recommend them to you if you are in any doubt as to what copyright is all about. A good rule of thumb is to assume that someone owns the copyright on anything written, and that it's not freely available until at least fifty years after the death of the author. This period was expected to be extended to seventy years from 1 January 2005 under the terms of the new Australia/US Free Trade Agreement.8 This will bring Australia into line with the United States and Europe. Before that period is over, you have to seek the permission of the owner of the copyright before using anything, wherever in the world it has been written. In Australia, this all comes under the Copyright Act 1968. When copyright has expired, a work can be said to be 'in the public domain', not requiring permission to use, but usually not until then.
So who owns copyright? Usually the author, and it's automatic - as soon as something is written down or recorded, it is protected under the Act. It doesn't have to be published, and you don't have to use the word 'Copyright' or the symbol ©, though these are helpful if you need to let people know just who owns the copyright and that the material is protected. Sometimes, work is written as part of employment: in that case the employer owns the copyright. Sometimes it's difficult to tell who owns the copyright: I own the copyright in all of the articles I have written for The Canberra Editor, but if I wanted to republish them all as a collection somewhere, I would regard it as courteous to seek the permission of this Society to do so. Some of my articles are republished in other editing journals, such as Blue Pencil in Sydney and Book Worm in WA. Invariably, the editors of these journals seek permission from both me as author and the editor at the time of this journal. It's just common courtesy.
So we're back to courtesy - and really that's what it's all about. If you want to use other people's writing, illustrations, website material, sound recordings, films etc, just ask and then acknowledge in the text or in a bibliography or footnotes, using any clear method of citation or referencing. It's easy to do. If you don't, you can be sued by the copyright owner. On the other hand, if you want to use someone else's idea (provided it's not yet written down), concept, style or technique, go for it! They're not protected by copyright, though they could well be protected under other laws.
© Elizabeth M Murphy 2005 (but of course you knew that!)
Sources:
- A frog he would a-wooing go,
- Heigh ho! says Rowley,
- A frog he would a-wooing go,
- Whether his mother would let him or no.
- With a Rowley, powley, gammon, and spinach,
- Heigh ho! says Anthony Rowley.
If you had told me, back in June 1993, that I would work in the French Embassy for more than eleven years, I wouldn't have believed you. But it happened, and I produced a regular publication, French Science and Technology. However, as time passed, budgets became ever tighter and finally the crunch came, the funds dried up completely, and now it's over. People said, 'So you're leaving the Frogs at last!' Frogs! Why 'Frogs'?
Well, they eat them, don't they? And there the pursuit of etymology might well stop, because that was almost certainly the origin of the nickname since the early 19th century. But look back a little further, to the 17th, and you find it was the Dutch who were the Frogs or 'Froglanders', presumably because the undrained and untamed areas of their Netherlands were great breeding grounds for the little fellows.
The early 19th century was the time of the Napoleonic wars, and the nickname used by Wellington's men and Nelson's sailors for the French troops was 'Johnny Crapaud'. But crapaud means toad, not frog. Less flattering? Certainly. Eaten by the French? Certainly not, although both the French and the Italians have an idiom, 'to swallow a toad', meaning to swallow an insult or have to do something unpleasant against your will. In 17-18th century England, a toad-eater was a charlatan's assistant who pretended to eat a venomous toad, to prove that his master's quack medicine could cure even that. Later the meaning was extended to describe anyone who used fawning and flattery to gain an advantage - a meaning it still has in the modern word toady.
You probably know that the heraldic arms of France carry the fleur de lis (formerly lys), usually translated as lily although it looks more like an iris. You may not realise that the lis has links to toads. When Clovis I was king of the Franks in the late 5th century, his shield bore the symbol of three toads. To please his wife Clotilde (later St Clotilda), Clovis swore to convert to Christianity if he won a great battle against the Alemanni at Tolbiac, near the River Rhine. Legend also has it that an angel appeared to him and promised victory if he became a Christian. Either way, he won the battle and was duly baptised at Reims in 497.
Because his winning ambush was mounted near clumps of yellow iris at the water's edge he changed his pagan toads into three golden fleurs de lis, more acceptable to the Church. When you see the two emblems side by side, they are really quite similar:
From then on the French kings included the fleur de lis in their arms. So did the territorially ambitious British monarchy from Edward III in the 14th century right through to 1801, when George III (he of 'the madness') finally renounced any further claim to the French throne. But Quebec still uses it, and so does Queen Elizabeth II's royal standard in Canada.
The word frog reached the English language from German ancestry, not French - modern German has Frosch, modern French is grenouille. Readers of my musings on Grimm's Law will immediately spot a relation between grenouille and the Latin rana; however, the Latin for toad is bufo, and that doesn't turn up in anybody else's language. The origins of the English word toad are also obscure; the word is quite unlike, say, crapaud or the German Kröte (derived, without too much attention to the niceties of amphibian systematics, from the Greek batrachos, frog). The Italian for toad is rospo, again quite unlike the Latin, although the Italian word for frog is just the Latin rana, no messing about. As for the word crapaud itself, that comes from an Old French word crape with the same sense as our modern (well, Victorian) slang word crap. Something yucky.
Natty little frogs are much cuter than warty old toads - what princess in her right mind would kiss a toad? Long ago, frogs even enjoyed a reputation for purity, and their metamorphosis from egg to tadpole to adult was seen as symbolic of the soul's progress towards Christian perfection. Moreover, it was believed that frogs buried in earthquakes and landslides could remain alive indefinitely and hop out years later when floods washed the soil away or the rocks cracked, a myth thought to symbolise the resurrection.
You can work out why a toadstool is a poisonous mushroom, or why being frogmarched is so called. But why did medieval peasants suppose that the toad has a jewel in its forehead, the 'toad-stone', which, worn in a ring or necklace, changes colour or heats up in the presence of poison, so warning you that somebody may have tampered with your food or drink?
Victorian moralisers considered the nursery rhyme of Mr Frog's disastrous wooing to be a salutary warning against childish disobedience: the frog disobeys his mother, sees his friend Mr Rat seized by the cat and his love Mrs Mouse pulled down by the kittens, and is then gobbled up by the lily-white duck. But did it begin life as a political satire, as so many did? This one was first published as a children's rhyme in Scotland in 1549 ('The frog came to the myl dur') and has since gone through a great many versions, some of them with music, mostly apparently without any hidden agenda. However, a researcher, Evelyn Wells, has suggested that a version registered in 1580 may poke fun at the Duc d'Alençon's unsuccessful (and very unpopular) wooing of Queen Elizabeth I between 1579 and 1582. The Queen was known to call the Duc her 'Frog', and several other characters in that version may be identified with her courtiers.
'Rowley powley' came into the verses only in the early 19th century; it was then a Cockney term for a plump fowl - very tasty with gammon and spinach - but is now generally 'roly poly', a jam roll pudding. Nobody knows whether an Anthony Rowley existed and there's almost certainly no connection with Old Rowley, the nickname of the lecherous Charles II. But you'll be pleased to know that the original Scottish Lady Mouse, baith gimp and sma', escaped the kittens when she crept into a hole beneath the wa'. So there.
Peter Judge
Sources: The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes by Iona and Peter Opie. Most of the etymology from The Oxford English Dictionary 2nd edition on CD-ROM. Most of the historical bits from Le lys héraldique at fbecuwe.free.fr/lys.htm and Contes et légendes de France Bas at forum.aceboard.net/. Evelyn Wells is cited in 'The history of "The Frog's Courtship"' by David G H Parsons, Canadian Journal for Traditional Music, at cjtm.icaap.org/content/18/v18art6.html. All sighted in December 2004.
Have you been worried about insurance? All the different kinds, which kind or kinds you really need, what they might cost, what are the implications if you don't have enough of the right kind… Last year, societies of editors distributed a questionnaire about insurance to their freelance members, on behalf of Robyn Colman, of the Tasmanian society. Robyn's report has been on your website for some months now - see it at www.editorscanberra.org/notices.htm.
There was not a huge number of responses: only 22 people answered the survey, and Robyn's report was based on the replies from the eighteen respondents who had some relevant experience. Most communicated strong feelings and many wrote extensively about their experiences and suggestions. If you have looked at the report, you will have found that the responses add up to very sensible and resourceful advice.
Robyn concluded that, if the responses to the questionnaire are a reasonable indicator, then not many of our profession have been bothered by insurance requirements, but those who have see some requirements as unreasonable, if not just plain silly. The suggestions that respondents made for individuals and for societies show the resourcefulness of sensible, intelligent people who refuse to be bullied. Robyn hopes that sharing these suggestions will give confidence to freelance editors worried about insurance and that societies can find ways to support these members. Her report is well worth a look and may answer questions that you have been asking!
A BELS exam will be run during the CASE national editors conference, 'Editing in context', Melbourne, 13-15 October. Precise details of the date and time of the exam will be posted later in the year, when the conference program has been worked out. I am hoping that it will be held on the same day as a workshop on science editing that will be part of the conference.
BELS is a US-based organisation that offers certification by examination to editors in the life sciences. Formed in 1991, it has certified members worldwide, including some in Australia. You can read all about the BELS organisation and the certification exam at the BELS website at www.bels.org.
This notice is given to you early because if you are interested in gaining BELS certification you need to start the ball rolling by applying to BELS for candidacy, by mail or fax, on an application form available from the BELS website, a CV, proof of education (copy of diploma or transcript from the highest degree), three letters of reference and US$25. I understand that BELS can accept Visa or Mastercard payments from people outside of the United States but you will need to send an email to request a form for this as there is not one on the website.
Assuming that all is in order, applicants will be sent a letter admitting them to candidacy, a study guide (which is very useful and will also help you to decide if you want to go ahead with the exam this year), the schedule of exams and an exam registration form. If candidates decide that they want to proceed with the exam, they will need to forward the exam registration form and a further US$100. Applicants have about two years from being accepted as candidates to sit the exam before they have to reapply. However, the BELS office has been very lenient on this score in the past, understanding the difficulty for Australians of being in the right place at the right time to sit the exam (which is mainly held in the United States or Europe).
If you would like further information about BELS and the exam from someone who has taken it, please contact me on (02) 6282 2280, janet.salisbury@biotext.com.au. Anyone who applies for candidacy should also please let me know, so that I can keep them informed about details of the exam.
Janet Salisbury, ELS
Members of all state and territory societies of editors have voted in favour of the introduction of accreditation for Australian editors.
A secret ballot on the scheme, developed by the Council of Australian Societies of Editors (CASE) Accreditation Working Group and accepted by CASE, was held in late November and early December 2004.
Some 400 (29 per cent) of the almost 1400 society members eligible to cast a vote did so. The vote to adopt the accreditation proposal was carried nationally by 307 votes to 91 - that is, for every vote against the proposal, there were 3.4 votes in favour of it.
Since the members' vote was overwhelmingly in favour of the proposal, CASE is now seeking the endorsement of the executive committees of all state and territory societies to proceed forthwith towards implementing a national accreditation program. Your Canberra Society committee discussed the report and agreed its endorsement at a meeting on 20 January.
CASE next meets in Melbourne on 12-13 February to discuss this and other matters, and we will keep members informed of progress.
Janet Mackenzie, Liaison Officer,
CASE: www.case-editors.org
We would like to offer a warm welcome to the following new full members of our society:
Yvonne Best, Rebecca Booth, Simon Kelly, Dr Stephanie Reeder, Malcolm Scott, Katie Verco, and Susan Wales,
and to our new associate members:
Karen Robinson and Lucy Potts.
is published by Canberra Society of Editors,
PO Box 3222, Manuka ACT 2603.
© Canberra Society of Editors 2005. ISSN 1039-3358
The next newsletter will appear in March 2005 and the copy deadline for the next issue is 27 February.
The editor welcomes contributions using Word for Windows, by email to ara.nalbandian@defence.gov.au
If by snail mail, then send them on a floppy disk, to Canberra Society of Editors, PO Box 3222, Manuka ACT 2603. If mailing, always provide a printout as well.
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