At the society's next meeting we will be joined by Frank Craddock, an insurance agent who has been in the business since 1957. Frank will talk to us about public liability insurance and professional indemnity insurance, and he will also touch on other insurance aspects pertinent to small and home-based businesses. Then he hopes there will be plenty of general discussion and questions.
Frank has been in Canberra since 1964, almost continuously. He is a Past President and Life Member of the Insurance Institute of the ACT. He is a member of the Insurance Advisers Association of Australia and a Certified Professional Insurance Adviser of that Association.
As usual, the evening will start with networking and finger food at 6 pm before the meeting at 6.30 pm at the Friends' Lounge at the National Library. See you there!
The President's column
Welcoming the 6th edition of the Style manual
Doing it in style
New members
Training news
Effective project management in publishing - a report...
Membership renewals
Dates for your diary
Copyright and deadlines
A grand night was had by all on 29 May at the National Press Club when, along with Canberra members of the Australian Graphic Design Association and the Australian Society of Indexers, we celebrated the birth of the 6th edition of the Style manual for authors, editors and printers. Our thanks to the graphic designers for organising the affair.
Loma Snooks and her team - the team that fertilised, carried and was midwife to the new baby - were there to tell us about the trials and tribulations of the two-year gestation (longer than an elephant's, but with much more to show) and the birth, and to answer tricky afterbirth questions.
I think everyone who has had the opportunity to inspect the new baby agrees that she* is quite a looker who will inevitably inveigle all with her, albeit minimalist, charms. But some customer re-education will be required. Only a week or so ago in editing a document I experimented with some of the new bible's recommendations concerning punctuation. The document duly came back from the client with the whole host of semicolons reinstated.
Why does the new Style manual look like it does, and so different from its predecessor? Those of us who had thought about this question were pleased to have designer David Whitbread provide the definitive answer at our Press Club assembly. The sixth edition looks like it does because it was designed to be a book online as well as a book in print, and now that we know that, the splendid 'information architecture' in the document becomes more obvious (maybe all reference books should be like this). We have the book in print, but alas it seems that 'due to lack of resources' the online version will never appear.
It's June again, the end of the financial year is almost upon us, so it's time to renew membership in the society. The good news is that membership in the society is up, and steadily increasing. Presumably that means that more and more editors do want to join a society that has us as members. The bad news is that we are barely paying our way. We have a nest egg to see us through bad times, or to fund essential high-cost activities such as, for example, a contribution to the development of a national accreditation scheme, but our 'current account' will need to be healthier if we wish to continue (and expand) our training program and projects such as the freelance register. So, to cut a long story short, for the first time for quite some years we really do need to increase our membership fees. The increases proposed for the various categories of membership are large in percentage terms, but low in absolute dollar terms (an extra $20 p.a. for full membership). Even after such an increase our annual subscriptions would be, I believe, still pitifully low for the things we do and compared with those for similar associations.
For the reasons outlined in my column last month, we have taken the first steps towards incorporation of the society. We hope we can tie things up so as to be able to present members with an amended constitution at the annual general meeting in September. Our current constitution appears to have served the society well, so we will be so seeking to keep changes to the minimum required to satisfy the regulations for incorporation of associations. Our new vice president Kerry MacDermott is masterminding these things.
We have a couple of training courses in the pipeline: the topics are proofreading and indexing for editors. Check the notices in the newsletter and at our web site for details of these, and sign up if you feel that you need to learn new skills or refresh some old ones. And tell your colleagues who are not yet members of the society about these low-cost training opportunities. If and when we become an accredited profession, courses such as these will likely be a component of mandatory continuing education.
I see that Richard Flanagan has won both the Miles Franklin award and the Commonwealth Writers Prize for his novel Gould's Book of Fish. And well deserved too, but oh how the book could have been brought closer to perfection by according it editing resources equivalent to those expended on design. Then again, if you can win the gongs without solid editing, who cares? Think about that, depressing though it might be, and how we can convince publishers that the things we do really do add value.
Hope to see you at our next meeting.
Ed Highley
* I decided to make the Style manual an honorary female, to compensate for the recent decree that ships are no longer to be considered of the feminine gender. We will never again hear at launch the moving exhortation 'May God bless this ship and all who sail in her', an exhortation that no doubt brought some comfort to those who go down to the sea in ships. One presumes that from now on it will be '... all who sail in it'. Not quite the same, is it?
Editors, indexers and designers met for dinner at the National Press Club on 29 May, joining Loma Snooks and David Whitbread and their team in celebrating the latest edition of the Style manual. Both Loma and David illustrated their talks with slides. We are grateful to Loma for her speech notes, two-thirds of which are reproduced here. See also page 6 for impressions on the evening.
I'm delighted you are here tonight to share with us in baptising, patting, stroking and otherwise welcoming into the world the 6th edition of the Style manual for authors, editors and printers.
This title should probably have read 'Style manual for authors, editors, printers, designers, illustrators, indexers, communication managers, publication managers, information architects, web managers and other electronic publishing professionals'. (The last lot haven't been around quite long enough to have developed titles we all recognise, but I've no doubt they will have by the time the 7th edition is produced.) We certainly had all these people in mind when we were writing this edition. We even tried including them all on the cover at one stage.
To fit them all in, we ghosted this additional list of publishing people in a ladder down the left side of the cover. But I'm not sure what designers, in particular, would have felt about seeing their title faded into the starry background. Most designers I know think their names well and truly deserve to be up there in the sun, not just twinkles in the milky way! And if you look at their contribution to this sixth edition, they are certainly leading lights.
In the end, we were persuaded that if we changed the title to that extent, it would be the first edition of a new book, not the 6th edition of this bible of publishing. So we left the title as it is, even though it doesn't cover all the people it is actually intended for.
It's been a great privilege to have been involved in revising this manual - which has such a great tradition and which has meant so much to all of us in our everyday work over so many years.
The 5th edition was published in 1994 and there have certainly been a lot of changes in the publishing world since then. This is why you'll notice a great many changes in this latest edition. Perhaps the most fundamental is the way it was produced. It was done as an outsourced contract.
As most of you would know, AGPS - the Australian Government Publishing Service - was the author of previous manuals. Much of the work for earlier editions was done in-house, although they contracted specialist authors to draft various chapters.
With the closure of AGPS, responsibility for the manual was transferred to AusInfo in the Department of Finance and Administration. In line with government policy on outsourcing, they invited tenders from external contractors, and our team was fortunate enough to be selected.
There were ten of us on the team, and I'm delighted that they could all be here tonight. I'd like to briefly introduce them now, but first I'd like to warmly acknowledge Julie Hourigan, who was AusInfo's Project Manager for the major part of the manual's development. Julie had a background at AGPS, and a great commitment to maintaining the quality and relevance of the manual. Without Julie's constant support, the manual would not be this book that we can all be so proud of.
Others I'd like to thank from AusInfo are Stephen Donkersley, who took over from Julie at AusInfo for the last few months to see the manual through the publishing process with Wylie's. And Gina Newlyn, who stayed with the manual at AusInfo from start to finish, and was always the essence of calm commitment in sometimes turbulent waters. Then there were Eric Webb, Alan Kuslap and Anne Villiers, who all played important roles in the project at various critical points.
Back to the team First of all, there's my co-presenter, David Whitbread, whom most of you will know already. He was the design director for the manual. He also wrote the seven chapters on design, illustration and print production, as well as making sizeable contributions to other chapters.
Next, in terms of the number of chapters they were involved in, is Pam Peters, Associate Professor of Linguistics at Macquarie University, and Head of the Graduate Program in Editing and Publishing there. Pam drafted six chapters: on grammar, effective language, spelling, capitals, shortened forms and numbers.
Chris Pirie, a very experienced editor who was also involved on the 4th edition, drafted four chapters. These were on punctuation, textual contrast, citations and parts of a document. She was also responsible for much of the copy editing and proofreading.
Then there's Michael Harrington. As well as being an indexer of renown, he has a great deal of experience in the regulations relating to government publishing. As you indexers will probably know, Michael was responsible for the chapter on indexing, as well as for Part 4 which is all about copyright, privacy, defamation, international numbering systems and access requirements. And, of course, he indexed the manual.
Vickie Richardson taught us all about electronic publishing. She probably felt this was a thankless task at times, but we certainly learnt a great deal from her, some of which is included in her Chapter 24, On-screen production. But there are bits of Vickie right through the manual. She kept saying 'but you are being print-centric again!'.
Graham O'Loghlin has an exalted background in management consultancy, and wrote much of the final chapter on monitoring, testing and evaluating - things that should be done at the end of a job a lot more often than they are.
All the designers here will know Julie Hamilton, who is superb at producing intelligent, sophisticated designs and page layouts. The manual testifies to her skills in this regard.
We were very fortunate to have two other members of the team as advisers. Shirley Purchase reviewed quite a few of the chapters in Part 2, and was an excellent sounding board on tricky editing questions. As well as being a highly experienced editor, Shirley wrote the much loved Little book of style and the Australian writers' dictionary.
And then there's Lindsay Mackerras. Many of you will know Lindsay from her days at AGPS, where she was at various times responsible for the Editorial Unit, the Style manual and general Standards and Style. Lindsay helped put our team together, and came up with ideas for the approach we should take to the revision. She was also a constant source of support and wise counsel throughout the job.
And, finally, my role. I was the Team Leader, and was therefore heavily involved in the development of all the chapters. I also wrote four new chapters: on planning, on the publishing team, and on structuring documents for the audience, as well as the chapter on editing and proofreading. I also did the final full revision and the substantive editing.
Apart from the way it has been produced, many other things also changed between the 5th and 6th editions. In fact, the 6th edition looks and reads very differently. Why should this be so, when we all loved its previous incarnations? Well, for a start, the government policy environment is very different from what it was a few years ago. And so is the publishing industry. Both these factors had a major impact on our choice of content and target audience.
The closure of AGPS signalled the government's intention to outsource non-core services such as publishing. As a result, far fewer staff who understood the ins and outs of publishing were retained within departments. There are also many freelancers who need a broader view of the full publishing process than they may have gained through previous work, in order to undertake these outsourced projects effectively.
With access to the Internet and desktop publishing, many more people are able to publish than in the past. As you all know, anything from a brochure or newsletter to a scientific report can be produced pretty readily, without necessarily going through the quality checks that used to be applied as a matter of course by publishing professionals. Nevertheless, the Commonwealth still needs to maintain certain standards of quality in the information it supplies to the community.
An important part of our brief for revising the manual was to support the need for proper publishing expertise to continue to be applied to government publications, and to explain what was involved in the full publishing process, from planning through to production. Our primary readership was agreed to be any government officer who might be asked to manage a publication, and anyone likely to be part of the team needed to produce it.
With this focus on government needs, this edition also concentrates more on producing information documents than has been the case in the last couple of editions of the manual. But in focusing on Commonwealth needs, we don't believe we've excluded any of the traditional users of the manual. Outsourcing of course has become a common approach in corporate and commercial publishing as well. So we feel the new manual will remain as relevant as it has ever been - and perhaps more so.
In this outsourcing environment, we felt there was a need to describe the general processes that go into making a publication: the planning, scheduling and budgeting which have such a great impact on the quality of the final product. And we also describe the range of skills that can contribute to a publishing project, as well as the industry practices in each of these publishing areas. Indeed, the whole manual is built around this process-oriented approach.
There's also a greater emphasis on readers' needs. This is important for all publications but absolutely crucial for information documents. So in the early chapters we talk about assessing the audience, structuring documents to meet their interests and needs, and using suitably inclusive and effective language. We also look at access needs in terms of delivery: should the publication be presented in print, in electronic format, or both, and what can be done to help readers with a disability?
Also of course there's the updating task common to any new edition, although the rate of change in publishing seems to be escalating all the time. So we look at changing usage in language, punctuation, capitalisation. What is likely to be acceptable to audiences, and also to clients? Often, these are two quite different things.
We look at the impact of electronic publishing. This is something of a moving target. We've therefore concentrated on the broader principles that we feel are less subject to change, and have left the detailed information on software and platform-specific information to the Commonwealth's existing Electronic Guidelines and to other online government statements that may be developed in the future.
The approach we've taken is that the principles of good writing apply equally to print and screen. However, we recognise that readers absorb information differently when using these different media, and this has to be taken into account, particularly when structuring information. And then there are the navigation and design issues that apply particularly to electronic documents, and the production information everyone on any publication team needs to understand. In fact, electronic publishing has some impact on what we've got to say in just about every chapter in the manual. The changes in printing technology and in desktop publishing also called for a new approach to be taken in the design and production sections.
To produce this edition, first of all we sat down and reviewed all the comments on the 5th edition that AusInfo had received over the years. And then we reviewed the 5th edition in detail ourselves. We then agreed with AusInfo on the new contents outline and what topics should be covered in each chapter.
We've divided the manual into five separate parts:
• The first is all about planning.
• The second is about language: writing, editing and indexing.
• Part 3 is all about design.
• Part 4 talks about what NOT to do in terms of legal requirements, and also how to make publications as easily accessible as possible to as many people as possible.
• Part 5 talks about production for both screen and print, and how to learn to do it even better next time.
The team represents a broad range of views (from reasonably conservative to liberal) on just about every subject, so there were vigorous debates at team meetings. Pam's expertise on usage trends in language also proved helpful in deciding how far we might go in some of our recommendations.
Authors were allocated chapters in which they had particular expertise. Each of them went away and produced the first draft of their chapters to the detailed outline we'd agreed. Two other relevant team members and I each submitted a separate written review of each of these draft chapters. We then held a separate review meeting for each chapter, which some other team members and AusInfo also attended. At this meeting, we agreed on the changes that needed to be made (always an interesting exercise). The author then revised the chapter to meet the agreed guidelines.
The resulting second drafts were compiled and sent out to the external review panel established by the client. This panel included experts in Plain English (many of you will know of Robert Eagleson), corporate editing, government publications, electronic publishing, and printing.
While this panel and the client were reviewing the full draft document, I went through it carefully. This was the first time I'd seen it as a whole, so there was quite a lot to be done to make it consistent in approach, recommendations and style. David also reviewed it from a design point of view, and Vickie read it all from the perspective of electronic publishing, to ensure our advice was as 'format neutral' as possible.
We then amalgamated all the recommended changes from everyone on one copy, and sent each chapter back to its author or another available team member for further revision, and to consult with the designers about illustrations. I then revised the next version before submitting it to the client for content signoff. After that, it went through the full design, illustration, editing, page formatting, proofreading, indexing and production phases.
This process, from initial research to handover to the publisher took two years. Given that there are 26 chapters in the manual, the average time to complete a chapter was therefore 3.5 weeks.
I think this rate is pretty impressive. It includes the time taken for all the research, eight different reviews and subsequent revisions, all the substantive and copy editing and proofreading, the design and illustrations, the page formatting and then the final proofreading and indexing. Some people seem surprised that it should take two years. I'm amazed we could do it in that time - 3.5 weeks per chapter! However, we all needed a good lie down at the end!
Loma Snooks
Loma's talk concluded with an outline of the chapters on text management, but unfortunately there is not space to print that here so they will be provided in next month's newsletter.
The National Press Club was a stylish venue for the joint dinner meeting for Canberra's editors, indexers and graphic designers. We started with a crowded 'pay and drink' session where I wondered how valid it was to identify who were designers from editors and indexers by their 'look', the small sample I met conformed to my preconceptions! We then passed into the dining room past earnest staff from the Uni Co-op Bookshop offering discounted copies of useful tomes, including the new Style manual. I hope they did brisk business.
The dining room was spacious and the round tables conducive to a lot of discussion. I lucked onto a table with many of the manual's team which was a special treat. The food was good, the atmosphere airy and pleasantly warm and the noise level unobtrusive. This was a good backdrop for the engaging presentations by Loma and David.
CIT personnel provided the 'high tech' component, a Powerpoint slide display, and it worked flawlessly. This is something worth noting when, unfortunately, computer setups often fail "on the day".
There was a shift of speakers between Loma, David and other team members which helped to weave and break up the presentations to enable so much dense material to be brought in a lively and engaging way. Elsewhere, Loma speaks for herself. Some other comments by team members and comments and questions from the audience follow.
Pam Peters pointed out that the proposals regarding gender-free use of 'they, them, their' reflected the database usages. She also indicated that it's not possible to pitch material to everybody's comfort level simultaneously. Given the 'creative frontier of language', if we 'never allowed a noun to turn into a verb then language would be duller for it'. The use of lower case 'm' for minister was only set after 'vigorous discussions with the client'. There were many drafts of the evaluation section until the team said 'now we understand'.
One audience member felt the manual was 'on a loser' by recommending angle brackets for web references. Others disagreed.
Another queried the relationship between the Style manual and the Design manual. The latter was done privately by David Whitbread, was commissioned earlier and intended to cover matters not in the Style manual. This includes items not used in government publications, such as signage, and specialty production processes. It was to provide the 'whys and the wheres' for those who knew how to use desk top publishing programs such as Quark Express. An indexer pointed out that the Style manual is for those who need to dabble in design and the Design manual is for designers.
Graham O'Loghlin, who wrote the chapter on evaluation, commented on challenges posed by changes in the client team and shifting policy environments. He considered it a credit to Loma as team leader that the end production was of such quality.
Loma's final comment was that 'all told it was a wonderful team, we all learnt a lot'. She hoped that those who delve into the manual will learn something too.
I found the discussion to be a clear, thorough and intriguing introduction to the sixth edition of the Style manual. It was also a good night out. Congratulations to the societies for organising it in such style.
Alexa McLaughlin
In the next newsletter, I will provide a detailed review of the Style manual, indicating how it works for an editor using it, and, I hope, identifying the ways in which the guidelines have changed from the previous edition.
We would like to complement this with comments from other members on their experiences, describing their experiences using the manual. Please send comments to Ann Milligan or myself by the end of June (see panel on page 2 for contact details).
Alexa McLaughlin
We welcome Matthew Stevens as a new full member of the society. Matthew has been freelancing since 1995, and before then was with the Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney.
We also welcome a new student member, Clare Tayler-Henley, and three new associate members: Tessa Wooldridge, Jennifer Leslie and Leanne Dempsey.
A one-day course, Monday 5 August 2002, 46 Lhotsky St, Charnwood (the 'Dream Centre')
Indexer extraordinaire, Max McMaster, is available for one day only to teach Canberra editors the basics of book indexing.
The course will start with instruction on the initial steps to build an index, move on through selecting and arranging terms, cross-referencing and filing, and finish with the all-essential editing task. Apparently even indexes need editing - and there is a 'good' way to do it.
As a special for commissioning editors, there will also be a session on assessing a finished index.
Those who attended the three-hour workshop at editors' and indexers' conference last year will find the full-day session useful for reinforcing that basic level of knowledge. Others will find this a useful and comprehensive introduction that equips you with the basic blocks of indexing.
Please RSVP (with payment) by 10 July, using the form below.
|
9.30 |
Introduction to course |
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11.00 |
Morning tea |
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11.20 |
Arrangement of terms - subheadings and style |
|
1.00 |
Lunch |
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2.00 |
Style of indexes (Haldane; The Murray and New
Scientist) |
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4.00 |
Afternoon tea |
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4.15 |
Assessing and evaluating indexes (texts provided) |
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5.15 |
Close |
Please print this form and mail it with your cheque
I wish to attend this course:
Name
Phone
Address
Fee enclosed: member of Canberra Society of Editors $130 ; nonmember $170
Make cheques payable to Canberra Society of Editors.
Mail this form and your cheque to: Cathy Nicoll (Training), Canberra Society of Editors, PO Box 3222, Manuka ACT 2603.
It was with anticipation that the three of us from CSIRO Land and Water headed out on a wet Monday 13 May morning to join six other members of the Society for a training course in Effective Project Management in Publishing. Cathy Nicoll had organised a beaut room for us at the old Charnwood high school. For the next four hours Karen Deighton-Smith shared her knowledge and hard-earned experience in project management and we left wanting more.
The many aspects of project management Karen touched upon included the skills you require (knowledge, mindset, management, people skills, stress management and managing up), project planning, budgeting and quotes, manuscript assessment, teamwork, author management and trouble-shooting.
Karen drew upon her experiences as both a project manager and more recently as an author, to generously share with us all that she had learned along the way. Her explanations were logical and to the point. She gave us invaluable, practical advice that was like gold sifted from the sands of her publishing experience.
We had all fallen into managing aspects of publishing without having any formal overview of the whole process and it was reassuring to have it spelt out. Karen also handed out a couple of examples of publishing and production schedules and we all appreciated the reminder to be more disciplined and use such useful planning tools more effectively. We were individually inspired by Karen's presentation to believe that if you are organised and have a passion for publishing you could also achieve in the field.
It was great half-day training and our only regret is that we didn't have a full day to learn from Karen and each other. Many thanks to Cathy Nicoll and Claudia Marchesi for their excellent arrangements and catering.
Suzette Searle, Leanne Dempsey and Jenny Leslie
Subscriptions are due on 1 July 2002. The Treasurer, Pete Martensz, will be available at the June society meeting to receive subscriptions, as exact money or cheque.
26 June The society's June meeting
1 July Society membership renewals due
5 August Introduction to book indexing course
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
1 July.
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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