Our next meeting will be a double-header. First, Janet Salisbury will bring us up to date on the deliberations of the CASE Accreditation Working Group, on which she is our delegate. After that, we'll have another fantastic quiz run by Vice President Kerry MacDermott, so get your team together. We won't go out to dinner after the meeting this month, because members will want to be saving all their pennies for the big 'Christmas in July' feast coming up after the AGM on 30 July.
Hope to see a big turnout!
Next meeting
Convict and soldier words
President's column
Freelance editing
A female-dominated society!
Indexing annual reports
One thing and another
Time to smile
CASE news
However, however
Microsoft Word notes
XML DTDs
The AGM is getting closer
Reminder from the Treasurer
Dates for your diary
Copyright and deadlines
At the May meeting we were treated to a fascinating talk on convict language and the language of World War I soldiers by Dr Amanda Laugesen, a researcher at the Australian National Dictionary Centre (ANDC). Amanda came to the ANDC as an historian without specialist knowledge of the English language. However, she had been aware of the power of language and knew that language was a rich field of study providing great insights into history.
Dr Laugesen spoke first about her work on the language of the convicts in Australia. She explained that language is specific to society at a particular historical time and that it reflects that time. Language gives a soundscape of the period and it shapes and reinforces cultural identity.
Dr Laugesen stated that convict language was the language of bureaucracy and of punishment and that the source material is largely from the literate people in government and bureaucratic circles. Unfortunetely there is not a lot of direct source material because many convicts were illiterate, and even when they did publish material it was generally "sanitised".
The influence of government is evident in such words and phrases as tickets of leave and emancipations, while words such as indulgence and pardon had an almost religious flavour to them. Social distinctions were very important in early Australia and the language of the time reinforced social boundaries and helped keep convicts in their place. Examples included words about different gangs doing varying work; the broad arrow - the monarch's mark; the lash; and re-transportation. Many of the punishment words had their origins in military and naval traditions: the triangle, for example, starting as a construction of three halberds, then in convict times meaning anything to which a convict was tied for flogging.
Free people often had a voyeuristic interest in underworld language but at the same time wanted to stamp out the slang because it was thought to perpetuate crime. They also thought that bad language was a sign of criminality. To the convicts themselves, language was a form of subversion and they developed a language, or cant, referred to as flash. They talked of bolting, absconding and bushranging, and used abusive language as a way to challenge authority. The terms they used for themselves highlighted their differences from the free society: magpie and canary came from the colour of uniforms and cockatoo from working at Cockatoo Island. The word pebble was used for incorrigibles. Amanda particularly liked the transformations that had taken a prisoner that originated in Pentonville Prison to being a pentonvillian ultimately to the play on words pentonvillain. In like vein came the term Van Demonian for a prisoner who had served time on Van Dieman's Land.
Ex-convicts were emancipists, free people were exclusives, and there was a great rhetoric around felons and the birth stain that convicts obviously had.
Another influence on the language of the time came from anti-transportationists who drew on the language of slavery - a powerful language that was part of the international politics of the time and that drew parallels between convict labour and slavery.
As people were freed, the use of slang decreased. Some words took on new meanings, for example while a swag was once a thief's booty, it came to mean a collection of possessions, especially when rolled in a blanket.
And Dr Laugesen took great delight in telling us that the term public servant was once a phrase used for convicts.
Dr Laugesen then turned to her work on military slang.
She talked about working with an unpublished typescript glossary of 900 World War I military slang terms held by the Australian War Memorial. It was not known why the typescript remained unpublished, although it had been speculated that it was intended for Bean's World War I history and that the language was too informal to use. Another possibility was that it was too confronting and there was no publisher or market for it then. Parts of this typescript were published in 1919, though, as part of the book Digger Dialects.
We were then treated to some vocabulary from Australian soldiers of World War I, which helped to develop, define and promote the Australian identity. Words first appearing during World War I were Aussie for the country and an Australian; dinky-di; digger; cobber; and Anzac. Soldiers called women tabs or tabbies; conscientious objectors deep thinkers; and officers brass hats.
Soldiers' humour and verses were in the tradition of the 1890s, and their slang and humour were quite different from the sentimental material from home which they saw as irrelevant to the trenches.
Their slang and humour were very black and it helped deflect the full impact of the experience these men went through. To make death more familiar and acceptable, soldiers talked of a water-filled shell hole with a dead soldier in it as Anzac soup; dog tags as dead meat tickets; and referred to being killed as being smudged and to being dead as up in Annie's room. There were numerous names for guns, and shells had names such as pineapples and flying pigs.
All this material is available on-line, the original material as well as her annotated version. This medium allows linking of entries with annotations; with groups of similar words; and with other web sites giving details of military technology.
Dr Laugesen finished with some comments on modern Australian English. She speculated on the effects of globalisation on purely Australian forms, suggesting that even the youth culture was more internationalised than it had been in the past. Nonetheless she told us that great Australian word dag was still current. She treated us to words she said were purely Australian: dole cruiser for dole bludger; firies for fire fighters; mugachino; Pacific solution; and seachange. Apparently a person that has clothing tags hanging out is a tag dag and country towns often have ute musters when people driving utilities congregate.
There is more on these things at <www.anu.edu.au/ANDC>
Greg Baker and Ted Briggs
An enjoyable and enlightening talk on the lingua francas (in the SOED sense of 'a system of communication providing mutual understanding') of convicts, diggers and other Aussie groups was given at our May meeting by Dr Amanda Laugesen, society member and researcher at the Australian National Dictionary Centre. For more information on Amanda's topic, and specifically to view the Glossary of slang and peculiar terms in use in the AIF she discussed, go to
In this issue of the newsletter, we are at last able to make a general announcement (see page 5) about the competition and award that the committee has been discussing and planning for well over a year. The form that the award might take changed several times during our discussions but, for the reasons outlined in the committee's response to Ann Parkinson's letter in the May issue of the newsletter, we settled in the end on making an award for the best-edited annual report for this, the inaugural year of the competition. The response can be read at <www.editorscanberra.org/comp_letter.htm>. Ann's letter was a timely stimulus to exposition and general discussion of the award.
We discussed the award at the May general meeting, specifically the pros and cons of focusing on annual reports. On a show of hands, those present at the meeting strongly supported the award scheme proposed by the committee, which will see a different class or classes of publication selected for the award each time it is run, should it become a regular event - something we certainly hope for.
This is an ambitious project, not just for the society but for the profession as a whole. We hope that all editors will support it through promotion and participation. Note well that the competition is open to all editors, not just members of the Canberra Society. The sole stipulation is that the document entered should be a 2002-03 annual report published, or to be published, in Canberra. Membership of the judging panel is almost finalised, and will be given on our web site shortly.
July is annual general meeting month. The venue for the AGM, on 30 July, will be University House. A hospitality team headed by Helen Topor is organising a blockbuster 'Christmas in July' dinner to follow the meeting. Sign up early for this not-to-be-missed event.
Moving to linguistic matters, my award for 'tautautology' of the year so far goes to one Markham Robinson who contributed as follows to a A.Word.A.Day group-discussion of 'zombie':
In the world of venture capital, a zombie is an investment that breaks even, but makes no profit, and hence has little prospect of yielding a return on investment.
Got the message?
Recent press advertisements have been providing 'Travel information regarding SARS'. What an unhappy word is 'regarding' here . Why not 'about' or 'on'? And just how did travel information regard SARS?
Look forward to seeing you at the June meeting.
Ed Highley
On Saturday 17 May, I attended a full-day program sponsored and run by the Society of Editors (NSW) in Sydney. It was an enjoyable and informative day, and I have indicated that it would be great if something similar could be run in Canberra.
The four speakers covered some of the most important and difficult aspects of being a freelance editor. In the morning, Kate Robinson and Ruth Green, co-authors of Independent Contracting,* covered first some aspects of business planning from the editor's point of view: assessing the unique quality of your business, identifying goals, projecting income and expenses, managing risks and assessing performance. During this session, we were asked to do a few self-searching tasks that were a great help to focusing on the topic. Later, the emphasis switched to the person and such topics as your suitability for freelance work, working from home, defining skills and services, being clear about what the client wants and keeping yourself in the picture.
The early afternoon was devoted to one of the most troublesome aspects of being a freelance - costing and quoting. The speaker was Pamela Hewitt, who brought us all down to earth by asking us to decide whether our freelancing was to be a living or a hobby, specialist or generalist editing. She moved on from there to working out what costs we need to include in quotes, including those associated with maintaining a home office, be it ever so humble. She then discussed industry 'pages-per-hour' norms for various levels of edit and indexing, and warned us of the traps that can befall us: receiving an atypical sample of the whole job, delayed supply of the manuscript, change of mind or inclusion of new material, and so on. She finished with a set of points that should be included in any quote: itemising multiple tasks, clarifying design information, date for receipt of copy, a clause to cover variations, description of the task in terms of level of edit required and whether or not indexing is included, allocation of time for meetings, postal costs, how payment is to be made and whether invoicing will be at the end of the job or in stages, and the validity period of the quote. I would have liked an opportunity to work through a mock quote in this session, but time was against that, and the information was most valuable anyway.
The afternoon continued with a discussion by Cathy Gray of aspects of project management relevant to the freelance editor - importantly looking at both managing the project and managing your own life as an editor and as a person. As with the other sessions, this was packed with information, and Cathy's handout included printouts of actual documents: a letter of agreement, a master schedule for the whole project (a time line), extracted individual schedules for specific parts of the project, some useful advice on computer file-naming for ease of access. Budgeting, resource management, multi-tasking and contingency allowance were all touched on. On the personal management side, I found her advice to work on difficult tasks when your energy levels are high very sound - commonsense, of course, but we often forget commonsense when things get on top of us.
This was an excellent day, in a very pleasant venue - Jacksons Landing at Pyrmont. The organisation was impeccable; the lunch and other refreshments, tasty and nutritious; cost, very reasonable; and opportunities for networking, great.
The day ended with a panel session where all four speakers answered questions that had been emailed and that were presented from the floor. This was valuable, but I think it was generally agreed that more opportunity for question time after each speaker would have been useful. I would have liked a little more hands-on 'workshopping' in a day that had been advertised as a workshop. Nevertheless, the NSW Society is to be congratulated on gathering such a fine group of speakers to share their knowledge and experience.
* Robinson, Kate; Green, Ruth; Petty, John; Wood, Janet, 2000, Independent Contracting, Pearson Education Australia, Frenchs Forest, Australia
Elizabeth Murphy
At the April general meeting I gave a brief overview of the history of the society from its origins in 1990, listing its presidents: Loma Snooks (1990), Stefanie Pearce (1994), Peter Judge (1996), Clare Booth Steward (1998), Louise Forster (1999), Lee Kirwan (2000) and Ed Highley (2001). Five women, two men. I wondered how representative this was of the society as a whole, and since I have the database it was easy to check the numbers.
Currently we have 181 names on the monthly mailing list for the newsletter, made up of 169 financial members of the society and a dozen others: representatives of editors societies around Australia, the indexers, the National Library's legal deposit copy and a media person (surprisingly, this is the presenter of Arts Today in the ABC Sydney - there is no-one from the Canberra Times or any other local media). Among the financial members, there are 141 Full, 25 Associate and 3 Student members, who include:
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So, in our society women editors really are about twice as numerous as the men: they make up 64 per cent of the Full members or 69 per cent of the members as a whole. While we are playing with numbers, it may be worth adding that we have 18 PhDs among our members, all but one Full members, of whom seven are men and 11 women. We also have two professors, both men. (And, incidentally, among the women members most prefer to be called Ms, but we have 16 Mrs and two Miss.)
Why should anybody want to know all this? I draw no conclusions and in any case the Canberra society is probably not a representative cross-section of the profession as a whole, because in Sydney and Melbourne at least we believe that there is more book editing and proportionately less government work. It would be interesting, nevertheless, to know more about who we are, what we do and what rewards we obtain. And hence how your society can do more to interest and support you.
In the February 2002 issue of our newsletter (on the web - our 2001 and 2002 newsletters are all easily accessible from our home page), Ann Milligan gives a very good overview of the three editors surveys carried out in 2001: the questionnaire to participants at the joint Editors-Indexers conference <www.editorscanberra.org/survey.htm>, a member survey by the NSW society, and a survey of the Canberra society members on attitudes to a number of issues to be discussed by CASE (newsletter August 2001). The NSW survey had 92 responses (30 per cent), which is probably enough to base some conclusions on, although you never know whether the minority who answer surveys are truly representative of the majority who don't. The conference questionnaire drew 49 responses from editors (88 per cent female there!) and 33 from indexers. Our society only managed 23 responses to the CASE questions, and although Ann drew what she could from these meagre data, their significance must be in doubt.
The last Canberra society survey to look at issues such as 'Is your society giving you what you want from it?' and 'How much do you charge for various levels of edit?' was in May 1998, focusing primarily on freelancers. In five years much may have changed. Is it time for a new survey, aimed across the board at all our members? If linked to the renewal form, it should obtain a good response rate. At the very least, we might then have something solid on which to plan our forward program. And, if we follow your suggestions, perhaps we should see more of you turning up to our general meetings. At present we average an attendance of around 30, mostly the same people every time, and out of 169 that's really not very good …
Peter Judge
Australian Society of Indexers, ACT Region Branch workshop on indexing government annual reports conducted by Michael Harrington. National Archives Building, East Block, Parkes, ACT. Saturday 28 June. 1 pm to 4.30 pm. Cost $80 for members of AusSI, Canberra Society of Editors and ALIA, and $110 for non-members.
For further information and registration forms contact Edyth Binkowski at <geoffb@webone.com.au> or phone 6281 2484.
In last month's article, I noted that the lack of a hyphen can create ambiguity. In the clause When Government financed projects in the development areas have been grouped … (Gowers, 1973, p. 184), we are sent off on a false trail by the lack of a hyphen between government and financed. Similarly, in this sentence As soon as the principal finishes the keynote address will be given by Professor Jones, we are sent off on a false trail - this time by the lack of a comma after finishes.
Many people think that ambiguity means 'having two possible meanings' because ambidextrous means being able to use both hands - not so. The prefix ambi- can mean both, around or on both sides, and ambiguous can mean simply 'open to various interpretations - at least two'.
There are several forms of ambiguity (not to be confused with vagueness): the first is lexical, where a word can have more than one meaning in the context, as in Bear left at the zoo gate and She can't bear children, or I took your picture, or The case is closed. To analyse just one of those examples, are we instructed to turn left when we reach the zoo gate, or did someone leave a bear at the zoo gate?
Another type of ambiguity is surface structural - syntactic, but meaning depending on the emphasis placed on different parts of the sentence. This occurs because in writing we lack the ability to transfer spoken emphasis to paper. We end up with ambiguous sentences such as I asked how old Barney was. This could mean either that I asked after his health or that I wanted to know what his age was.
A third type is deep structural - syntactic, but meaning depending on the reader's knowledge of what was in the writer's mind. An example: Visiting friends can be a nuisance. Phrases such as china egg container are structurally ambiguous, as are sentences such as The police shot the rioters with guns. In these examples, there is no lexical ambiguity, and emphasis is not a factor.
As it is the editor's job to see that the author's intention is manifested clearly, watching for ambiguity of any kind is part of the job.
Pronouns can cause problems. In the sentence She gave her mother her hat, we don't know whose hat was given to mother. And whether to use 'that' or 'which' is a decision that has to be made with a view to making one meaning clear. Compare the following:
The police investigations that could cause embarrassment will not be publicised.The police investigations which could cause embarrassment will not be publicised.
The police investigations, which could cause embarrassment, will not be publicised.
The first sentence makes it clear that the investigations not to be publicised are those that could cause embarrassment. The third sentence makes it clear that none of the investigations will be publicised. But the second sentence is ambiguous. Can you see why? (see Style Manual, 6th edn, p. 75)
Ambiguity of a sort also occurs when we write sentences with dangling modifiers - modifiers that have no word to which they are clearly related. These can cause mirth, but should be weeded out of the documents we edit:
Waving frantically, the taxi sped right past the old lady.While turning the page, my coffee spilt on my book.
Looking for vagueness is also part of the editor's job. If we place an ad in the paper that states Nurse required for local hospital, we shouldn't be surprised if we get a mixture of midwifery nurses, theatre nurses, intensive-care nurses and so on applying! The ad is vague. Which of these phrases is least vague: The chairman's adviser, the chairman's most trusted adviser, the chairman's most trusted adviser on Middle East negotiations, the chairman's most trusted adviser on foreign policy? Yes, the extra words make the third phrase more precise.
A final question for you: this series is about 'One thing and another' - another what?
Elizabeth Murphy
References
Bach, Kent (n.d.), 'Ambiguity', in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Website: <online.sfsu.edu/~kbach/ambguity.html> (accessed 8.5.03).
Mission: Critical - San Jose State University's Critical Thinking Web Page (n.d.), Website: <www.sjsu.edu/depts/itl/graphics/main.html> (accessed 8.5.03).
Murphy E M, 1989, Effective Writing: plain English at work, Pitman, Melbourne (Chapter 8: 'Some common writing errors').
Style manual for authors, editors and printers (6th edn), 2002, revised by Snooks & Co, Wiley, Australia (Chapter 5: 'Grammar').
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - Ambiguity (n.d.), Website: <www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambituity> (accessed 8.5.03).
There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in a hamburger; neither apple nor pine in a pineapple.
English muffins weren't invented in England, nor French fries in France.
Sweetmeats are candies, while sweetbreads - which aren't sweet - are meat.
We take English for granted. If we explore its paradoxes, however, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.
And why is it that bakers bake, but grocers don't groce? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth beeth? One goose, two geese. So one moose, two meese? One index, two indices? If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?
In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? We ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell? How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?
You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which an alarm goes off by going on.
English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race (which, of course, isn't a race at all).
That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.
And finally, how about when you want to shut down your computer you have to hit 'START'.
Members might recall reading some time ago that the Council of Australian Societies of Editors (CASE) had written to the Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee, with draft guidelines designed to overcome potential ethical problems in the editing of postgraduate theses. The council of Deans and Directors of Graduate Studies (DDoGS) has at last responded.
In summary, DDoGs is uneasy about the first of CASE's three guidelines - that students get their supervisor's written permission for editing to take place and supply their editor with a copy of the permission. DDoGs believe that CASE's other two proposals - relating to acknowledgment of an editor's contribution and the possibility of specialist advice above and beyond editing - should be included in individual universities' policies.
The matter will go forward, because DDoGS is establishing a working party to develop guidelines to help universities formulate policies on thesis editing. It is to be chaired by Dr Deirdre Barron, Director of Graduate Studies at Swinburne's Graduate Research School. CASE has been invited to nominate an editor to join the working party.
We will bring you further news on this as it comes to hand.
A meeting of CASE delegates will be held in Brisbane in association with the national conference on 17-20 July. The agenda for the meeting is developing formidable proportions and its completion might entail the combustion of oleaginous materials well past crepuscular hours.
This edifying article by James Hansen appeared in the April 2003 issue of Book Worm, the Western Australian Society of Editors newsletter, and is reproduced with the author's permission.
We editors need to work harder to save however, one of our most useful words, from death through overwork and a pattern of serious misuse which appeared in the late twentieth century and continues in the twenty-first.
Traditionally, however has operated in two ways: firstly, as an adverb - the equivalent of nevertheless, yet, on the other hand, all the same, by whatever means, no matter how - which modifies the whole sentence or clause in which it stands, and is separated by a comma or commas from the rest of the sentence or clause.
However, we will look into the matter.The weather, however, was too bad to allow play to resume.
Secondly, however has functioned as an emphatic form of how, in which role it is not separated from the word it modifies.
However strong you are, you still need rest.He is always willing to help, however tired he is.
Note that the powerful suffix -ever becomes a separate emphasising adverb in questions:
How did they ever find out?Who ever was that?
The archaic form of this suffix, -soever, was added to the words who, which, what, when and how to give who(so)ever, which(so)ever, what(so)ever, etc. In this form they are sometimes used as simple pronouns (= who, which, what), as in 'Who(so)ever will, may come' and 'Whatever is, is right'. But all the compounds of -ever are most commonly used in a concessive sense: that is, they equate to though or although.
Whatever you do, don't take risks. (= Though you do everything else ...)Whoever goes, I shall not be affected. (= Though everybody or anybody go ...)
However strong you are, you should be careful. (= Although you are remarkably strong ...)
It is this sense of concession that leads many of today's writers to misuse however as a fully-fledged conjunction. They use it (monotonously) to add afterthoughts to a main clause or a complete preceding sentence. The result is frequently a run-on sentence.
Nicholas Hudson, writing in 1992 in Modern Australian Usage, describes a run-on sentence as a sentence with two main verbs and no conjunction to link them. Consider:
The marathon runner struggled on, but he was unable to reach the tape.
This is correct because we have two simple sentences joined by a conjunction; nevertheless, if we replace but with however the result will be a run-on sentence:
The marathon runner struggled on, however he was unable to reach the tape.
This does not sound right because however is not a true conjunction at all, but an adverb, possibly a shortened form of the adverbial clause of concession 'however hard he tried' (= although he tried hard). This confusion in the writer's mind may produce (yet another) run-on sentence:
The marathon runner struggled on, however hard he tried, he was unable to reach the tape.
The best solution is to recast the sentence, and comma off the however:
The marathon runner struggled on. However, although he tried hard, he was unable to reach the tape.
Here is a recent, local example:
This Union does not donate to any political party, however, it does campaign to express a point of view on the policies of all parties at the time of an election.
Here the use of however as a half-hearted conjunction waters down both the strong opening sentence and the important qualification that follows. Recommended solutions are:
1. Substitute a full stop for the comma after party, and begin however with a capital letter, or perhaps replace However with Nevertheless (for variety's sake).2. Replace however (and the following comma) with although or but.
3. At the very least, substitute a semicolon for the comma after party.
Run-on sentences with however are not acceptable usage, and have been criticised as inelegant and illiterate. Yet they are very common, often a sign of hurried, pressured writing. Their concessional aspects make them, along with the passive voice, a favourite of bureaucrats and others who work in rigid hierarchies. The passive, where the subject is not the 'doer' of the action, means that blame for a failure is more difficult to target, while a plethora of howevers means there can be many qualifications to statements. Nevertheless, bureaucracies have been around for a long time, and the big problem of however and the run-on sentence is recent. Could a possible reason be that we now have several generations of writers who (through no fault of their own) missed being taught a formal grammar which imbued its students with a sense of structure?
While run-on sentences are a recent problem with however, there are two others of long-standing.
H.W. Fowler writing in 1926 and Stephen Murray-Smith in 1988 remind readers that but should not be used with however, as in:
But the snow, however, continued to fall.
Here either but or however is unnecessary.
Note also that while but has to be at the beginning of the words it introduces, however (being an adverb) can appear almost anywhere. However attaches itself to the word immediately before it, and puts stress on it. For example:
The winning team ran a lap of honour. The losing team, however, straggled to the dressing room.I wanted the article delivered on Monday, by messenger. It arrived on Tuesday, however, by post.
When however has no word before it, as at the beginning of a sentence, it applies to the whole sentence and indicates no particular stress pattern. Nicholas Hudson in Modern Australian Usage is particularly helpful on the position of however. Along with H.W. Fowler, he warns that carelessness with this word can lead to quite contrary effects. William Strunk Jnr in The Elements of Style makes the excellent suggestion that we avoid starting a sentence with however when it means nevertheless. For example:
The train was much delayed. However, we at last arrived.
The train was much delayed. At last, however, we arrived.
In preparing this article, I have referred to and drawn examples from works by H.W. Fowler, Nicholas Hudson, Stephen Murray-Smith, H.A. Treble & G.H. Vallins, William Strunk Jnr & E.B. White, and Dudley Burton. I greatly admire their scholarship and common sense. However, (!) I am aware that this article may, in other respects, be judged by some readers to display neither of these two virtues. Should that be so, the fault is entirely mine.
Long-time member of the society, Clive Huggan, recently ran some workshops on long documents in Microsoft Word that were publicised in our November newsletter. Some of our members who attended found that the workshops were very appropriate for on-screen editors who already had a good grasp of Word and wanted to configure the software for greater efficiency.
For the past two years, Clive has been compiling personal notes on aspects of Word with which he has had difficulty. He has been refining his notes largely from experts' comments on the Microsoft-sponsored newsgroups, <microsoft.public.mac.office.word> and <microsoft.public.word.formatting.longdocs> - arguably the best available sources of in-depth information on Word appropriate to on-screen editors.
The notes are titled 'Bend Word to your will', reflecting Clive's view that Word first needs to be 'dumbed down' by getting rid of unwanted 'bells and whistles', then smartened up by being configured to suit one's needs.
Some 115 pages long, 'Bend Word to your will' is now available for downloading from the Microsoft MVP website <http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/WordMac/Bend/BendWord.htm>.
Although focused on Word 2001 for the Mac, the notes are suitable - with 'a few mental adjustments' - for users of Word 98 and Word X on the Mac and for users of Word 97 and onwards on Windows machines. Included in the notes is an outline of the main differences between the PC and Mac interfaces (essentially the software is the same, with bells and whistles added over time and with slight variations according to platform).
Most PC users will opt to download via the WinZip version of the Word document; most Mac users, the Stuffit version. Both versions provide the 'Bend Word to your will' document and a template. A PDF file is also downloadable - it's best used for printing only, because 'Bend Word to Your Will' is intended for use as an on-screen Word document. That way you can take advantage of features such as hyperlinks and the 'Find' command, and you can see how the electronic features described in the document work in practice.
Clive intends to update the notes every few months, though he expects future changes not to be radical.
Your webmaster asked Clive whether he could provide a little more detail to facilitate access to these information sources. His answer, taken from his 'Bend Word...' notes, can be found by clicking here.
Greg Baker continues this series in the June Newsletter. See it by clicking here.
Our 'Christmas in July' Annual General Meeting and dinner in the Common Room, University House, on Wednesday 30 July is almost here.
Enjoy mulled wine in front of an open fire from 6.00 pm. The AGM will start at 6.30 pm. Dinner will consist of a hot carvery, vegetables, salads and plum pudding. Tea and coffee is included in the cost of $39.50 per person.
If you have special dietary requirements, please let me know by Friday 11 July.
Remember to bring a small, inexpensive, wrapped gift to swap - no more than $2.50, please. Make it fun and imaginative!
Please make your payment to the Treasurer by the same date.
To book for the AGM, and for the dinner, contact Helen Topor on email
<helen.topor@cit.act.edu.au>, or phone 6207 3414 (work) or 6292 8016 (home).
Annual membership subscriptions for 2003-04 are due on 1 July. All members are requested to forward their annual subscription to reach the Treasurer before 31 July.
New annual rates are payable as follows: Full member: $60 Associate: $45 Student: $30
A renewal form has been sent to each member. Please update your contact details on that form if there are any changes, and return to the Treasurer.
Should a member and their spouse or partner wish to attend the AGM dinner in July, please include $39.50 per person with the renewal payment. Last payment date for the dinner is c.o.b. 11 July.
Treasurer
25 June - Next meeting
4 July - July newsletter copy deadline
18&endash;20 - July National editors' conference
30 July - Annual General Meeting
The Canberra Editor is published by
Canberra Society of Editors, PO Box 3222, Manuka ACT 2603.
© Canberra Society of Editors 2002. ISSN 1039-3358
The deadline for the next regular issue is 4 July.
Mail contributions on a 3.5 inch disk, using Word for Windows (essential) or email (preferable), to:
Canberra Society of Editors,
PO Box 3222, Manuka ACT 2603
ara.nalbandian@defence.gov.au
If mailing, always provide a printout as well.
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