The meeting will be held in the Friends Lounge, NLA, at 6.00 for 6.30 pm.
Gabby will describe her experiences of working within two indigenous publishing houses (owned and run by indigenous people), and the cross-cultural implications that arise. The main context of the talk will be describing the need for formal protocols (as processes and guidelines) as a way of dealing with many of the issues that arise out of cross-cultural publishing.
Gabby feels that 'white fella' editors are made aware of the implications of working with indigenous authors. They then need to honestly evaluate their own personal politics, sentiments and work practices before they decide take on a job with an indigenous publisher or author.
The performance is on Wednesday, 28 July for one night only.
|
Prologue |
6.00 p.m |
Register and pay for dinner at the door (cash preferred) |
|
Act 1 |
6.00 p.m. |
Canapes and reception drinks |
|
Act 2 |
6.30 p.m. |
|
|
Act 3 |
7.30 p.m. |
Fine dining $30 Turkish banquet. |
|
Act 4 |
Movie star quiz |
|
|
Act 5 |
Presentation of prizes |
In keeping with the ambience, wear something theatrical, or dress to impress.
Please contact me on <helen.topor@cit.act.edu.au> or 6259 3360 (h) about dietary requirements and acceptances by Wednesday, 21 July.
Helen Topor
- The next meeting
- AGM among the stars
- Revised accreditation scheme
- President's column
- Style Council in July
- A little of what you fancy
- canberraeditors@yahoogroups.com
- Your committee needs YOU!
- Review: Communicating in style
- SfEP conference announcement
- National policy on editing theses
- Vale Michael Welbourn
- New members
- Copyright and deadline
The Accreditation Working Group (AWG) of CASE met in Melbourne on the weekend of 15-16 May for further discussions on the proposed scheme for the accreditation of editors in Australia.
The group reviewed the extensive feedback received from the membership of the state and territory societies on the draft accreditation proposal circulated in mid-2003 (and discussed at the Canberra Society of Editors meeting last October). After careful assessment of all the feedback, the AWG worked to develop a revised proposal that took account of members' concerns.
The updated proposal contains the same elements as the previous one but in a significantly revised form. The main difference is that, while information on qualifications, experience, professional development and professional participation will still be collected from applicants, these elements will carry less weight than in the previous proposal. Rather - in response to the many comments received that all candidates should have to provide a portfolio of their editing work - the revised proposal suggests that all candidates should submit a variety of evidence, including examples of editing, to show that their work conforms with the Australian Standards of Editing Practice.
As soon as the draft revised proposal is complete, I will ensure that it is posted on the website and that a copy is circulated to all members for review. Hopefully,* after further discussion with members, the AWG will be able to finalise its recommendations for CASE towards the end of the year. CASE will then decide whether the accreditation scheme recommended by the AWG should be put to the membership nationwide for a vote.
Janet Salisbury
* Note
Yes, yes, I know this use of 'hopefully' will have me struck
off from any possible future accreditation, but 'I love it' (as
Maca's lady friend would say).
The May meeting was a dinner at the ZenYai restaurant in Civic. Eleven members enjoyed a convivial meal and it was a good opportunity for some new chums to meet other members in a relaxed setting and find out more about our activities. At the end of the dinner we adjourned to the Macchiato café for more conversation, with coffee.
To catch the publishing deadline, I am writing this before the culmination of many months of work, our major training activity for the year, Ed-Ex. The reports from the day will be up on our website and a full report will appear in our next newsletter. Your committee has not been idle, however, and there has been quite a lot of CASE action. The accreditation and publicity subcommittees of that body have reports elsewhere in this month's newsletter.
We are now also gearing up for our Annual General Meeting in July. It will be at Vivaldi's restaurant at the ANU - for those of you who are planning to attend the dinner, the menu looks great! More details on that later … Come along and hear what we have achieved in the past year and the plans for the next twelve months.
Another important part of the proceedings will be the election of committee members. We have a few positions to fill, both for the committee and on a number of subcommittees. This is your opportunity to take a more active part in the life of the society. I urge you to consider nominating. If you have a particular interest or you have any questions, contact any of the committee members, who will be happy to explain what we do.
Before the AGM we have our June meeting, and another interesting topic to explore. Gabby Lhuede will tell us about the development of Indigenous publishing in Canberra and around the country. Join us for that at the National Library Friends' Lounge.
And make sure you fill in your nomination form.
Claudia Marchesi
Style Council is on soon. Featuring the theme 'Public and professional discourse', it will be held in Sydney, 9-11 July 2004, at the State Library of New South Wales. It is the thirteenth in a regular series concerned with professional uses of Australian English to be conducted by the Macquarie Dictionary Research Centre and Style Council Centre. The conference highlights contemporary themes raised by Don Watson's Death sentence: the decay of public language (2003), bringing together editors, professional communicators, teachers and anyone else interested in the common quest for clarity.
Early bird registration for the conference is $250 (+GST), with full- and half-day rates available on request. Registration forms and program details are available at <http://www.shlrc.mq.edu.au/style/styleconf04.htm>. For further enquiries, contact Adam Smith on email:
<Adam.Smith@ling.mq.edu.au> or at (02) 9850 8783.
Elizabeth Murphy
A reminder that all members of the Canberra Society of Editors are invited to join this Canberra Editors (CSE) discussion group, set up a couple of years ago exclusively for CSE members to facilitate on-line discussions and mutual assistance on editing matters.
There are currently only 44 members, so it really is rather an exclusive club. Perhaps too exclusive. But when news of jobs or training opportunities reach the society, it is likely that this group hears first. There tends to be an assumption that these 44 are the keen ones. This might be quite unfair to the other 141 members - but then, why aren't they interested in coming into the group too?
If you would like to join, send a blank e-mail (no need to include a subject line) to:
<canberraeditors-subscribe@yahoogroups.com>.
This will be referred by Yahoo to me for approval, which is automatic for CSE members in good standing but ensures that it remains our own group. There are regular approaches from other individuals trying to get in - they are always rebuffed.
You aren't trapped for life. If you don't like it, you can always leave. To unsubscribe, you just send a blank e-mail to:
<canberraeditors-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com>.
Peter Judge
'Not another style manual!' you might be thinking to yourself in dismay. But think again! This is no ordinary style guide. Yateendra talks about readability on p. 53 of the manual - and that is the very quality that characterises his book. Its reader-friendly, chatty style makes it easy to read, especially with the occasional injection of humour. For instance, on p. 51, when discussing contractions - which of course do not normally end with a full stop - Yateendra brings up the point that, even to this, there is, as in all things linguistic, an exception: where a contraction happens to be a separate word by itself, as in 'no' and no. (for the Italian 'numero'). He advocates the use of the full stop at the end of such a contraction in order to distinguish it from the existing word, and goes on to quote Carey (1958) in Mind the stop: a brief guide to punctuation, 'a coy commander is different from a coy. [for company] commander'. I should, however, point out that no such distinction is made in the Australian Department of Defence. Are we sacrificing clarity here in Australia for the sake of saving a few keystrokes?
The author gives each of his thirteen chapters delightful, catchy headings: 'Heads, you win; text, I lose', 'Alphabet soup' and 'Setting the table' immediately caught my interest.
I found the 'At a glance' introductions to each chapter particularly helpful.
The uncomplicated layout of this guide also makes it a delight to read. The separation of 'Quotes' and 'Examples' (which consistently appear on each left-hand page) from the text (which is always on the right-hand page) makes for uncluttered, clear text. The latter is no prosaic prose, however. It is full of useful hints that one doesn't encounter in other style manuals in quite the same way. For example, in the chapter on lists entitled 'Make a list', Yateendra offers the following hint for run-on lists:
Watch out for an item marker out on a limb, that is a marker falling at the end of a line and thus separated from the item itself, which is carried over to the next line. One way to prevent this is to use a 'non-breaking space' (Alt + 0160 in Windows) between the closing parenthesis of the marker and the first letter of the item. (p. 35)
Although with a necessarily Indian bias, the annexes do nevertheless provide valuable information. A case in point is the laying out of telephone numbers in Appendix D. There are, of course, other things that we do differently here, as in the way we cite page numbers. Yateendra suggests not shortening page numbers to the least number of digits: 147-156 not 147-56, but then perhaps we're merely lazy!
Ara Nalbandian
The focus of this year's conference is the impact of new technology on the publishing industry and how this is affecting the jobs we do. Learn about the challenges our profession is facing, and be inspired.
Details of the fees for attending the conference are on the booking form, which can be downloaded from our website at <www.sfep.org.uk>, where there is further information about the conference and the SfEP. There are discounts available for individual members and associates who book early or who are attending the conference for the first time.
For further information about the conference and the full program, please visit our website or contact Jane Ward, email: <conference@sfep.org.uk>.
Editors have long been concerned about the ethics of editing student work that is to be submitted for academic assessment. Editorial intervention may misrepresent the student's academic ability or proficiency in English, and it may unfairly advantage students who have the means to pay for editorial services. In the absence of guidelines, committees of the state and territory editors' societies have often found themselves in a difficult position when asked to adjudicate in particular instances.
I am delighted to announce that we now have an official national policy on the editing of theses (click to see it on our website). It was developed by the Council of Australian Societies of Editors (CASE) in collaboration with the Deans and Directors of Graduate Studies (DDOGS), representing the universities of Australia.
As the CASE representative, I have been negotiating with Professor Elaine Martin, head of the Postgraduate Research Unit of Victoria University, representing DDOGS, to draw up a policy acceptable to all interests. We had two meetings in Melbourne and a considerable email correspondence. Professor Martin reported that the academics were impressed with Australian Standards for Editing Practice and felt that it provided a sound basis for the policy.
Having gone through various drafts, the final policy was ratified by both DDOGS and CASE in May 2004. This is the culmination of three years of effort by CASE, which first approached the Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee about this matter in April 2001.
Having been agreed at a national level by representative bodies, the policy has considerable standing. Although it is written specifically for higher degree theses, it can be taken as guidance for the editing of student work at any level. The policy sets out the roles of academic supervisors and editors, and stipulates requirements for acknowledging editorial services. It provides editors with a clear statement of their responsibilities in undertaking this type of work, and it should enable them to resist any pressure for inappropriate intervention.
Janet Mackenzie
Born in Adelaide, Michael completed his schooling there. Having been a keen scout and junior naturalist, it was a natural progression for him to take up studies at the School of Forestry in Canberra, from where he graduated with a Diploma of Forestry. However, Michael was a man of action who thrived on challenges; he wanted to make changes and see them enacted. Trees grew too slowly for him. In the late 1960s, after completing a Masters of Science in Ecology at the University of Adelaide, he moved out of the forests and into the thickets of government administration. The dynamics of organisations and the function of systems became his fascination. There he put his incisive legalistic and analytical abilities to good use. His experience in both government and the public sector encompassed work in many areas: science, technology, environment and education.
Michael later added a Masters of Business Administration to his qualifications. Tapping into his work experience, he developed a number of postgraduate university courses and contributed teaching modules to others. A member of the Open Distance Learning Association of Australia, he was an aficionado with online teaching. Students appreciated the thoroughness of his feedback and his ability to support and encourage them in cyberspace studies.
In fact, Michael had twenty-five years of experience in teaching and was the author of two textbooks, Understanding Teams and Supervising People. Over the past five years he enjoyed teaching for the Universities of Canberra and South Australia at a number of their campuses in South Asia.
The enthusiasm with which he taught was a reflection of that same general demeanour in his approach to life.
Michael was a masterful wordsmith and precise in his use of language. In his work he wrote and edited widely. In social situations puns peppered his conversation, and an apt limerick could appear without warning.
He had an eclectic taste in music, although his passion for jazz may have slightly eclipsed his love of the classics. In the last months of his life Michael soaked up the cultural life of the capital city, attending lunch-time lectures at the universities, concerts at the ANU School of Music, theatre and exhibitions. This was a chance for friends and family to indulge themselves in the pleasure of his company.
In all aspects of his life Michael was a man who exuded energy and who energised others.
Michael was about to embark on a PhD in Canberra in 2004. He was unable to realise this ambition, however, when a secondary melanoma unexpectedly manifested itself in late 2003. He died peacefully at home in the company of his wife, younger son and sister on 21 May.
Sue Salthouse
In Shakespeare's time, mattresses were secured on bed frames by ropes. When you pulled on the ropes the mattress tightened, making the bed firmer to sleep on. Hence the phrase 'goodnight, sleep tight'.
The Canberra Society of Editors welcomes Gabrielle Lhuede, David Kingwell, Michelle Green, Fiona McKinnon and Katie Norman as new associate members.
Ed Highley's competition, announced in the May issue of this newsletter, showed a photograph of a shop sign, offering baskets, pot's, urns, giftware, clothes. Ed asked why POT'S got the apostrophic nod and not the other items. Prize will be a bottle of red wine.
This is the only response:
Dear Ed and Ara,The reason that pots gets the apostrophic nod is obvious.
As you are well aware apostrophes are used not only to indicate possession but also to indicate a contraction (for clarification of this complex issue please refer to The Usborne Book of Better English, p. 22).
Suspecting this was the case, I contacted Gypsies to confirm that as well as baskets, urns, etc, the establishment also sells POTATOES!!!!!! In the interest of conserving space on their billboard they have correctly and appropriately used the apostrophe to indicate the omitted letters.
As I am desperate for the $20 bottle of red, I can offer any number of other suggestions should this one fail to please.
Jeanette Swayn (a mere associate member)
Editor's note: The awarding of the prize awaits Ed Highley's return from overseas.
The Canberra Editor is published by
Canberra Society of Editors, PO Box 3222,
Manuka ACT 2603. © Canberra Society of Editors 2004. ISSN
1039-3358
The Canberra Editor is your newsletter and the editor is keen for copy from any and all members. Remember, the more material you provide, the more this newsletter reflects the views and needs of the members.
Email contributions, using Word for Windows (essential), to: ara.nalbandian@defence.gov.au
If by snail mail, then send them on a 3.5 inch disk, to Canberra Society of Editors, PO Box 3222, Manuka ACT 2603. If mailing, always provide a printout as well.
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