The next meeting of the Society will be on 28 March at the Friends' Lounge of the National Library at 6 p.m., with socialising and finger food until 6.30 p.m.
Our guest speaker is Dr Tom Frame, author of 12 books, mainly about aspects of Australian history, and a recently-joined member of this Society. He will describe his experiences of the published author's tortuous path through matters of style, content, reproduction rights and promotional interviews.
Dr Frame has been sued twice for defamation. This is startling when you realise he is currently the Anglican Rector of Bungendore, and his subject area is military and church history.
His varied background includes 14 years as a seaman officer in the RAN, and completion of a PhD in history before resignation from the Navy. Since training for the Anglican Christian ministry, he has held several rural posts, and enjoyed a sabbatical at the University of Kent at Canterbury. Now he lectures half-time in Public Theology at St Mark's National Theological Centre at Barton. Being an author, he will bring some of his books to the March meeting and sign them on the spot, for purchasers.
The last after-meeting dinner of this Society (at least for now), will be at Ardeche, on the corner of City Walk and Ainslie Avenue in Civic (the loop of Ainslie Avenue, opposite the theatre). A two-course meal costs $20.50. Park in Ainslie Avenue along the loop.
Instead of the normal April meeting, Lee Kirwan invites all members of our Society and members of other editors' societies who attend the conference to an informal lunch and discussion on Sunday 22 April, between 12.45 p.m. and 2.30 p.m., either at the Friends' Lounge at the National Library or beside the lake (weather permitting). Lunch will be provided. Transport is being organised from the Lakeside.
If accepting, please contact Lee by 17 April, by phone 6262 1551 or email.
Next meeting
The April meeting
The President's column
Editing the Donald Friend Diaries
'Partnerships in Knowledge' Conference
Diploma of editing and publishing
Perfection
What do you know about indexing?
New members
Email and copyright law
Email group
News and notes
Have you heard ...?
Dates for your diary
Deadlines
On Monday 26 February Pamela Hewitt, Louise Forster and I sang for our very pleasant supper at the Annual General Meeting of the Canberra branch of the Australian Society of Indexers.
Pamela spoke about putting the program together for the 'Partnerships in Knowledge' conference, Louise recalled the difficulties of tracking down (successfully) high profile speakers and I talked about my plans-in-progress to promote the event to indexers and, particularly, editors.
Of course I was only stating the obvious when I outlined how drastically the editing profession had changed in the past 15 years. With the decline of opportunities to work in-house has come the potential for professional isolation. It is rare now to be able to consult informally with a colleague, view the progress of designers as they work on other projects or sit in on a marketing meeting to see how things are done. So the need to network by joining an editing society is essential and the opportunity to attend a conference, such as the one we are arranging, will provide truly valuable training at a very modest price.
By now, I'm sure you are aware that this is the first conference of its kind in Australia (potential sponsors take note!) and the Canberra Society of Editors is very proud of it. A visit to our website will now give you an idea of the program and which sessions will interest you most. The only thing wrong with parallel sessions is that it is impossible to attend them all at once but we've managed to get around that by repeating some of the sessions.
As well as scheduling some of the weightier issues such as ethics, standards and where we are going nationally the committee has arranged plenty of very practical sessions and, on the Monday, excellent workshops. Any person practising, or hoping to practise, as an editor would be mad to miss this wonderful opportunity. I'm sure that the interstate visitors who have registered would agree with that!
As I write, counting of votes for the National Editing Standards continues, with an overwhelming trend emerging for their acceptance. I hope we will be in a position to launch them at the April conference.
Tom Frame, fellow editor, prolific author and renaissance man will speak to the Society at our next meeting on 28 March. His topic is 'Intellectual Integrity versus Commercial Imperative: An Author Looks at Book Production and Marketing' and he plans to talk about his experience with four publishers, being sued for defamation (twice), disagreements over style and content, disputes over reproduction of public domain materials and the mindless round of media interviews. Note, not one unfavourable word about editors (perhaps because he is one)! Tom will join us afterwards at Ardeche for what will be the last of our post-meeting dinner engagements. In future we will present our speakers with a gift.
Lee Kirwan
On 28 February 2001, Dr Anna Gray spoke to members and friends of the Society about her current task, editing the first volume (the diaries up to 1943) of the 44 or so diaries that Donald Friend donated to the National Library of Australia. The edited diaries are soon to be published in four volumes, and in consequence Dr Gray has embargoed reports of her writings and speeches until after the first volume has been released in October 2001.
All we can say is that Dr Gray's talk was well attended and that the audience found her talk interesting, even fascinating, and asked a number of questions. In Dr Gray's opinion, Donald Friend was more than a mere keeper of diaries-he was a 'writer' as well. His diaries are evidence of that skill, and they also contain a rich collection of sketches and pen and wash drawings. They should make excellent and stimulating reading when published.
Three days of conference activities. One day of workshops - nine are offered in aspects of editing and indexing - and they are open to non-participants of the conference. Book now! Find more details by clicking on the main program , workshops and some background material.
Conference
Members of editors or indexers societies: $295 ($115 per day)
Non-members: $360 ($140 per day)
Workshops
Conference participants: $35 (2 hour), $50 (4 hour), $75 (computer
workshops)
Non-participants: $75 (2 hour), $120 (4 hour).
For brochures, registration forms and information, contact: Louise Forster (02) 6232 7511 (w), www.wordsworth.com.au; Shirley Campbell, shirley.campbell@alianet.alia.org.au; Lynn Farkas, lfarkas@pcug.org.au. Registrants receive a tax receipt. The conference ABN is 25 818 564 078.
As a member of the first class to attempt the Diploma of Editing and Publishing at Southbank Institute of TAFE's Morningside campus, I feel that I am in a good position to comment on it.
With the completion of the course only a few weeks away, it seems like a good time to look back at this first run through. Has it got what students need? Is this industry-approved, industry-delivered course going to get people jobs? Let's see...
The thirty-six modules of this diploma add up to 1320 hours, or two full years of training. It starts with the big-picture subjects like 'Overview of the Editing and Publishing Industry' and 'Overview of the Processes of Editing and Publishing'. These both provided excellent starting points. We covered the history of the industry in just enough depth to whet the appetite, plus types of publishing, the stages of the publishing process, the roles and responsibilities of editors, threats and opportunities facing the industry, and occupational health and safety.
Many of the other, smaller introductory modules were also delivered in Semester One. We learnt about contexts of communication, researching and editing for accuracy of content, word processing on both platforms (Mac and IBM), typography, graphic communication and client interaction. All very important, but not what we were keen to hear. Teach us the symbols and then let us loose with our red pens!
Semester Two rewarded us for our perseverance with the 'housekeeping' subjects of the previous semester by introducing the real editing stuff: the practices of copyediting and proofreading, grammar and spelling. All of these modules need to be lengthened by at least twenty hours. Ninety hours to learn about editing copy; twenty to get a grip on proofreading-are they serious? Why neglect the basics? They should all be longer! This is where students get their grounding in the fundamentals of editing, and any extra time could only be beneficial. The timed proofreading tests were great though (excellent preparation for job interviews).
We also learnt about different parts of the industry-government, general trade publishers, educational publishers-as well as getting a good grounding in design principles and applications, desktop publishing, and printing industry awareness (that is, printer lingo).
The menu for Semesters Three and Four included such juicy modules as job-seeking skills, industry placement, law and ethics, financial and scheduling management, emerging technologies, and editing for annual reports, magazines, and non-text material; as well as more copy-editing and proofreading-we're getting the hang of these by now.
We still have a few final modules to wrap up, but, with the graduation ceremony already booked, I think it's safe to talk about the course as a whole.
Basically, this is a really good course. It was compiled by industry professionals who wanted students to have a good leg-up into a career in editing and publishing. Of the seventeen people who started the course in February 1999, only six will graduate next month. And those six people will have a head start in the great job hunt, so that's all right. Several of the original full time students already have jobs in the industry and intend to complete their diplomas part time. For those of us who stayed on to finish the course in the two years, their success has been encouraging.
There is room for improvement. The course document needs to be reviewed and freshened up because too much emphasis has been placed on training freelance editors; an unrealistic employment assumption for trainee editors. There should also be work for editing on-screen. Hard copy is all well and good but this computer thing looks like it's here to stay, so... Those points aside, however, it has all been extremely useful.
So would I recommend it? Yes. If you want a career in editing and publishing, the Diploma of Editing and Publishing is a very good place to start.
Kim McNamara
(This article is reprinted from Offpress, newsletter of the Society of Editors (Queensland) Inc., Nov.-Dec. 2000, with permission. Morningside is a suburb of Brisbane.)
Perfection, n. An imaginary state or quality distinguished from the actual by an element known as excellence. (Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary. Dover, 1958.)
'I want 450 words on perfection in editing', said the editor. But why from me? But then again, why not - I sadly confess to my imperfections in every respect, editorial and otherwise, but that doesn't stop me having opinions. And I firmly believe that, regardless of the Devil's misgivings, actual perfection is the standard our clients expect and pay us for, even if excellence is the best we can aspire to.
Is it possible to define standards of 'excellence' (or even 'competence') in editing, other than by the qualitative judgment of our peers or our clients? The new Australian Standards for Editing Practice doesn't really help. The Preface tells us that the standards cover 'the knowledge and skills expected of experienced editors'. Each of the five sections begins, 'Editing requires knowledge of the following matters' and together the sections present a formidable list, updating and extending Loma Snooks's Commissioning Checklist (of which a slightly simplified version is on our web site). In this perspective the Standards seems, to this reader, more like a syllabus than a national standards document.
'Standards' of anything, whether of editorial excellence or the fat content of milk, surely require some numerical basis: 'no more than one spelling error to slip through per 1000 words' (ditto grammatical or author's errors), 'revised punctuation at least 95% correct', '98% adherence to the client's preferred style', or the like. Could this approach ever work?
What, after all, is the purpose of editing? Why do we do it? The Standards says: 'to reconcile the needs of the author, the reader and the publishing client'. The AGPS Style Manual, 5th edn 1994, chapter 2, gives a daunting list of what the editor should do, 'to ensure that the book is as readable as possible'. Nick Hudson's Modern Australian Usage has a half-dozen pages on 'editor' and says the same thing in different words: 'the editor's role is to satisfy the reader'. Does this mean that editors should edit with a target reader in their sights, and hope that by aiming straight they also satisfy the author and the publisher?
How do we achieve these high standards? The unpopular answer is by spending more time with the text. A single reading may never be enough. Haste makes (or leaves) errors. Old-time journalists said, 'Always read the big letters three times' (and in today's Canberra Times, as I write this on 22 February, a front page banner headline reads 'Disabilty services chief in tears'). Also, it is axiomatic that you can NOT edit something you have written yourself - make sure another pair of eyes looks critically at what you have done.
Enough of these musings - what do you think? Do you have practical ways of measuring, or drawing closer to, editorial perfection? We'd like to hear from you!
Peter Judge
Pamela Hewitt asked some basic questions about indexers, and Garry Cousins, President of the Australian Society of Indexers, answered them.
(1) Do indexers tend to have similar employment and/or educational backgrounds?
Indexers come from a variety of backgrounds, although in Australia many have backgrounds in librarianship and, to a lesser extent, editing. The same is true in the United Kingdom, but indexers in the United States seem, on anecdotal evidence, to be a little more diverse. Quite a few freelancers combine indexing and editing, and some combine librarianship and indexing. And some people come to indexing with a particular subject speciality, and, after acquiring indexing skills, work, for the most part, within their speciality.
(2) What is the difference between a back-of-book indexer and a database indexer?
Book indexers usually index discrete items, that is, single volumes, and compile their indexes from the body text of a book, using the vocabulary of the book as their guide for the vocabulary of the index. The choice of other terms for the index, for example synonyms and cross-references, is usually left to the indexer's discretion. Database indexers, on the other hand, are usually indexing a variety of materials, for example, a variety of journals in a particular subject area, and usually use a thesaurus as their guide to the vocabulary of the index. Database indexers, therefore, often have no discretion in their choice of terms. Database indexers are also often required to write an abstract of the material they are indexing.
(3) How does one qualify to be an indexer?
There are no formal qualifications for indexing in Australia. However, the Australian Society of Indexers runs courses in indexing, and also administers a registration process, in which established indexers can submit an index for assessment by the Society's Board of Assessors. Applicants who pass are entitled to call themselves registered indexers. The Society only recommends registered indexers to third parties such as publishers.
(4) Are most indexers freelance or in-house?
There is no precise information available with which to answer this question, but, with the exception of some law indexers, most indexers seem to be working freelance rather than in-house. Some indexers are librarians who do some indexing in the course of their library work; not all indexers are full-time indexers.
(5) What is AusSI (the Australian Society of Indexers)?
The Australian Society of Indexers (AusSI) is the professional society for indexers in Australia. It has approximately 200 members, with branches in NSW, Victoria and the ACT; the national executive is rotated and is presently in Sydney. The aims of the Society are:
1. to improve the quality of indexing in Australia;
2. to promote the training, continuing professional development, status and interest of indexers in Australia;
3. to act as an advisory body on indexing to which authors, editors, publishers and others may apply for guidance;
4. to provide opportunities for those interested in and connected with indexing to meet and exchange information, ideas and experience relating to all aspects of indexing;
5. to establish and maintain relationships between the Society and other bodies with related interests;
6. to publish information in accord with the foregoing objectives.
AusSI administers a registration process for indexers, maintains a list of indexers available to take on commissions (Indexers Available), publishes a monthly newsletter, maintains a website, administers an annual indexing prize, and organises conferences for members. State branches also organise general meetings and workshops for members and other interested persons.
This month the Society welcomes Sandra Green, Yvonne Sheard and Murray Hollis as new associate members.
This is a news release, dated 4 March 2001, from the Commonwealth Attorney-General's Department web site, contributed by Ann Parkinson and reproduced with Departmental permission.
Contrary to alarmist media reports, sharing e-mail is not banned by law.
Amendments to the Copyright Act that came into effect today do not outlaw the practice of forwarding personal e-mails to other people. That would be ridiculous.
The Copyright Amendment (Digital Agenda) Act updates copyright law to ensure it provides the same protections in an electronic environment as exist in a hard copy environment. For example, musicians whose music is distributed online without their permission will be able to take action to stop it, in the same way they can if pirate CDs are sold over the counter.
Forwarding a personal e-mail is unlikely to breach copyright laws. A court would need to find that the contents of the e-mail were an 'original literary work'. For example, if the e-mail was simply a joke that everyone had been re-hashing for years, it is doubtful it would have the necessary originality to be protected by copyright. Similarly, a casual exchange of personal information or office gossip would probably not be original enough to have copyright in it.
The Digital Agenda Act brings copyright law into the electronic age. It is an important reform that will further protect the rights of musicians, artists, writers, film makers and other creators of original works. It will also continue to allow users, especially libraries and educational institutions, reasonable access to copyright material through new communications technologies. It will not impose hefty penalties on everyday users of personal e-mail.
Does the Society know your email address? If so, you will have heard that we launched a new email discussion group last month, in response to Maureen Wright's suggestion in the February newsletter, and it is now well and truly off the ground with new subscribers joining daily. If you want to take part, we must have your email address. Just send a message to Peter.Judge@alianet.alia.org.au with 'Subscribe to Group' in the subject line.
Having your email address is also an advantage when we want to contact members in a hurry. We already have addresses for 93 of our members, a little more than half. But if you didn't receive an email last month about the February meeting, then yours is one of the addresses we do not have. Even if you don't want to join the group, please send Peter an email so that we can add you to the Society's contact list.
A reminder that Style Council this year is being held from 27 April (evening only) to 29 April at the State Library of New South Wales, Sydney. Registration now costs $302.50 (incl. GST).
Topics include: English worldwide (keynote speech), International English, Regional Englishes on the Pacific rim, Local and niche varieties of English (The language of sport, Examination English, Australian styles for newspapers and magazines), and Local to global in print and electronic media (Styles for online broadcasting, Editing internet documents, Electronic books, Editing print for overseas markets).
For a registration form, phone (02) 9850 8753 or fax (02) 9850 9199 or use the link on our website.
(1) www.gohtm.com/
This site, www.gohtm.com/, says that BCL's Gohtm.com is a free service that provides instant document conversion into HTML. Both PC and Mac platforms are supported. Gohtm.com will take your document, and generate an accurate HTML representation of it, complete with the images (JPEG) and the hyperlinks.
Currently, Gohtm.com supports these source-document file formats: PDF (Portable Document Format); RTF (Rich Text Format); TXT (Simple Text Format); DOC (MSWord(r) Format); XLS (MSExcel(r) Format); PPT (MSPowerPoint(r) Format).
Cathy Edmonds, editor of the Society of Editors (Victoria) newsletter, recommends the site at www.bartleby.com/index. It presents books of reference, verse, fiction and non-fiction. For example, gain access to Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, Gray's Anatomy, and Strunk's [sic] Elements of Style. Very handy for checking terms, as Cathy says.
Members of the Society of Freelance Editors and Proofreaders (SFEP) in the UK have emphatically approved a proposal to restructure their Society along more professional lines. Three classes of membership will be introduced: new entrants to the profession; members with proven professional competence; and members whose skills are backed by extensive experience.
The SFEP's own accreditation tests, currently in preparation, will support the new membership structure by introducing vocational qualifications in copyediting and proofreading.
The SFEP was founded in 1988 to foster high standards of editing and proofreading and to uphold the professional status of editors and proofreaders. It has about 1400 members, mostly in the UK, and a website at www.sfep.org.uk
Do you ever look at our web site, www.editors.dynamite.com.au, and particularly at the Notice Board, which may sometimes carry up-to-the-minute news of interest to you?
Are you a freelance editor and a full member of the society? Is your name among those on the 'Freelance' page? If not, why not? People do get jobs from that page, as I am happy to report from personal experience. And if you have your own web site, you can add links from the society site to your own. If you are on the society's Freelance page, have you put your ABN into your entry? It may be important in getting your next government job.
If you don't look at the web site regularly, is it because information you need and looked for once, long ago, isn't on it? If so, let the web minder know. After all, it's meant to be YOUR site, and should reflect what YOU want. Drop me an email ... my link is on the site.
Peter Judge
Progress on the register has been slower than expected. The deadline for entries is extended to 17 April. See the February newsletter.
For new or potential members of the ACT Writers Centre, the monthly morning teas are a useful way of meeting others and hearing an interesting speaker. The next morning tea is on 11 April at 11.30 a.m. in the ACT Writers Centre Meeting Room. The speaker will be Geoff Maloney, a speculative fiction writer. Cost: $6 for tea/coffee and cake, plus the talk. Bookings on 6262 9191.
Would you like a copy of a basic book on book publishing? The Society has some copies of Introduction to Book Publishing to give away. It is a small 56-page book produced by the Australian Book Publishers Association Ltd, in 1995 or 1996. Just send a self-addressed C5 envelope (230 mm x 165 mm) with stamps to the value of $0.98 to Ann Parkinson, Secretary, Canberra Society of Editors, PO Box 3222, Manuka ACT 2603, or pick up a copy at the next meeting. You'll have to be quick, though, as there aren't many copies left.
The ACT Writers Centre and the ACT Public Library present a series of Writing Groups for Young People in Years 7-10. Sessions will be on Mondays, 4.00-5.30 p.m., once a month for six sessions starting 26 March (but not in school holidays), at the Balcony Room, Woden Library. Cost: $20 for members of the ACT Writers Centre for the six sessions, or $25 for non-members. Bookings essential. Places are limited. Call 6262 9191.
Bosses of a publishing firm are trying to work out why no one noticed that one of their employees had been sitting dead at his desk for FIVE DAYS before anyone asked if he was feeling okay.
George Turklebaum, 51, who had been employed as a proofreader at a New York firm for 30 years, had a heart attack in the open-plan office he shared with 23 other workers. He quietly passed away on Monday, but nobody noticed until Saturday morning when an office cleaner asked why he was still working during the weekend.
His boss Elliot Wachiaski said 'George was always the first guy in each morning and the last to leave at night, so no one found it unusual that he was in the same position all that time and didn't say anything. He was always absorbed in his work and kept much to himself.'
A post mortem examination revealed that he had been dead for five days after suffering a coronary. Ironically, George was proofreading manuscripts of medical textbooks when he died.
... You may want to give your co-workers a nudge occasionally.
Janet Salisbury and Ed Highley both contributed this article originally from the Birmingham Sunday Mercury (7th Jan 2001).
28 March: Society's March meeting
20-23 April: Partnerships in Knowledge Conference
22 April: Society's April meeting
27-29 April: Style Council
The deadline for the next regular issue is
31 March 2001.
Mail contributions on a 3.5 inch disk, using Word for Windows
(essential) or email 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.
up to Contents