The next meeting will be a catered tour of Pirion Printing at 47 Kembla Street, Fyshwick. This will include a tour of Pirion's Print on Demand facilities. Be sure NOT to go to Pirion's Gladstone Street premises. Kembla Street is the place to be.
The meeting will open with formal business as usual, which will be conducted in Pirion's boardroom. Nibbles and drinks will be offered, and then members will be guided through Pirion's plant.
Numbers are restricted as 20 is the maximum Pirion can accommodate for the tour, while the boardroom can fit only 11. Please be early - as close to 6 p.m. as possible. Parking will not be a problem.
On this occasion, the Society will NOT be organising a dinner after the meeting. However, members may choose to arrange their own get-together.
Contents
Next meeting
From the President
Design guidelines
Training news … Ed-Ex
Editing embargo
Conference announcement and call for papers
A little of what you fancy …
Editors are 'on the map' at Yellow Pages'
Advance notice - April meeting
Members survey 2003
Well, we've started up again for the year and our first meeting was well attended. It was great to see quite a few new members coming along for the drinks, nibbles and the discussion on future directions for the society. Our vice-Pres Kerry brings you the results of the members' survey elsewhere in the newsletter. These formed the basis for the lively exchanges at the General Meeting. Thank you to Elizabeth Murphy for stepping in as Catering Manager at short notice and to the helpers on the night. All the best to Lucy Tylman - hope you are now completely recovered, and we'll see you at the next meeting (not just for the comestibles).
We have had many interesting suggestions for meetings, speakers, activities, and so on, although, I must say, the actual number of respondents to the survey was very disappointing. Just because the survey is over doesn't mean that you've missed out: you can still send in your suggestions and opinions. You can even make suggestions on improving the response rates for future surveys! I'll be glad to raise any of your ideas with the committee or at the general meetings, so come on and put your two cents' worth in (or 'put in your two cents' worth' . . .).
One of the other things that you will see in this issue is the notice of Ed-Ex - our fabulous day-long mini-conference and information day. It will be in June; block out your diary and be prepared for a great day in an environment that will be both relaxing and stimulating, and where you will be able to immerse yourself in topics that are at the core of our profession.
On a less jovial topic, our valiant Treasurer, Louise Oliver, has had reluctantly to cut back on her commitments, including her work for the society, and she'll not be able to continue in her role full-time. At the February general meeting, Lee-Ling Sim offered assistance, so between Louise and Lee-Ling, the Treasurer's work will be covered at least for the next couple of months. If there is anyone out there with a desire to contribute to the society in a practical and not too time-consuming way, your committee would love to hear from you. If you want to find out more about being Treasurer, please contact Louise.
See you at the next meeting.
Claudia Marchesi
As you probably know, the Australian Government decided in June 2003 that common branding would apply to all Australian government departments and agencies. To facilitate this move away from individual branding, the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet issued Design Guidelines to all departments and agencies. Tucked away at the back of this document, under 'Other issues' is this, rather crucial, information:
Reference to 'Australian Government'
All references to 'Commonwealth' or 'Federal' Government should now be to 'Australian Government' in all cases and on all products.
Departmental names
When making reference to itself in the text of a document, if previous reference would have been to 'the Commonwealth Department of XYZ', it should now be 'the Australian Government Department of XYZ'.
Use of the term 'Commonwealth'
The 'Commonwealth of Australia' is the legal entity established by the Constitution. It is sometimes referred to simply as 'the Commonwealth'. Where the term 'Commonwealth Government' is used, it will normally be appropriate to replace that term with 'Australian Government'. However, in implementing the new branding requirements, care will need to be taken not to replace references to the 'Commonwealth of Australia' or 'the Commonwealth', where that term is used to describe the entity established by the Constitution or in a geographic sense, with references to the Australian Government.
Press advertising
Departmental designs should, preferably, appear at the top of any non-campaign advertisement. For campaign advertising, branding will be considered in the context of creative materials and will be agreed by the Ministerial Committee on Government Communications (MCGC). Authorisations on advertising materials should refer to the 'Australian Government'. Campaign advertising by non-FMA Act agencies (that is, those not requiring MCGC approval) should still apply the branding requirements.
Internet
The new branding applies to departmental and agency web pages, and text references should reflect the 'Australian Government' and 'the Australian Government Department of XYZ'. The National Office of Information Economy (NOIE) issues guidelines on the appearance and construction of departmental and agency web pages.
Inquiries
Inquiries about the application of the design should be directed to:
Government Communications Unit
Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet
3-5 National Circuit
BARTON ACT 2600
Telephone: (02) 6271 5829
Facsimile: (02) 6271 5850
Email: gcu@pmc.gov.au
Website: www.pmc.gov.au
More like a mini-conference than a seminar, Ed_Ex promises a smorgasbord of items prepared especially for the needs of editors. It will give everyone the opportunity to broaden their skill base and identify new training needs. The major areas to be covered will be Computers, Management, Money and Editing. More details are in the program below.
The fee includes an excellent lunch, wine tasting, and even a bus ride there and back.
A registration form will be on the website when details are finalised.
Cost: Members $150 ($140 for payment by 20 April) Non-members $250
Venue: Madew Wines (Lake George)
Date: 6 June 2004, 9.00 a.m. to 5.00 p.m.
Contact: <cathy.nicoll@atrax.net.au>
1. Computers - the technology of editing
Systems set-up and maintenance, On-screen editing, Backup and archiving procedures,
2. Management - tips and traps
Project management, Manage your designer, Editing in a large organisation, Manage the printer
3. Money - how to avoid going broke
Costing and quoting, Government tenders, Financial planning, The legal stuff, Building a business
4. Editing - doing the job
Words and usage, Grammar, Plain English, Levels of editing, Literary editing, Science editing
This article - sent to us by Ray Watson, Technical Editor of the Australian & New Zealand Journal of Statistics - describes US editing restrictions on papers submitted from countries that have been put under trade embargoes.
The Bush administration says the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, with more than 350 000 members worldwide, must stop editing scholarly papers submitted by researchers living in countries under a US trade embargo, or apply for a special licence to do so.
On 1 October, the Treasury Department informed the Institute that editing a research paper is equivalent to providing a service to authors and therefore violates US trade restrictions that prevent US-based organisations from doing business with countries such as Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya and Sudan.
'US persons may not provide [an embargoed author] substantive or artistic alterations or enhancement of the manuscript, and IEEE may not facilitate the provision of such alterations or enhancements', the director of the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control wrote in a letter to the IEEE. Trade policy prohibits 'the reordering of paragraphs or sentences, correction of syntax, grammar and replacement of inappropriate words by US persons'.
I guess we don't need to worry yet (though we do have at least one Iranian author in our current list). I wonder how long it will be before Howard decides to follow the leader ... again!
Ray Watson
A Style Council conference, featuring the theme 'Public and professional discourse', 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. Topics will include:
* The language of government, politics and bureaucracy
* Professional communication (including legal, medical, scientific)
* Writing within academia (and the editing of PhDs)
* Business and corporate writing (including vision and mission statements)
* Plain English and its application
* Public discourse on minority groups (inclusiveness versus identity)
If you would like to offer a paper relating to any of the topics indicated, please send details of the proposed content in a 250-word summary by 23 April.
Early-bird registration for the conference is $250 (+GST), with full- and half-day rates available on request. Registration forms and program details will be available at
<www.ling.mq.edu.au/style>. For further inquiries, or to submit an abstract for a paper, please contact Adam Smith at the Style Council Centre on email:
<Adam.Smith@ling.mq.edu.au> or tel. (02) 9850 8783.
Time was when you used your judgment about which spelling of a word to use when writing or when editing material. The custom was, when editing in Australia, to use the spellings we had known from school in Australia - British English spelling. Spellings such as color were frowned on and we all wrote colour. Then we started to think more amiably about American English spellings - should we write recognize or recognise? We allowed either, provided there was consistency throughout the document. However, as the world shrank, the situation gradually became more confused, and it was difficult to keep tabs on which spelling ought to take your fancy.
In July last year, a conference was held in Milan, Italy, at which Ron Blicq, Project Coordinator and Senior Editor, INTECOM International Technical Documentation Study Group, addressed the issue of international spelling - not spelling based on what country the editor lives in, but spelling based on the cultural norms of the expected readership of the document.
The Study Group's objective was 'to identify which spelling and usage we should recommend for documentation that would be written in English' but would 'receive worldwide distribution'. The upshot is a set of guidelines for three different situations:
1 for English-language documentation to be read primarily in countries where British-based spelling, terminology and usage are the norm2 for English-language documentation to be read primarily in countries where US-based spelling, terminology and usage are prevalent
3 for English-language documentation to be read by people in a broader range of countries, with some accustomed to British and some to US usage.
The Introduction to the Guidelines contains the following:
What will quickly become apparent is that the Project Group has mostly suggested using US spelling and usage for English-language documentation that will have worldwide use. Our rationale is simply that people who are accustomed to US spelling practices find British spelling to be strange or quaint, or may even think the writer cannot spell correctly. On the other hand, most people who use British spelling and usage have also been exposed to US spelling and usage, so that even though they don't use it themselves (as, for example, in Great Britain), they recognize [sic] it and more readily adapt to it.
I find this rationale arrogant and wonder why we should kow-tow to this insular point of view. Read on. You'll get your chance at the end.
Words that are spelt differently in British and US settings are set out like this:
harbor (US); harbour (Br); Intl: harbor
If a word can be spelt two different ways, but the Project Group recommends just one spelling for all documentation, no matter what the audience, it just gives the recommended spelling: antagonize
The Guidelines include advice, where applicable, on recommended (rec) plurals where there is a choice, for example:
memorandum pl: memorandums (rec) or memoranda
I have to wonder why no choice is offered in this entry:
addendum pl: addenda
Why not offer addendums as well and then make a recommendation?
Some entries are surprising. Some examples:
of autumn and fall, the recommended international usage is autumn
of e.g. and eg, the recommendation is eg
of e-mail and email, the recommendation is email (I applaud the last two)analyze and baptize are recommended but advertize is not.
Some I would query, such as:
burned (US); burnt (Br); Intl: burned
I think the context and syntax make the difference here.
And there are some strange omissions, for example:
Why are hood/bonnet and fender/bumper in the Guidelines, but no mention of trunk/boot? (Guess which of these pairs is preferred for international audiences.*)
At the end of the main section of the Guidelines (only 24 pages so far), there is a section of nine short articles which explain or expand on the guidelines and attempt to give the rationale underpinning the decisions of the Project Group. Some of these are interesting, for example:
Why must we use m as the abbreviation of metre and L as the abbreviation of litre? This is because M is the abbreviation for mega, and to use lower-case 'l' for litre risks confusion with the number '1'.
The recommendation for punctuating a list of bullet points takes a step backwards in time - in Australia we have abandoned the commas recommended here at the ends of lines and the 'comma + and' at the end of the second last line. See Style manual for authors, editors and printers, 6th edn, John Wiley & Sons, Australia, 2002, page 143.
Which brings me to my final point. While this is a useful reference tool, it is highly prescriptive (despite the word 'guidelines'): it seeks to force writers and editors into a mould (or should that be 'mold'?) of bland international English - I call it McDonald's English. English is a living language and should be allowed to live and grow. There are some Australian usages (for example utility or 'ute' for the US pickup - light truck) - don't these deserve a place in English written for international audiences? I don't believe that American readers are so ignorant that they can't see recognise and know it's the same thing as recognize.
The Guidelines are available on the Web at <www.intecom.org/guidelines.html>, and Ron Blicq issues an invitation to everyone - 'If you know of a local expression or a cultural difference that exists where you live, please email details to me <ronb@rgilearning.com>. I will circulate your information among the Study Group for discussion and eventual insertion into the Guidelines.'
* No prizes for guessing hood, fender and trunk - the US words.
INTECOM Guidelines for Writing Technical Documentation for an International Audience (Introduction, Glossary A-Z, The Rationale for Some of the Committee's Decisions and Some Additional Guidelines) <http://www.intecom.org/guidelines.html>, prepared by the INTECOM International Language Project Group (Project Coordinator and Senior Editor: Ron Blicq, Winnipeg, Canada), for the International Council for Technical Communication (last update)
Style manual for authors, editors and printers, 6th edn, John Wiley & Sons, Australia, 2002
Elizabeth Murphy
Many of you will know that the only two heading options for editors wanting to advertise in the Yellow Pages are Proofreading and Writers, Consultants &/or Services. This has been a source of some frustration for editors wanting to advertise their services. It has always also worried me that it is indicative of the 'invisibility' of editing as a profession.
However, as the result of a concerted national lobbying campaign by editors, we have now received the good news from the Yellow Pages National Headings Committee that a new heading will be added to Yellow Pages metropolitan and regional directories as follows: Editors &/or Editing Services.
The new heading will be effective from 2005. When the time comes to update for 2005, editors who already have entries under the other headings should consider changing their main entry to this heading, with cross-references to the other headings, if required. I assume that if we don't use the heading, we may lose it.
This is another good example of what can be achieved when we work together nationally to promote the profession and why we need CASE and the other national activities to facilitate national networking exchange of information and ideas.
Janet Salisbury
Paul Hetherington, the head of the National Library of Australia's Publications area, has agreed to speak at the April meeting. The topic will be advertised in the next newsletter.
Well, what do you want from your society? The detailed results of the members survey conducted last September and October are now available at www.editorscanberra.org/cse_survey03.pdf
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 deadline for the next regular issue (in April) is 2 April 2004.
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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