During the 'Partnerships in Knowledge' conference in April, editors from all over Australia discussed matters that are common to us all. The conference then drafted four resolutions to be put to CASE (Council of Australian Societies of Editors), for immediate attention. They concern: national coordination; moves to accreditation; the new standards, and a protocol for work on university theses (see our previous newsletter for more detail).
Now, it is time for all members of our Society to pool our ideas and expectations, so that Lee Kirwan, our president, can speak on our behalf at the imminent CASE meeting.
Come to the Friends' Lounge at the National Library of Australia on Wednesday 27 June at 6 pm (meeting starts 6.30 pm) for a structured discussion, with the aim of producing a Canberra viewpoint on each of the resolutions. There will be finger food and wine as usual.
The next meeting of the Society will be on Wednesday 30 May, at the Friends' Lounge of the National Library of Australia. Our guest speaker will be Gail MacCallum, senior editor at the publishing firm of Duffy and Snellgrove. This talk is likely to stimulate and amuse. Perhaps it will even shock us. Come and find out.
The meeting will begin at 6.30 p.m. sharp, after we have socialised from 6 p.m. with delicious finger food.
See you there!
Forming partnerships: impressions of a conference and a luncheon
Next meeting
The President's column
Partnerships in Knowledge
Partnerships in Knowledge-photos from the
conference
Word talk
By the way…
MEAA convention
Freelance Register
An editor with the European delegation
Style Council 2001
New members
Running Word 97/98 and Word 2000 on the same
computer
Training news
News and notes
Office XP
Dates for your diary
Copyright and deadlines
To me, one of the most satisfying things to emerge from the recent editors' and indexers' conference was the willingness of those who attended, and particularly interstate delegates, to look to the future. As the microphone passed from hand to hand and valuable points of view were articulated one after the other, I realised that many issues for the editing profession in Australia are already being looked at from a national rather than a regional standpoint, in keeping with our current way of working. Geographical boundaries have no (or little) meaning in the new work culture, so issues such as entrepreneurialism, ethics, standards and accreditation will inevitably have to be dealt with on a wider stage, which probably-in a decade to come-will be a global one.
For now, and in response to a motion put from the floor by our Victorian colleague, Janet Mackenzie, there will be a meeting of CASE (Council of Australian Societies of Editors, composed of the presidents of each society) in Sydney. Shelley Kenigsberg, President of the Society of Editors (NSW) Inc., will provide the venue.
To start with, we will need to clarify the composition of CASE by expanding its membership or seeking secretarial help to ensure its continuity while presidents arrive in and depart from office. Matters for determination are training, accreditation (what form this might take and how it will be administered), publicity for the Australian Standards for Editing Practice and an agreed process for their review, and professional ethics. Following the suggestion of the ANU's new Vice-Chancellor, Professor Ian Chubb, a dialogue will be opened with the Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee about the ethics of academic editing. Several societies have broached this issue independently, but agreed guidelines for all Australian editors working in this field are desirable.
Also on the agenda are the organisation of the next national conference (harnessing the work already done by the Queensland Society), and the possibility of establishing a national discussion list.
Changing the subject, the April issue of Blue Pencil (NSW) carried news of an 8-9 day workshop entitled 'Develop Your Editing Skills' over consecutive Sundays from late April to June. Would there be an interest in something similar if we could work up a proposal with the ACT Writers Centre?
Finally, don't miss the speaker at our next meeting on 30 May. Gail MacCallum is senior editor at the entrepreneurial publishing firm of Duffy and Snellgrove. As she proved at the recent Word Festival in Canberra, she enjoys playing devil's advocate and will definitely have some shocking things to say about our esteemed profession during her talk, 'Show me a critic without prejudices and I'll show you a case of arrested development: an editor's lament'.
I will be taking Gail to dinner afterwards at Marinetti's Italian Restaurant, 5 Sargood Street, O'Connor, and anyone else who would like to come is most welcome to join us.
Lee Kirwan
From 20 to 23 April, the 'Partnerships in Knowledge' conference in Canberra brought together editors, indexers, librarians and others from all over Australia and from overseas. During it, on 22 April, about 30 members of our Society entertained about 20 editors from interstate at 'Luncheon at the Library'. Here are some impressions.
The most enduring outcome of this first national conference will be the national coordination and the editors' proficiency that should result from four resolutions, voted on by all the editors present on Day 3, Sunday 22 April. More about them later.
We were able to get to the point of voting largely because of the well thought-out and thorough organisation put in by the conference committee over the last year or so. The program of speakers, topics, panels, hypotheticals, and small interactive sessions that Pamela Hewitt and Shirley Campbell had assembled included something for almost everyone, whether in-house editor or freelance. Each day, there were good opportunities for mingling and chatting. Everything ran smoothly and with great cordiality-not a single hitch. Even a briefcase missing towards the end of Day 3 turned up safely soon after it was reported. And in what became a comfortable link between all sessions, the two who had initiated the conference, Louise Forster (former president of our Society) and Lynn Farkas (president of the ACT region branch of the Australian Society of Indexers), generally were the ones who thanked the speakers, often adding a point or two of their own, and handing each speaker a colourfully wrapped bottle-shaped present.
The sessions did not go into such matters as organisational communication and budgeting that may be central concerns for in-house editors. However, we heard about national and international issues for editors (and indexers), the role of the societies in maintaining professional integrity, partnerships with other professionals, and education and training needs. A number of the focused breakout sessions were probably of particular relevance to freelance editors.
Can you visualise the bookshop of the future-a browsing place, with music as well as books, where you can relax in an easy chair and read or listen while a (future) 'd'-book is digitally printed for you, on the spot? Richard Walsh shared this idea with us during his keynote speech 'The future of the knowledge society'. Richard also pointed to a mass resurgence in literacy because the Internet demands it, unlike TV, radio and film. In thanking him, Louise told us her own wish-list for editors (and indexers) in the future: broaden, reskill, promote and market, take some control of production, be less pedantic, more flexible, and evolve with the language.
The new national editing standards were launched on Day 1 by Richard Walsh and Kathie Stove. Rather than launch them, Richard seemed to want to prevent lift-off as he voiced his 'quibbles' about their name, relevance, terminology and breadth. With aplomb, Kathie stood up and said that as she had prepared her speech beforehand she would simply ignore Richard's comments! The national standards are based on the Canadian model (1991); and as for the name ... a 'standard', in the Macquarie Dictionary, is something taken by general consent as an approved model. The ingredients of this successful drafting of national standards, we were told, were a working group representing all the societies, one convenor, a single focus and an achievable outcome.
Some interesting ideas appeared during these three days. Richard Walsh proposed that editors form a national body that loves text and ensures that text is prepared to a high standard, whether in instruction leaflets for gadgets, or books, or web sites. He also advocated awards (raspberries?) for examples of bad editing (since good editing is invisible). Later on Day 1, the need for making information readily accessible was emphasised, and book editors were called on to use the structural skills of back-of-book indexers at an early stage, making them partners in production rather than an afterthought.
There were suggestions for managing one's business imaginatively, and planning ahead. What about renting a computer (with service backup) instead of buying one? How about face-to-face negotiation with the potential client before taking on a large job so that all have a better idea of its scope? We heard that at the old AGPS, the editors could share ideas and knowledge because they worked alongside each other. Can that sharing be recreated somehow?
Lynn Farkas's entrepreneurial vision is that the societies set out to make money and then use it to generate progress for the industry. For example, they could offer paid marketing and job placement services, paid assessment of members' work, paid adjudication of complaints, and accredited training courses.
Training was a recurrent theme. How about small businesses associating together to share trainees, with mutual benefit? Would in-house training of freelancers with a publisher improve their work? Professor Ian Chubb outlined the cost and student number restrictions that confound universities' efforts to set up new courses, and said that if we want tertiary courses, we will be expected to help teach them. Lynn Farkas picked up on that: let the societies use whatever is around, she said, but also set up their own courses, employing trainers if necessary, to do what the knowledge industry needs.
On the Sunday we adjourned for a refreshing 'Luncheon at the Library' meeting of our Society, at the Friends' Lounge. Its purpose was to entertain the editors from other parts of Australia. In small groups we extended acquaintances formed during the previous two days, or vigorously talked out the resolutions to be put to the conference delegates in the plenary session after lunch. So much agreement had been gained already during and between the conference sessions; this luncheon was a perfect opportunity to get the editing component of the conference together and settle what we wanted in the way of national action.
Discussions that had begun in the hotel foyer crystallised into four resolutions that Janet Mackenzie of the Society of Editors (Victoria) then put to the assembled lunchers. We voted unanimously that they should be acted on. The same four resolutions were later put to the remaining conference delegates, and again there was no dissent.
In outline, it was resolved that CASE (Council of Australian Societies of Editors) should meet within two months to discuss: (a) national coordination among the Australian editors' societies-a more effective role for CASE, perhaps; (b) training and accreditation; (c) national publicity for the newly launched editing standards, and a review process for them; and (d) contact with the Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee to seek a ruling on the ethics of editing undergraduate and postgraduate work.
Now, post-conference, it's time for us all to contribute our views to assist CASE in its deliberations.
By early-mid June, the text or summaries of papers, keynote speeches and workshops will be at both web sites:
www.editors.dynamite.com.au and www.aussi.org.
Last month we looked at the first four rows of the braille chart so you can read the writing on the outside walls of the National Museum. The chart showed the orderly system of using different combinations of the six dots in the braille matrix to make the letters of the alphabet and some contracted signs.
*Here is last month's chart, in case you need to refer to it:
As with many other things, if you know the system you don't have to remember so many individual pieces of information. Start by numbering the dots 1, 2, 3 down the left and 4, 5, 6 down the right. Once you've learnt the first row of the chart, almost all the rest follows a pattern. The first row, for the first ten letters of the alphabet, uses dots 1, 2, 4, 5. The second row uses the first row plus dot 3. The third row uses the second row plus dot 6. The fourth row uses the third row minus dot 3.
The rest of the system covers the punctuation marks and more single-matrix forms for common letter combinations in the fifth and sixth rows; and some special signs in the seventh row, for a more advanced level of braille that uses many contractions of words. (You don't need it for the museum-it's just here for completeness.) The fifth row is like the first row but lower, using dots 2, 3, 5, 6. The sixth row uses dots 3, 4, 5, 6. And the seventh row uses dots 4, 5, 6.
Here is the rest of the chart, i.e. the fifth, sixth and seventh rows, started in last month's newsletter.
Sometimes the same sign can be used for two purposes where there isn't likely to be confusion in the context, such as the sign for both opening and closing brackets, and the sign for opening quotes and a question mark. Putting the number sign # in front of letters a-j produces numbers 1-0, though the system for mathematical symbols is another advanced level.
Finally, when you've finished reading the braille on the museum's outside walls, using last month's chart and this one, go inside and read the cubicle doors in the loos!
Pauline Bryant
We've just completed in Canberra a joint conference with the Society of Indexers and our fellow Societies of Editors. Or have we?
What exactly is a conference? According to the Macquarie Dictionary, it's a 'meeting for consultation or discussion'. Did we consult each other? Did we discuss issues of common interest?
My experience of conferences, until now, has generally been of a series of talking heads interrupted by lunch on the run with time only to get to the loo and find the room where the next talking head will be performing.
Not so this time. At this conference, there were many opportunities for networking, talking in small groups, talking in special interest groups, interacting with speakers during the plenary sessions and soapbox sessions, and even getting to the loo and back with time to spare. And where there didn't seem to be sufficient opportunities for in-depth discussion of burning issues, we made them. We perched on anything handy to meet in the lobby of the conference hotel, we huddled in corners, we met in each others' homes.
Perhaps a reason for this huge energy is that we were nearly all practising editors and indexers-notoriously fussy about style and order, pernickety about detail and determined to ask enough questions to make sure we got points straightened out in our individual and collective minds. Most of us work at home, alone, so this was an opportunity to converse with someone other than the neighbour, the children or the dog. As a group, and individually, we're not backward in coming forward!
Have we completed the conference? Of course not. This coming-together of minds and ideas was only the beginning-now the real CONference gets properly under way. Now we confer with the people we met; now we start putting into action the words that were said and the proposals we agreed to during those four days; now we consult with our colleagues in our own and other disciplines towards the betterment of all, and to the eventual greater benefit of our clients.
Elizabeth M. Murphy
The Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) is the union which covers, among others, freelance writers (including journalists), editors and photographers.
This year the MEAA held its fourth freelance convention, over the weekend 27-29 April, at the Australian Museum in Sydney. The bustling tourist venue contrasted for me the silent world in which freelancers do much of their work, and the busy life on which much freelance work focuses and to which it is directed.
Ours is a small world. On the second day I was hailed by a fellow editor from the Northern Territory who had been at our Canberra conference the weekend before and spoke glowingly of it.
This year the spotlight was on science, information technology, health and medicine. Lively presentations were provided by practitioners in these genres including Robyn Williams, Clio Cresswell, Leigh Dayton, Kellie Bisset, Rachel Nowak, Ray Moynihan, David Higgins and Wilson da Silva.
Other presentations gave insights from a range of working writers, journalists and photographers from print, radio and TV. These included Kerry O'Brien and Hugh Riminton.
Editors may be interested in a new initiative by Alex McKinnon in Sydney-an editorial agency covering Australian and New Zealand writers and editors. Information is available at www.editforce.com.au.
Freelance journalism was discussed by speakers and participants as being something of a poor relation to employed journalism, with struggles for credibility and adequate income. While we editors may share the latter problem, it seems to me that in Canberra, at least, freelance editing is the norm and that credibility is an issue for individuals rather than freelancers as a whole. For other authors, my understanding is that income is an even greater problem than for journalists and editors, but that credibility also depends on the individual.
The convention was extremely good value for money, approximately $200 for the weekend. This was achieved particularly by speakers being working journalists, and presumably union members, who gave their time for free as a contribution to their union. Their clarity reflected their callings, and the usefulness of their ideas to the eager audience demonstrated a commitment to their colleagues.
For me, there were new ideas on the science focus that is one of my writing areas. I got good 'nuts and bolts' information about various potential commissioners of work across all media and a chance to question and discuss with leading practitioners. I came away with my freelancing enthused.
Many of the presented papers will be available on the MEAA web site: www.alliance.org.au.
I am grateful to artsACT for their financial support for me to attend the convention.
Alexa McLaughlin
After a delay, to do with our recent conference, work has resumed on the Freelance Register. Some people have already registered and sent in copy for their entries. Thank you.
Margaret is sending out copies of the previous entries, now. Once you receive yours, and if you want to re-register, please update the file and return it immediately. New registrants, please contact Margaret Pender, 6231 3383 or mcpender@
ozemail.com.au, very soon, and she will send you a sample page on which to base your entry.
It is hoped that the completed register will be at the printers' by 30 June. The register needs 60 or more entries to be viable. If it cannot reach this target, monies already paid will be returned.
Few Canberrans have heard of the Delegation of the European Commission, one of the diplomatic entities in town, although Canberra's cab drivers are mostly 'in the know'. The Delegation is the diplomatic mission representing the European Commission, which in turn is the administrative body of the European Union (EU). The Delegation's role is to promote diplomatic relations with Australia and to disseminate information about the EU within Australia. I work in the Press Section, which focuses on media liaison and publications, rather than on information dissemination.
Just what do we do at a diplomatic mission? Dispel all thoughts of cocktails and long lunches. Here is a glimpse of one of my recent working weeks. You surely know of the visit to Australia recently of the European Commissioner for External Relations, Chris Patten. After his stint as the last Governor of Hong Kong, Mr Patten was appointed to the European Commission in late 1999, with responsibility for the Commission's external affairs portfolio, which covers aid and development as well as security and defence. The main reason for his visit to Australia was to attend the annual EU-Australian ministerial consultations in Canberra, but his international reputation and his presence in the country proved too good an opportunity to limit to the niceties of diplomatic exchange.
We informed the media of the impending visit just before Easter, but they made few approaches then. The Tuesday after Easter, the phones rang hot and the emails came thick and fast as print and broadcast media around the country strove to get the pick of the timeslots for their interviews. Priority went to the major TV current affairs programs with their more urgent program scheduling, followed by personal interviews with print journalists. Mind you, all these had to be fitted in around Mr Patten's other engagements in the several days he was in the country. Apart from the meetings with ministers and the Prime Minister, he was to give three major speeches and several smaller ones, attend a press conference, plant a tree at the ANU, attend several black-tie dinners, participate in two round-table discussions, receive an honorary degree, meet the British High Commissioner for a game of tennis and take in some of Canberra's cultural offerings.
Where does the editing side of me fit in with such a visit, you might ask? Well, you have to keep your editing and proofreading wits about you at all times, no matter what the situation. Mr Patten's speeches, for example, came 'not as single spies, but in battalions', as the draft was revised, pronounced final, and then revised again, either in Brussels before departure or while on the ground in Australia. Corrections had to be made and then finalised in an 'absolutely final' version before the speech could be released to journalists. Each speech was read carefully here to ensure that it conformed to good idiomatic English and contained no idioms or terms not familiar to an Australian audience. Transcripts of impromptu speeches or question and answer sessions also needed careful reading before being released-even those obtained from professional media agencies. One error I caught had Mr Patten referring to 'UN Jews' instead of 'UN dues'. While context would have made the correct term evident to any reader, it would still have been a sorry error to release under Mr Patten's name.
As Mr Patten's sometime 'ghost writer', I was pleased finally to meet the man for whose signature I have written many a paragraph. He is sought-after as a contributor of forewords and articles to a number of publications in Australia and usually the task of writing these falls to me. This, too, has its downside. I remember one particularly inspired piece several months ago on the relationship between the EU and Australia and its future prospects. I submitted my piece to Mr Patten's Cabinet for approval. Back it came via cyberspace, with nary a word changed, but with my beautifully-balanced compound sentences brutally bisected and their component pieces beginning with, for me, the dreaded 'and' or 'but'. I could have wept. Knowing that Mr Patten himself had probably not seen the piece, I could scarcely hold such barbarities against him.
So, the Patten visit is over and the working day reverts to its usual 9-5 for a while. Now I turn my attention to writing and editing the Delegation's newsletter, EU News, and begin to plan an issue to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the opening of the Delegation in Australia. Meanwhile, the Canberra Times wants material for a feature piece on Canberra's diplomatic community and there's research to be done for the Ambassador's speech on sovereignty in a changing world. There's a brochure to be edited and a briefing paper on indigenous issues to be written ... oh, and that journalist who wants to visit the European Commission in Brussels, I must give him a ring soon ....
Jennie Collins
Style Council is always a must for me. I relish the intellectual stimulus in the well-researched papers and perceptive deliberations of lexicographers and linguists who spend their time analysing the way we use language. This year it was a must because of the topic: From local to global English, a fascinating subject which dovetailed nicely with my part-time study.
Style Council 2001 was held in Sydney on the weekend of 27-29 April. It is held approximately every 18 months, run by the Style Council Centre at Macquarie University, and is convened by Pam Peters, Associate Professor of Linguistics at Macquarie and author of the Cambridge Australian English Style Guide. High quality papers on issues of style and usage always attract editors, publishers, journalists, educators, lexicographers and linguists from around Australia.
Academic speakers from Germany, New Zealand and Hong Kong placed our own approach to English within an international context. You might be able to pick a New Zealander by their accent, but could you pick a piece of text as originating from New Zealand? You might think you can spot an 'Americanism' from 100 metres (because it would be in yards), but could you distinguish between texts written in Australia, South Africa, Canada or Singapore? We were thrown the challenge! Some variations are subtle: in Australia the word 'must' tends to carry a different meaning from the same word in other English-speaking countries. In East African English, the expression 'there is need (to, for)' is common (as in 'There is need to think of'; or 'there is need for the people to decide'). Sporting idioms have spread into many Englishes but with slight variations, possibly depending on the dominant local sport; for example, Australians will 'go in to bat' meaning to take up or support a cause, but baseballing Americans will 'go to bat' for a cause and the cricketing Brits will just 'bat for' (as in 'Will you bat for the government?'). This has interesting ramifications for writing text for the Internet.
While Australian teachers of English as a foreign language are debating the style of English needed by their students (American, British, Australian, or a hybrid 'International' version?), in China a charismatic local English-language teacher, Li Yang, is filling stadiums with his entrepreneurial approach to English-language teaching, combining elements of a rock concert and a Billy Graham crusade to lead thousands to learn 'crazy English'. The film footage of his approach was nothing short of astonishing.
Meanwhile, within Australia itself, we have regional variations. Only some of you will understand the following: refidex, de-nutting, cent sale, olive peril, beefroad and Blue Nurse. If these were as tantalisingly meaningless to you as they were at first to me, then you are clearly not a Queenslander (or banana bender). Such variations can pose problems for anyone addressing a national audience, as Tony Delroy of ABC Radio's NightLife program explained. He needs to 'think local but talk to the whole of Australia'. He imagines himself 'suspended somewhere above Alice Springs in a space capsule, with no time and no weather' so that each listener can believe the program is local.
Dictionary makers are affected by the internationalisation of English, and the Australian editor for Collins dictionaries shared some of the lexicographical and linguistic advances made in preparing dictionaries, especially for the English language student market.
Entertaining, erudite, well presented and well organised, this was, I think, my seventh Style Council and, to borrow an internationally recognised English phrase recently given global exposure, it was 'the best Style Council ever'.
Stefanie Pearce
Welcome to the following new full members. Penelope Rose Craswell is publications administrator for the Australian Early Childhood Association's publications section. Ian Milliss is currently a consultant in marketing and publishing systems; he previously ran, and edited for, his own contract publishing business. Maren Child works at both Biotext and Wordsworth Writing, where she proofreads and copy-edits, in addition to her administrative duties.
The Society also warmly welcomes Kim Woodland as an associate member.
Apologies to recent new members, Rose Chaffey and Melanie Cooper, whose details were inadvertently transposed in the last issue of the newsletter. Rose Chaffey is a freelance editor, working especially with training publications and Melanie Cooper specialises in science, education and sports-related publications.
'It is my impression that Word 2000 is not widely used yet in the editing sphere, either on the Mac or the PC platform', writes Brett Lockwood at the start of his article (title above) in the Society of Editors (Victoria) newsletter, January 2001.
Brett, who is training officer for the Society in Victoria, continues, '...editors who work by choice with Word 97 (PC) or Word 98 (Mac) are faced with no great urgency to upgrade [but] ... there are advantages in moving to Word 2000', and he describes some of them - mainly, better and radically different on-line help, extended support for languages other than English, and improved language dictionary use. 'Word 2000 also incorporates other improvements useful for editors', Brett says.
The article provides detailed notes about how to install and use Word 2000 on a stand-alone PC that already runs Word 97; in other words, how to run both applications on the same computer. Brett thinks it is quite likely that this side-by-side operation could also be effected on a Mac (that is, running Word 98 and Word 2000 simultaneously). The notes 'may assist editors who would like the comfort factor of using Word 97/98 and Word 2000 interchangeably, while learning the ins and outs of Word 2000'.
Brett concludes the article by saying, 'I have found that running both Word 97 and Word 2000 is very useful as a way of learning the differences while maintaining productivity...You can go on using Word 97 and Word 2000 interchangeably for years if you want to. I probably will'.
Thanks to Brett, and Peter Judge, and the Society of Editors (Victoria), the whole article is now mounted on our Society's web site, at word_versions.htm. It is much too long for this newsletter.
Adobe Acrobat PDF (portable document format) files are in great demand! Here's your opportunity to find out about making and using PDF files from a range of source files for all sorts of uses.
On 2 June, between 9:30 and 11:30, Ed Highley of Arawang Editorial will take us through the best and worst of PDFs, at the Canberra Business Centre in Bradfield St, Downer.
This workshop will provide a good introduction to the basics, as well as giving insight into some tricks and tips to get the best out of your PDF software. Ed will guide us through creating and using PDFs for print applications, CD-ROM and the Internet. And he will briefly mention third-party plug-ins that give greater scope for 'editing' PDF files.
Contact Cathy Nicoll on 6259 2984 if you want to attend, but be quick... (a) because places are very limited, and (b) because it's not very long to 2 June.
Cost: $40 members, $80 non-members. Send your cheque with your name, address, telephone number and email address, to:
Ms Cathy Nicoll (Training), Canberra Society of Editors, PO Box 3222, Manuka ACT 2603.
By consensus, our Canberraeditors email discussion list is not available to non-members of our Society.
Editorial-L is a national email discussion list for editors. Although its subscribers do not use it very much, it does still exist. To join or leave the list at any time, send email to <Listserver@unisa.edu.au> with the appropriate command:
subscribe "EDITORIAL-L" or
unsubscribe "EDITORIAL-L".
Send email contributions to: EDITORIAL-L@unisa.edu.au. For any queries, please contact Moya Costello: Moya.Costello@unisa.edu.au or phone (08) 8302 6763.
If you are able and willing to run a course on proofreading for the Society, please contact Claudia Marchesi or Cathy Nicoll soon.
It is important for CASE deliberations to represent the views of members of all Australian editors' societies. A new series of lunchtime discussion groups, starting soon, will be a forum that our Society members can use. Watch the web site or newsletter for details, or contact Claudia Marchesi.
The Australian Booksellers Conference is concurrent with the Australian Publishers Association Book Fair in Sydney this year. Together they are called Working with Words. Visit www.bookfair.com.au for details and to organise registration, or see the flyer at our meeting on 30 May.
If you were at the conference and want an updated list of conference delegates and their email addresses, send a stamped addressed envelope to: Contact List, PO Box 251, Lyneham, ACT 2602.
The next version of Microsoft Office for PCs, called Office XP, is expected to be released mid year. One feature of great interest to editors is a new tool that uses boxes to the side of the text showing deletions and insertions rather than the current 'track changes' facility of crossing out and underlining.
30 May: Society's May meeting
2 June: 'Solve your PDF problems' workshop
19-22 June: ABA and APA conference and book fair
27 June: Society's June meeting
The Canberra Editor is published by the Canberra Society of Editors, PO Box 3222, Manuka ACT 2603.
Copyright: Canberra Society of Editors 2001
ISSN 1039-3358
The deadline for the next regular issue is
4 June 2001.
Mail contributions on a 3.5 inch disk, using Word for Windows
(essential) or email (preferable) to:
Ann Milligan
Science Text Processors Canberra
PO Box 3161, Belconnen MDC, ACT 2617
phone/fax: (02) 6259 3080
email: scientex@actonline.com.au
If mailing, always provide a printout as well.
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