The May meeting will be a dinner meeting at the ZenYai Thai restaurant located in the Sydney Building, 111-117 London Circuit, Canberra City. It will commence at 7.00 p.m.
The business of the society will be conducted briefly at the dinner table, after which there will be no formal agenda. It is hoped it will be largely a social occasion, although of course members are welcome to raise any matter for discussion by the group during the evening.
The society has selected the $17 banquet menu for simplicity, additional to which members may either purchase or bring their own wine. Members are invited to bring guests to the dinner. The price will be the same for both members and non-members.
In order that numbers attending the dinner can be confirmed with the restaurant, could you please notify the society's Meetings Coordinator, Kerry MacDermott, by email on <kermac@ozemail.com.au> of your name and the number attending with you. If email confirmation is not possible, please ring Kerry on 0407 956 799.
It would be appreciated if you could email Kerry by 24 May (i.e. the Monday before the meeting).
- Next meeting
- President's report
- Beatrice Davis Editorial Fellowship
- Ed-Ex
- A little of what you fancy
- New members
- Coming attraction!
- The landmines of health writing and editing
- A handy little encyclopaedic package
- Editorial team
- Copyright and deadlines
The excitement is building! The date, the venue and the program are now all set for Ed-Ex - our full-day seminar and training day. You will have received the advertising leaflet (and the details are on our website). We have also sent this information out to as wide a range of potential members and allied professionals as possible, so make sure that you reserve your place quickly!
Our April meeting was well attended. Paul Hetherington from the National Library treated us to an entertaining and informative talk on editing the second and third volumes of the Donald Friend diaries - a huge undertaking! The lively group at dinner after the meeting kept him talking for another couple of hours.
Taking another suggestion from the members' survey, your committee this month has arranged an alternative to the usual meeting structure. We are going to meet at the ZenYai restaurant in Civic. The usual business will be dealt with at
7 p.m. and then we will continue with dinner - a banquet, see details at left - and an opportunity to meet and talk with other editors in an informal setting.
We are still looking for a permanent replacement for our Treasurer. Louise has been carrying on in spite of many other calls on her limited time; so if you can help, please contact any of the committee members. We are also still looking for more assistance with many of the society's other activities, including CASE. You don't need to be a member of the committee; occasional support is also important. All offers are welcome!
Claudia Marchesi
Application forms and guidelines are now available for the Beatrice Davis Editorial Fellowship.
Entries must be received by Wednesday, 23 June 2004.
Named after Australia's most acclaimed book editor, this biennial fellowship recognises the contribution of editors to quality writing. The fellowship provides a senior book editor with funds for a three-month attachment to a US publishing house to gain experience in US publishing practices.
To be successful, applicants need to be Australian-based editors, working in-house or freelance, with at least five years or equivalent editorial experience in quality Australian fiction or non-fiction publishing.
The winner of the 2002 fellowship was Rowena Lennox. Rowena is the eighth recipient and shares the honour with previous winners, Rosanne Fitzgibbons, Sue Hines, Jacqui Kent, Bryony Cosgrove, Bernadette Foley, Erica Irving and Jo Jarrah. Reports detailing the US experiences of the two most recent recipients - Erica Irving and Jo Jarrah - are available online at <http://www.publishers.asn.au/awards.cfm?doc_id=25>.
For more information contact Mary Kumvaj at <mary.kumvaj@publishers.asn.au>. The fellowship is sponsored by the Literature Fund of the Australia Council, the Australian Publishers Association and the Australian publishing industry.
This is your LAST chance to register for the big training event of 2004.
Designed to enhance the editing expertise of Canberra's editors, the day promises an extravaganza of skill building, information exchange, and fine food and wine.
The venue is the beautiful Madew vineyard, set on the verdant slopes overlooking Lake George. Your registration fee includes all tuition, a delicious lunch at the gourmet restaurant 'grapefoodwine', and winetasting conducted by David Madew.
The program and registration form are on the website at <www.editorscanberra.org>, and you should have received them by snail-mail (Australia Post) as well.
Cost: members $150; non-members $250
Venue: Madew Wines (Lake George)
Date: Saturday, 5 June 2004, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Email: <cathy.nicoll@atrax.net.au>.
Registrations close 22 May 2004.
(a few kilometres up the road from Madew's). The food at the Lynwood has an excellent reputation. A wine list of mainly local wines is available, and diners may also bring their own. Accommodation for those not wishing to drive home after dinner is available at the Bushranger Hotel in the town at $33 per person per night. The standard of accommodation has not been vetted by the society, but can be assumed to be similar to that at pubs in small country towns.
Would any member wishing to dine at the Lynwood Cafe after Ed-Ex and/or to stay at the Bushranger overnight please contact Meetings Coordinator Kerry MacDermott by email <kermac@ozemail.com.au> so that appropriate bookings can be made. If sufficient numbers are interested, discounts may be possible.
English is a living language, so word classes often change. We're quite used to hoovering the carpet and xeroxing the document, where nouns have taken on verb functions. But there are some of these verbed nouns that grate.
I had occasion to consult the style guide of the American Psychological Association (APA) recently, and was horrified to read this:
The following is excerpted from the 5th edition of the Publication Manual …1
Whoever heard of excerpted, particularly in a style guide? Apart from the horrible nerb (Nancy Allison's great word for such verbed nouns),2 an active construction would have made better sense as a direct statement to students writing psychology theses:
The following is an excerpt from the 5th edition of the Publication Manual …
So I went looking for more in examples from business writing and from the web. Is it any clearer to write:
than the older-style versions:
Inventing nerbs (or indeed 'vouns' - nouns made from verbs) seems to be a passion with the upwardly mobile set these days. It doesn't seem to matter that half the population has to work at understanding these new terms. They are a real challenge to the proponents of plain English because they confuse rather than clarify, despite producing slightly shorter sentences.
In her article Verbing and Nouning3 Henrietta Hay uses the word 'verbicide' to mean 'the wilful distortion or depreciation of the original meaning of a word' and quotes from a US comic strip Calvin and Hobbes in which the two main characters have the following conversation:
The word weirds here is an example of an adjective being verbed.
A word that has jumped both word class and discipline is architect - it's now being used as a verb, as in the [book] is focused on architecting and building X dynamic workplaces.5 The word means designing - a nerb from way back, but one we're comfortable with. The only people comfortable with 'architecting' in this context are the people who put together websites and such. As ever, in my view, jargon should be kept for those who are familiar with it and should not be imposed on the general public. As to focused, why not write the focus of the book is … ?
A recent addition to the family of nerbs is google - not, I hasten to assure you, with an initial capital. To use that word with an initial capital as a verb would apparently be to incur the wrath of the founders of that excellent search engine. I have been guilty of suggesting to friends and students that they google a term - well, like nerb, for instance - to see what is thrown up. It's an expressive verb and there really isn't another one that does the job half as well.
So what do I think about the use of nerbs in public documents? I think they are an inevitable part of the ongoing changes in English. I think that, as long as there is no other short phrase that the public is comfortable with that will do the job, use them. But they must be sensibly applicable to human situations. I don't think it's clever for people to interface when they merely meet; I don't think one should be tasked when one is just given a job to do. And I certainly don't ever want to be told again, as I was told recently, that this room is not suitable for either officing or conferencing. I don't much care for greenlighted either, though we've come to accept highlighted.
Well, this little piece was goaled at impacting on you some of the effects of verbing. You are redlighted to watch for nerbs as you edit.
Elizabeth Murphy
Endnotes
1 APA Online 2003 APA Style.org <www.apastyle.org/electext.html> (viewed 28.04.2004)
2 Allison, Nancy 2000 Nancy's Wordsmithy: Every noun can be … <www.stc-boston.org/archives/articles/nouns.shtml> (viewed 29.04.2004)
3 Hay, Henrietta W 2000 Verbing and Nouning <www.henriettahay.com/language/00jul14.htm> (viewed 29.04.2004)
4 Same page (ibid, if you prefer, but I prefer English)
5 Marquis-Kyle, Peter 2004 Stop verbing those nouns <www.marquis-kyle.com.au/mt/000426.htm> (viewed 29.04.2004) (trade names removed from quote)
The Canberra Society of Editors welcomes Anna Monro and Mark Radford as new members and Eve Sullivan, John McLeod, Dr Margot Harker and Lydia Bezeruk as new associate members.
Do you want to mingle with the stars of stage and screen? Then come to the society's AGM at the newly named Teatro Vivaldi on Wednesday, 28 July 2004. Mark this date in your diary!
Watch out for exciting details in your next newsletter.
A good health feature should inform, educate, be accurate, be genuinely useful to your readers and not leave you or your publication liable to a potential lawsuit.
Landmines abound in health writing, and when you come to edit a story the slightest change can profoundly alter the intended meaning.
You could leave yourself or your newspaper liable if you change a health story in a way that goes from reporting facts and theories to claiming them as your own.
So the first rule of health writing and editing is never take a position.
A good health writer will report other expert opinions, and scientific and clinical studies. He or she will avoid taking a stance on anything. When you edit you must be conscious of this fact.
Going from 'Dr Barry Sears suggests dietary changes can increase levels of serotonin, the feel-good hormone' to 'Dietary changes can increase levels of serotonin, the feel-good hormone' represents a huge change in position.
It moves from reporting Dr Sears' opinion to reporting your publication's opinion, in theory leaving you liable.
Make sure that you don't inadvertently take a position by editing out the author of any theories and studies.
Never take a position, and be sure that your health writer is attributing opinions to someone else.
This area can be confused a little by accepted medical and scientific facts.
It's accepted, for example, that the hormone insulin is released when we eat carbohydrates pretty much the same way it's accepted that our brains reside in our skulls.
So the accepted medical fact is: 'Insulin is released when you eat carbohydrates'.
An opinion would be: 'Eating a diet too high in carbohydrates releases insulin, leading to every chronic disease in the Western world'.
There may be some truth in the opinion above, but it is still an opinion and should be framed that way.
This whole grey area is a hard one for editors. You can't really be expected to know the difference between opinion and medical fact all the time. Developing this knowledge requires constant research and dedication in the health field because accepted medical facts change constantly.
The best advice I could give you is:
a) Work with health writers who know the difference between opinion and medical fact. Look for health writers who are specialists in the field and research constantly as a basic commitment to their profession.
b) Watch for the red flags in any health story. If a statement sounds too good to be true or doesn't sound quite right, chances are that your instincts are correct. As an example, the statement above is much too broad: 'every chronic disease in the Western world' is a huge red flag.
So the first rule of good health writing and editing:
Never take a position. Be sure that opinions are correctly attributed to an outside source.
In the next article I will discuss the topic of identifying red flags in a health story.
Andrew Cavanagh
Reference books - dictionaries, style manuals, thesauruses and the like - are among the tools of an editor's trade. While it is true that these days those of us with ready access to the Internet can answer most questions by a quick search on Google or whatever, a good encyclopaedia close at hand is also often invaluable. Encyclopaedias now come in print and electronic (CD) format.
For a print-format encyclopaedia, it seems to me that one could do worse than opt for the The New Penguin Encyclopaedia 2003 (NPE).* I recently came across this on the bargain table at a local bookstore, and it needed no more than a quick browse for me to see it on my bookshelf. Apart from the content, it's really a quite handsome volume, solidly constructed and with immaculate typesetting.
There were over 350 specialist contributors to the NPE, and the whole caboodle was edited by the esteemed David Crystal - a name that will be familiar to all serious wordsmiths. The work is thus likely to be comprehensive and authoritative. It certainly looks that way to me, despite the entry for 'crystal', which reads:
Crystal 1 A computer package for the development of expert systems. 2 An inexpert system for the development of encyclopaedias (see title page).
There is one peculiarity of the volume that I should mention: while the dust jacket and cover give the title of the work as The New Penguin Encyclopaedia 2003, the half-title and title pages make no mention of a year, and the verso (imprint page) gives the year of publication as 2002. You work it out.
The coverage of matters Australian by the NPE appears adequate and balanced. Howard, John (Winston) is billed as an 'Australian statesman and prime minister', but then so too is Keating, Paul (John). The entry on Australian Rules football notes that it is: 'A handling and kicking game which is a cross between association football and rugby. Surprisingly, it has few rules'. There's a good debating topic in there. The other codes described in detail are American football, Association football [soccer] and Rugby Union. Rugby League gets barely a mention.
Looking more generally, the entry for [book] editing seems to me admirably done:
The preparation of a book for publication. A commissioning editor (or sponsoring editor) commissions books and assesses submitted typescripts. A copy-editor, subeditor, or desk editor checks the text for accuracy, consistency and conformation to house style, marks it with instructions for the typesetter, and may recommend changes in content and structure to the author. The work of an editor may also involve correcting typesetters' proofs, checking for libellous statements, and obtaining permission to use copyright material.
The entries on countries are especially nice. The information on each country is set apart in a box and under standard headings, including local name; time zone; area; population total; status; date of independence; capital; languages; ethnic groups; religions; physical features; climate; currency; economy; GDP; human development index; history; head of state; and head of government.
The last entry in The New Penguin Encyclopaedia 2003 is for zygote:
zygote [ziygoht] The fertilized egg of a plant or animal, formed by the fusion of male (sperm) and female (ovum) gametes. It is usually diploid (possessing a double chromosome set), having received a haploid chromosome set from each gamete.
But you all knew that.
Ed Highley
* Crystal, D. (ed.) 2002, The New Penguin Encyclopedia, London, Penguin Books, 1688pp.
The editorial team needs your help. Every month we need people to check The Canberra Editor before printing.
If you can spare an hour or so every so often, send your contact details to Greg Baker or Ara Nalbandian. Also let us know which months you are available and we will develop a roster with two people per month (a proofreader and a backup).
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. Writing for the newsletter will also improve your profile in the Canberra editing community and add material to your curriculum vitae, of great interest to prospective employees.
The deadline for the June issue is 4 June.
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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