Our next general meeting will be on Wednesday 28 September at 6.00 for 6.30 pm, in the Friends Lounge of the National Library.
Come along are hear something about the fascinating subject of indexing. Like editors, indexers are a group of specialists who can make a huge difference to the usefulness of a document. Even in the face of huge advances in computing technology, the age-old art of indexing continues to be essential for the quick and accurate retrieval of information. Lynn Farkas, National President of the Australian and New Zealand Society of Indexers will talk about what indexers do, how they go about creating an index, what skills and training they need, and the relationship between our two professions.
At some stage you are sure to have to work with an indexer, so come along and learn about this important topic. And of course join us for dinner after the meeting at a nearby eatery.
Next meeting
Towards a national association
IPEd notes
Minding my p's and q's
Track changers
Thinking about words
BELS exam in Melbourne
Post words
New members
Copyright amd deadlines
That there is great interest among society members in moves to form a national association was evident in the bigger than usual attendance at our monthly meeting on 30 August. This report draws on notes on proceedings by Ted Briggs and the memories and interpretations of Ed Highley and Virginia Wilton.
The business at the meeting was to discuss the issues paper prepared by the National Organisation Working Group (NOWG) of the Institute of Professional Editors (IPEd; formerly CASE, the Council of Australian Societies of Editors). IPEd is not yet a formal body, and the issues paper discusses, among other things, various routes by which it might become so. The paper can be found at <www.case-editors.org> and this report could usefully be read with reference to it.
A primary aim of the meeting was to gauge the degree of support for a formal national body among Canberra Society of Editors (CSE) members, and to get comments and ideas about how best to move things forward.
The immediate driver of moves to form a national body is the vote taken on accreditation at the turn of the year. In all the Australian societies of editors, there was a majority vote in favour of the accreditation scheme proposed by CASE. An Accreditation Board has since been formed, and is working towards implementation of a national system for accreditation of editors. The board expects to consider the first batch of applicants for accreditation in the second half of next year. But before it can do so, there must be a formal, legally constituted national body to oversee and administer the scheme.
That aside, administering an accreditation scheme is clearly not the only useful service that a national body could provide to our profession. Indeed, in an appendix to its issues paper, the NOWG lists a set of proposed objectives for a national organisation. These were seen as a matter of primary importance by editors at our meeting and much discussion ensued. It was decided that the views of the members of the society should be canvassed as widely as possible, and Maureen Wright agreed to act as a collator of comments on the functions and objectives of a national body from our members.
The NOWG paper outlines the pros and cons of several forms of legal constitution: an incorporated association; a registrable Australian body; a company limited by guarantee. The cost implications of these vary, but only qualitative statements about cost appear in the issues paper.
The meeting devoted a good deal of time to discussing the various options. Though the incorporation option was the one least favoured by the NOWG's legal advice, it seemed to be the one most favoured by members at the meeting.
The legal arguments against becoming an incorporated association, as presented in the issues paper, were somewhat unconvincing since at least one member present at the meeting is employed by an organisation that has adopted this structure with success. The organisation is incorporated in the ACT but has branches in each state. It recently implemented, with no substantive problems, a national accreditation scheme. In addition, being an incorporated associated has proven to be no barrier to applying for grants and sponsorships.
There was a feeling among participants that the arguments in the issues paper were from a purely legal perspective and not the matter of organisational effectiveness.
Deciding on which state an association is registered was seen as a potential problem. Options canvassed were:
But those at the meeting did not see this as a major issue. If IPEd chose the incorporated association option, perhaps relative costs would be a deciding factor.
There was some discussion about how the national organisation would be funded and what would constitute its membership - individuals or societies? Members were happy with the notion that it is the state and territory societies that will be the members, and that they will continue to function and provide the same types of services to their members as they do at present.
Means of funding the national organisation included grants based on annual membership income (akin to the way in which IPEd/CASE expenses are currently proportioned between the societies) and a national levy on membership subscriptions. No conclusions were drawn, but there appeared to be no aversion among the members present to providing such financial support as will be needed to establish and maintain a national organisation. The meeting noted that funding for the accreditation system is a separate issue; it will be self-funding from application fees.
The NOWG issues paper makes six recommendations to CASE (IPEd). The meeting discussed and agreed to each of these. The greatest amount of discussion centred on the second recommendation: That IPEd assess its financial capabilities in making its choice of legal registration based on its projected yearly income (from membership fees) and its projected expenditures.
There was concern over concurring with this without knowing what the structure would be and hence how much it would cost and what the societies would be asked to contribute. Our president suggested that the societies might be willing to provide seed funding for the development of a business plan which she saw as the next step in the gestation of the national organisation. The meeting gave in principle agreement to this as far as our society is concerned.
On the matter of the NOWG's third recommendation - that an agreement be drawn up between state/territory societies and IPE - there were questions about what might happen if it was not possible to get unanimous agreement between the societies, or if one or more societies opted out of the process. Would the national body still go ahead? The lynchpin here is accreditation. All societies had voted in favour of a national accreditation scheme: no national organisation, no accreditation scheme.
If one could summarise the mood of the meeting about the way ahead, it would be 'let's just do it' and get the national body off the ground as quickly and painlessly as possible. We might make mistakes, but they are unlikely to be fatal and we'll learn from them. The members of our society at the meeting were clearly supportive of the formation of a formal, legally constituted Institute of Professional Editors and were willing to put their hands into their pockets to see this happen.
We await with great interest the reports of similar meetings in the other societies. You can keep posted on IPEd matters by reading IPEd Notes in The Canberra Editor each month.
IPEd has had some changes of personnel. Our business manager/secretary Renée Otmar has resigned due to pressure of other commitments, and Janet Mackenzie is filling in for her until the next IPEd meeting in October. The Canberra society has appointed its new president, Virginia Wilton, as IPEd delegate, replacing Ed Highley. Ed will continue as webminder and as a member of the Accreditation Board for the time being.
The delegates have decided that they prefer IPEd for the shortened form of the Institute's name; it is more distinctive and memorable than IPE and also easier to pronounce.
Earlier in the year IPEd presented a draft budget to the state and territory societies of editors. The budget is being developed in good faith in a fluid situation; it is necessarily imprecise because the organisation faces so many unknowns that both income and expenses are difficult to forecast. Once members have adopted a model of a national organisation we will have a clearer idea of our target income and the likely costs of activities. In the meantime Robin Bennett of Queensland is drawing up a revised budget, which IPEd expects to present to the societies after its next meeting in October.
IPEd delegates and the members of the Accreditation Board are busy preparing their presentations for the national conference to be held in Melbourne in October. All members should have received a copy of the Issues Paper prepared by the National Organisation Working Group, which sets out options for the structure and registration of a formal national body. If you've missed out, it is available on the website.
Janet Mackenzie of Victoria is collecting feedback on the Issues Paper. She will compile this and present it to a plenary session of the national conference, and the subsequent discussion should indicate how the profession wants to proceed in creating a national body. If you have not been able to attend a meeting on the Issues Paper, or if you have further thoughts, send them to your IPEd delegate who will forward them to Janet.
The website <www.case-editors.org> is worth a look to catch up on the latest on current projects or if you've forgotten who your IPEd delegate is. We are exploring the possibilities for a new domain name to match our new identity. Delegates have agreed that a national discussion list would improve communication, enabling IPEd both to answer questions promptly and to gather ideas from members nationwide.
Janet Mackenzie, IPEd Liaison Officer
Australian Style (June 2005) headlined an article by Dr Robert Eagleson, a long-time advocate of plain English and a member of the Corporations Law Simplification Task Force. Rob has been mentor, guide and friendly colleague to me for many years - we first met when we were both part of the team that put together the very first issue of TaxPack. I don't have to agree with everything Rob writes, and his article entitled 'Figuring out numbers' is one about which I have some reservations.
The article recommends dropping all numbers presented as words and replacing them with figures. Just like that. I mean, there are 2 ways of writing numbers - 1 is in words and 1 is in figures. Did you like that sentence?
The question is asked: 'What principle makes 4 July acceptable, but not 4 sheep?' Well, to me, it's the principle of not comparing oranges and bananas. 4 July, even at the beginning of a sentence like this, is perfectly acceptable to me because dates would be cumbersome if their numerical elements were written as words. On the other hand, for me 4 sheep would be acceptable only in something like a list of livestock for sale:
- 4 sheep
- 10 goats
- 2 cows etc.
In running text, I find four sheep perfectly clear.
The article's typesetter didn't help Eagleson's cause - one passage shows a figure 1 stuck at the end of a line, looking for all the world like a mistake - it could flash through your mind to wonder if the 1 could be the letter l and perhaps the start of a word beginning with l, such as line:
...beginning with a capital. The punctuation at the end of 1 sentence is an adequate marker that what follows is a new sentence.
Single figures can get lost or skimmed over or mistaken for something else unless the typesetting makes it clear - and why should a typesetter have to make up for an author-engendered problem?
I'll go along with the use of figures at the beginning of sentences, provided they are substantial. Years, sums of money, percentages are all generally OK:
- 1939 saw the start of the conflict.
- $15,000 was raised for charity.
- 75% of the students passed with Credit or better.
But I wouldn't use figures if they were likely to confuse the reader. I would re-cast 1% of the population voted NO to Only 1% … so that the figure 1 doesn't get lost in the surrounding space and text.
I also agree that the conventions for using words or figures for numbers are fuzzy. What's magic about 1-9 or 1-99 as cut-off points for using words or figures to express numbers? I believe it's more important to consider the reader and use either words or figures as seems appropriate for easy reading, particularly in workplace documents. I would hate to see figures becoming so widely used in other writing - novels, essays, poetry etc. - that we abandon words altogether.
Unfortunately, without anyone even having to advocate it, I think figures will take over to a large extent in due course. In many business documents, it is probably easier to grab the number in a sentence like 15 students divided into 3 groups of 5 to discuss the case study.
There are other instances of figures creeping into common usage, not to mean numbers, but as substitutes for other words. Just today I received a note in my mailbox advertising Australia Post's service mail2day (they'll email you and tell you if there's anything to collect, thus saving journeys and precious petrol).
The SMS phenomenon has grabbed many of us by now, but do we have to let the use of figures as shorthand for words of all sorts spill over into the text of emails, reports, instructions and other workplace documents? This is not what Eagleson is advocating, of course: his plea is merely that we use figures where numbers occur in text. As such, it deserves serious debate among editors. But one thing leads to another.
SMS is with us, and I have to wonder whether it will come to this in ordinary document writing: I have 1 passenger so far 2 Melbourne 12 October 4 the editors conference …
c u l8r.
© Elizabeth Manning Murphy 2005
Sources: Eagleson, R. 2005. Figuring out numbers. Australian Style, 13(1), 1-2. Snooks & Co. 2002. Style manual for authors, editors and printers, 6th edn. John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd.
This month, Louise Forster interviews CSE Training Coordinator, Shirley Dyson, about her work, membership of the society and other interests.
Tell us a little about your background, Shirley.
After I left school, I worked for a few years then I married and raised three children. I was out of the paid workforce for 12 years, participating on school councils and committees and being involved in callisthenics, music lessons, scouts, guides, brownies, all of those things. I was quite active on committees and participated in everything that the children did. When the children were older, I decided that I would look for casual work. At that stage I didn't really have any formal qualifications, having left school fairly early. I did a few courses and began work in the age and disability services area of the Malvern Council in Melbourne, where I stayed for the next 13 years.
I was part of the Home and Community Care Program at the council. My responsibilities included rostering 40 home carers who helped 600 residents. I was also recruiting and engaging home carers, and either training them or organising their training. For the last couple of years with the council I studied for an associate diploma in training development.
After I finished my diploma I worked for three and a half years as a training development officer for the St John Ambulance in Victoria. I then decided to open up my own business offering training and development. I'd just got my business name when the National Officer of St John Ambulance, who'd seen some of the work I'd done, rang and asked me if I'd be interested in rewriting one of their training books. 'It's a first aid book and it's only 128 pages'. I said I'd give it a go.
I finished that book and went on to another, and then another. In the end I didn't really have much time to go and look for other work, although I did have contracts with organisations such as Vocam, which makes health and safety videos. Finally, it got to the stage where probably 90 per cent of my work was with St John Ambulance. When St John restructured their national office and offered me the position of publications manager in Canberra, I packed up house and moved to Canberra in November 2002.
I'm now employed full-time by St John Ambulance so I don't have time for freelance work, but I still retain the business name. When I retire I'd like to do some editing work from home.
How did you learn about the Canberra Society of Editors?
I found it, accidentally I might say, through the Internet. I didn't realise the society existed. I wish I had known of the editing societies when I was in Melbourne. It would have been very useful.
Shortly after I joined the CSE, I was offered the position of Training Coordinator. I thought that running the training programs would be a good way to meet people because I didn't know anyone in Canberra.
What training opportunities can we look forward to over the next few months?
I'm hoping to have an onscreen editing session in November, if I can organise that. I'm also the coordinator of EdEx, which will be held next year.
Obviously, you have a very busy life. Do you have time for much else?
Well, I'm completing an editing and publishing course through the University of Southern Queensland. This is an excellent course and I'm enjoying it. I would particularly recommend the course to new editors. It would be useful for people if they haven't had a lot of editing experience and would like to work towards accreditation.
I'm also a member of the Llewellyn Choir. One of the first things I did, even before I moved here, was look on the Internet for Canberra choirs. I had been in a choir in Melbourne for four or five years and knew I would want to join a choir when I moved to Canberra.
I love singing. I love the harmony and I love the vibe of a lot of voices. I just sing all the time. Once I finish my studies I intend to join a second choir because once a week just isn't enough.
I also love my job, I absolutely love my job, and the people I work with are fantastic and that's half of it, you know.
Lucky I'm not the designated driver - I'm just a tad tiddly.' Tad? Tiddly? I'm so terribly sorry if I'm wurring my slurds, but without wishing to make excuses for that second Scotch, are those two words related in some way?
As it happens, no... or perhaps, yes. Tad, in the sense of a small amount, sounds as if it might be of German or Yiddish origin. In fact, says the OED, it has come to us fairly recently, first recorded in 1940, possibly by analogy from 'tadpole'. (A century earlier it had quite a different meaning: the upper class students at some American universities, especially those who tried to get away without paying - West Pointers were either tads or plebes.)
But the 'tad-' in tadpole had nothing to do with 'small'. It appears in the 15th century, coming from an Old English word for 'toad', while the '-pole' is the head - the 'poll'. So, a little 'toad-head'. Some other words for tadpole are a tad more venerable and much more graphic: pollywog or pollywiggle, although now seen as largely American usage, go back to Old English polwygle (porwigle in Dr Johnson's dictionary), a 'wriggly head', conjuring up a vivid picture of the little creatures before they start growing arms and legs.
And what about tiddly? In the 19th century it was a short alcoholic drink - if you had too many tiddlies you would certainly be tiddly. Even if you tucked into the tidbits to act as blotting paper. The word began as tiddlywink, rhyming slang for drink, and, with much use, became shortened for greater convenience. And, pushing back a little further in time, where did the 'tiddly-' in tiddlywink come from. The OED is not too forthcoming on that, but suggests baby-talk for little. And if you're caught doing frivolous things instead of concentrating on serious matters, you might be accused of playing tiddlywinks.
Tiddly, meaning 'small', very often comes as an intensifier linked to 'little': a 'tiddly little', a 'tiddy little', a 'tiny little', an 'iddy bitty' or 'itty bitty' (as in the itty bitty* pool from which the three little fishes swam right over the dam). But tiny has its own origins, in an old English word tine, pronounced 'tiny', as in the medieval Christmas carol, 'Lully, lulla, thow littell tine child'.
A tiddler is a child's term for any small fish - or a grown-up's term for any small child! I can remember, as a very small boy, fishing with my net on its bamboo cane for tiddlers in the local stream, and going proudly home with a jam jar full of sticklebacks, minnows and gudgeon. Minnow is a good old English name, but with a little French in its ancestry, the word menu - in the sense of anything small, not necessarily la carte du jour from which to order your meal. The thought came to mind that the French for 'sparrow', moineau, might also be related (after all, moins means 'less'!), but that had its origin in moine, meaning 'monk', because the sparrow's relatively dull plumage was thought to resemble a monk's drab habit. Gudgeon comes straight from the French name for the same fish, goujon, whose diminutive goujonnette is the culinary term for rather up-market fish fingers cut from fillets of sole.
Tom Tiddler was a mythical character, the basis of a children's chasing game rather like 'tag'. Nowadays, however, 'Tom Tiddler's ground' no longer invites you to rush in looking for gold and silver - it is more likely to be a no-man's-land or a thorny diplomatic thicket that people are doing their best to keep out of. Tom is a generic term for anything male, like tomcats, or almost male, like tomboys. Tom Thumb in the fairy tale was fictional, but lent his name to any small male person, the most famous being the midget showman Charles Stratton (1838-83) who was brought to London by Barnum at the age of five, 0.6 m tall and weighing about 7 kg (he stayed that size until his teens, a tiddler indeed, but later grew to over 1 m and 33 kg). Barnum passed him off as an 11-year-old, calling him 'General Tom Thumb'. And that was a whopper!
Those feathered tiddlers, the tits, hatch from quite different linguistic nests. Tit certainly had the sense of small in various combinations: titling was Old Norse for a small size of stockfish, titlingr was Icelandic for 'sparrow'. Middle English titmose was the bird we know as a 'tit', but it became pronounced titmus and from there to titmouse, and in due course was generally shortened just to tit. So titmoses became titmice, in the quirky way in which our language evolves. All that has noting to do with tit for tat, which began life as tip for tap, in the exchange of verbal or other blows.
As for the tittlemice, alas they exist mainly in the imagination of Beatrix Potter, in her lovely story beginning 'ONCE upon a time there was a woodmouse, and her name was Mrs. Tittlemouse.' Earnest research has thrown up only one other member of the family, little Tommy Tittlemouse, who 'Lived in a little house; / He caught fishes / In other men's ditches'. But why shouldn't they be just as real?
Peter Judge
Sources: mainly the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) 2002 on CD v. 3.00, but with some reference to the Encyclopaedia Britannica on DVD and the Trésor de la Langue Française online at <http://atilf.atilf.fr/tlf.htm>. The tadpole picture is from the Kamishibai for Kids catalogue at <www.kamishibai.com/cat4.htm>.
A BELS exam will be run on the afternoon before the start of the Council of Australian Societies of Editors national conference, Editing in context, 13-15 October 2005, Eden on the Park Hotel, Melbourne (www.socedvic.org/editingincontext).
BELS is a US-based organisation that offers certification by examination to editors in the life sciences. Formed in 1991, it has certified members worldwide, including about five in Australia. You can read all about the BELS organisation and the certification exam at the BELS website at <www.bels.org>.
Anyone who is interested in gaining BELS certification needs to start the ball rolling by applying to BELS for candidacy. You need to submit (by mail or fax) an application form (which is available from the BELS website) a CV, proof of education (copy of diploma or transcript from the highest degree), three letters of reference and US$25.
Assuming that all is in order, you will be admitted to candidacy and sent a study guide (which is very useful and will also help you to decide if you want to go ahead with the exam this year), the schedule of exams and an exam registration form. If you decide to proceed with the exam, you need to forward the exam registration form and a further US$100. You have about two years to sit the exam before you have to reapply. However, the BELS office has been very lenient on this score in the past, understanding the difficulty for Australians of being in the right place at the right time to sit the exam (which is mainly held in the United States or Europe)!
NOTE: BELS can accept Visa or Mastercard payments from people outside the United States and you can also pay both fees in one hit if you prefer.
If you would like further information about BELS and the exam from someone who has taken it, please contact me. Also, let me know if you are planning to register and I will help you through the registration process. The closing date for registration for the Melbourne exam is Wednesday 22 September.
- Janet Salisbury ELS
- Tel 02 6282 2280
- Email: janet.salisbury@biotext.com.au
The Style Invitational of the Washington Post once again asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and then supply a new definition. Here are this year's winners:
*These are a hoot; thanks go to Jeneen McLeod for sending them in.
The society welcomes: Bryan Colebourne, Dr Stephen Dahlstrom, David Kingwell, Kipley Nink and Claire O'Halloran as full members; Dr Julie Christie, Tim Roberts and Dallas Stow as associate members; and Michael Gladwin as a student member.
is published by Canberra Society of Editors,
PO Box 3222, Manuka ACT 2603.
© Canberra Society of Editors 2005. ISSN 1039-3358
The next newsletter will appear in October and the copy deadline for this issue is 30 September.
The editor welcomes contributions using Word for Windows, by email to peter.judge@alianet.alia.org.au
If by snail mail, then send them on a floppy disk or CD-ROM to Peter Judge at 10 Glyde Place, Kambah ACT 2902. If mailing, always provide a printout as well.
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