Our next general meeting will be on Wednesday, 27 April, at 6.00 for 6.30 pm, in the Friends Lounge of the National Library.
Once described as 'the apostle of grunge', John Birmingham is a prize-winning journalist, poet, storyteller and novelist who has written for The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Australian, Penthouse, Playboy, Rolling Stone, HQ, Inside Sport, The Independent Monthly and the Long Bay Prison News.
He rose to fame with the 1997 novel He Died with a Falafel in his Hand, compulsory reading for anyone who has ever been in a share-house. Other books include: Leviathan: The Unauthorised Biography of Sydney; The Tasmanian Babes Fiasco; How to be a Man; The Search for Savage Henry; and last year a time travel sci fi thriller - Weapons of Choice.
John is sure to have lots to say about the relationship between editors and writers. This will be a very entertaining meeting, so don't miss it.
And, coming shortly:
25 May: Dr Pauline Bryant makes a welcome return, to talk on language change in Australia.
29 June: Gary Wilson from Paperlinx, on everything you ever wanted to know about paper but were afraid to ask.
- Next meeting
- From the Editor's desk
- CASE Notes
- National conference
- - Invitation and Call for papers
Translation issues - our March speaker- Track changers - Elizabeth Murphy
- Minding my p's and q's …
- Thinking about words
- New members
- Training news
Copyright and deadlines
Twenty-seven members was not a bad attendance at the society's general meeting on the penultimate day of March.
Penultimate - don't you just love that word? It's so lovely that one of our colleagues has chosen it as her business name. Why should we have to say second last instead? I would, however, draw the line at pulchritudinous.
Another word I love is endeavour, which should not be limited to the naming of ships and boats. It's a perfectly good word, so why do we feel that, when we're using it as a verb, we have to replace it with the shorter - and much less evocative - try, or when we use it as a noun we let ourselves be persuaded to substitute attempt every time? Whatever happened to variety? And why should anyone be forced to contribute to the dumbing-down of the English language? It's a rich language, so let's take advantage of that richness.
In Death sentence Don Watson complains about the decay of public language, which of course is the subtitle of his book. I would contend that the decay of private language is of equal, if not greater, concern. You only have to look at email messages or chat room exchanges to realise just how bad the situation is. The humble apostrophe has all but disappeared in these forms of communication. Both contractions and possessives seem to have lost their apostrophes - and in some cases their sense. People quite happily write im (for I'm), ive (for I've), your or ur (for you're), shes (for she's); and Petes (instead of Pete's) and Sheilas (instead of Sheila's) when they are talking about the singular. Whatever happened to clarity in writing, for Pete's sake!
The other day I was astounded to receive the following message (from someone I fortunately didn't know), not only because of its content but because of the way it was expressed:
Isn't chatspeak wonderful! With such desecration of the English language, one hardly seems to need to worry about the excessive use of cliché and jargon. All I can say is that saving keystrokes isn't everything; a few punctuation marks would go a long way.
btw u can read about dr gredleys talk on 30/3 elsewhere in this newsletter - if u cant beat em jn em! Now that's not the right attitude for an editor, is it?
Ara Nalbandian
The proposed accreditation scheme was presented in the Final Report of the CASE Accreditation WorkingGroup, which is available at <case-editors.org>.
Many editors have wondered just how it would operate. Janet Mackenzie, the CASE liaison officer, has listed their 'Frequently Asked Questions' (FAQs) and provided some answers. Find them on our website at <www.editorscanberra.org/case_faqs.htm>.
An Invitation to attend and a First call for papers have just been distributed by the conference committee. They can be found on our website at www.editorscanberra.org/call.pdf
Dr Matt Gredley is a member of the Australian Institute of Interpreters and Translators (AUSIT), with branches in all States. He is one of the ACT Branch's most experienced translators, specialising in translating from English into Chinese, especially technical-scientific material. At the society's March meeting he considered the interface between editors and translators and preparing material for translation.
What are translating and interpreting?
Translation relates largely to the written language. Spoken or written language is converted into written language - for example, providing subtitles to foreign movies or translating a document from one language into another.
Interpreting relates to the spoken language - a complex document may require an oral précis, or something said in one language may require a version in another.
Because translation and interpreting can sometimes involve life and death matters, the Australian government decreed in 1987 that AUSIT be formed.
What do editors do?
Matt suggested that there are similarities between the work of translators and interpreters and the work of editors and explored these with his audience.
Codes of conduct
Professional issues
Interestingly, most translators have a language other than English as their native language, and translating is not as skill-intensive as interpreting. Some translators are polyglots; others are bigamists - lovers of two languages.
Can anyone with knowledge of a language translate?
There are very few training courses in Australia. Practitioners are encouraged to seek accreditation with AUSIT by sitting an examination, but many are not accredited and most translators work part-time. The competition is fierce, and practitioners do not usually make a living as a full-time translator or interpreter.
The demand for practitioners changes with trends in immigration, tourism and export markets. Courts now recognise the right of 'non-English-speaking background' (NESB) defendants to an interpreter.
Translating documents in Australia
- into a non-English language
Common examples are community material such as Age Pension News, tax information, health pamphlets, and tourism and export materials. This material, about Australian issues, is aimed at the Australian and overseas NESB communities: snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef, Canberra Casino gaming, annual reports, foreign-student services and so on.
- into English
Typical examples are official documents for Australian officials about overseas issues such as drivers' licences or marriage certificates. Scientific papers are also translated for Australian researchers.
Literary publications are translated in both directions - the varying audiences and styles posing a challenge to the skill of the translator.
How do translators and editors interact?
Native English translators and NESB translators translate material into, and from, English. But should an editor have been involved when, for example, 'Hot tips' [for doing something more easily] was translated literally as 'Incandescent points'?
How should a document be prepared for translation?
Ideally, a document should be written directly for the intended (NESB) audience in their language so that it doesn't need to be translated. If it has to be translated, the document should be written for the intended (NESB) audience, not for the translator. However, the author and translator must be prepared to work together to ensure that the original meaning is clearly and correctly conveyed.
Examples of translation problems - can editors assist?
Idiomatic
Idiomatic expressions can cause problems for the translator. For example, consider the following sentences in an export brochure:
Which would you use, and do they have the same meaning?
Consider this extract from a voice-over script - 'The quality control standards are stringent, with lab tests conducted unfailingly every hour'. Does that mean tests conducted successfully or conducted on time?
Contextual
'If you are unable to have the form signed, the Department may approve a succession of tenancy.' Does that mean the department might or is empowered to?
List of items in tourist brochure: 'Dive equipment and manual rental' - why rent a manual, and is the dive equipment also rented?
Tourism brochure about safety around helicopters: graphic of person leaving a helicopter with 'Exit' printed beneath. Is 'Exit' a noun or a verb in this case? In Chinese a different word is used for each part of speech.
Punctuation and grammar
Tourism brochure about diving: 'Certified diving is available for accredited divers, and Introductory Dives for others, see the Dive Crew'. Should the last comma be a full stop?
Cultural
Australian election flier for a candidate: should the candidate's name and electorate only appear in the translated language? The Canberra Times thought that the candidate was defeated because her name and that of her electorate did not appear in English as well. After all, voters need to operate in an English language context.
'Commonwealth Ombudsman': what does the concept mean in countries that don't have an equivalent organisation? Chinese varieties are 'Appeals Commissioner's Department' (Hong Kong), 'Control Department' (Taiwan) and 'Injustice Ambassador' (Australia). Clearly, the concept of the Ombudsman (originally Swedish for commissioner) is complex and very culturally imbued.
Dr Gredly's talk about the issues and challenges facing translators gave us much to think about. He also reminded us of the importance of accreditation, professional standards and a code of conduct, ensuring the quality and integrity of the translator's work. Accreditation gives credibility and respect to individual practitioners and to the profession as a whole.
Ara Nalbandian/Helen Topor
This month Louise Forster spoke to Elizabeth Manning Murphy about her careers in writing, editing and teaching, her vision for the editing profession, and her extracurricular interests - including her great love of travel. Elizabeth said:
I've always been interested in words. I suppose if you go back far enough my father was probably my first major influence because he taught me to count in French before I could count in English. Then I went to Abbotsleigh, a girls' school in Sydney, where I had a marvellous English teacher who encouraged her pupils to write and write and write. Her name was Miss Shell. I don't know what her first name was. She was always 'Miss Shell'.
Soon after I left school I was writing for the ABC in what used to be called their Youth Education Department. I used to write quarter-hour scripts for them on some aspects of Australian history. At the end of the year they'd want something a bit light-hearted so I'd do something with fun poems in it.
The next major influence in my writing, and move towards editing, was when I started teaching - business English, typewriting, office practice, things like that. To start with, it was at Pitman's College in London, and later in the TAFE system in Sydney and Canberra.
I did what everybody did in those days - the boomerang trip to England by sea on the Strathaird. In those days every young person was doing this and P&O insisted that you or your parents had to guarantee your return fare, otherwise they wouldn't take you to start with, which was very wise of them. Hence, the 'boomerang' trip.
Then I came back to Australia for a time. At one point I was running a business college in Ashfield in Sydney. Then I returned to England, back to Pitman's.
I've been involved in a number of publications, but probably the one that most people know is Effective Writing: Plain English at Work. I wrote that as a result of doing a lot of training and consultations with people in public service areas, largely in Canberra. It seemed to me that they needed something more than just a handout and so the book came together as a result of that. As a matter of fact, I'm in the throes of rehashing that to bring it right up-to-date.
Apart from work …
Apart from work, I want to keep room for some of the other things in life. One of those is my involvement in the voluntary organisation RAPlink - Regional Action Partnership Link. I was a co-founder and then the secretary of that organisation. We put communities in touch with resources or information that they can't find, or don't know how to go about finding, for community projects.
And what about editing?
Like most of us probably, I've come to editing without any formal training, but I have a linguistics degree from the ANU and I've always been, as I said, good at English. Also I think the fact that I studied French and Latin at school has been an enormous help. I think it's a pity that children aren't actually made to study at least one other language besides their own at school because it gives them an appreciation of grammar in general. My linguistics degree took me to teaching in three universities - I'm now a member of the ANU's Emeritus Faculty. Most of my editing work is on public documents emanating from government agencies.
I think probably if I could say something about the society and editing societies in general, I'd like to say how much I welcome and look forward to CASE having a much bigger role in editing around Australia. My personal opinion has always been that there ought to be an overarching organisation of which the individual societies are members, reasonably autonomous members but certainly members, and that there should be some overarching guidelines that all of the societies follow.
The same goes for accreditation. I welcome accreditation and hope that it will sort out a few of the anomalies in the societies - in particular, where it's possible to be a full member and on the freelance register without any recent experience of editing. I think that's not fair on the rest of the editors - the ones who have recent experience and/or qualifications.
We're a professional body, and we need not only to be professional but also to look professional. We need to show the rest of the world that we're professional. I think we have to make sure that people who get into the freelance register in future will be the accredited editors or, if not, that it's quite clear who is accredited and who isn't, and what accreditation means.
What else do you do?
What else do I do? I travel; I like to travel all around Australia in my car with its luggage box on top. I like to drive wherever I possibly can. If I can't drive, I fly to places. I like to visit people. Happily, I have a very scattered family, which means that I have beds all around the world.
I always love going back to England where I was born, but I suppose my favourite town or city would have to be San Francisco. I was told once - I was working for Qantas at the time as a staff training officer and I'd never been to San Francisco - 'Oh, you'll love San Francisco, it's just like Sydney'. I said, 'Nothing can be just like Sydney', but by golly it is!
Louise Forster/Elizabeth Murphy
Do you remember the old legal documents (leases, agreements and the like) that started by stating something like 'Throughout this document, he embraces she' or 'In this book, he is taken to include she' or more pompously 'The masculine gender shall be taken to subsume the feminine gender'? OK, I can take being embraced, but in the right place and at the right time! I don't care to be embraced in print.
Inclusive, including non-sexist, language has become something of a talking point again at present - it surfaces every now and then - so I thought I'd share with you some of the thoughts of others on this topic as well as my own thoughts.
I go back to a textbook for 'secretarial'1 students published in 1971 to which I contributed three chapters.2 One chapter contained the following: 'The degree to which the secretary will deputise whilst her employer is away depends on …' In 1986 I edited a new version of the book, and this passage became 'The degree to which the secretary will deputise while the employer is away depends on …'3 Around this time, too, I remember being asked to make sure that he and she were used in alternate chapters of a book to refer to the same office worker - in hindsight a weird attempt at even-handedness and singular construction when avoidance, pluralising or 'singular they' would have got over the problem! A similarly quaint (to me) attempt to stick to singular constructions and third-person singular personal pronouns appears in Janet Mackenzie's recent book The Editor's Companion in which she writes:
I have exploited the precision of the singular by following an arbitrary convention, referring to the author and the designer as she and to the reader and the publisher as he. Does it bother you?4
The absurdities of exclusive language are legion. An oft-quoted example is 'Man, being a mammal, breastfeeds his young', and another that confronted me when I sat an examination in 1984: 'Do not turn the page until the supervisor starts the examination. The student should put his name in the top right hand corner of every page'. (A wit actually asked the supervisor to spell his name for us!)5
To be fair, there are some cogent arguments against inclusive language. One of the most telling I've seen was from Dr David Frost, then Professor of English Literature at the University of Newcastle, who had been given the task, in about 1993, of preparing a draft 'non-sexist' version of the Anglican Church's prayer book for Australian use. His comment to the Liturgical Commission of the day was that 'the imposition of "inclusive language" in the prayer book would add up to bad English, (and not just bad theology)'.6 Two of Frost's examples stand out:
Psalm 22, verse 6 (in the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible) has 'But I am a worm, and not human …' instead of the older version 'But I am a worm, and no man …' - Frost arguing that the original meaning is distorted in the new version.
Frost also refers to the opening words of the Service for the Burial of the Dead: 'Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live …' - he argues against 'Humanity has but a short hour to live' which 'suggests [that] the race may be terminated next week'. He equally dislikes another 'non-sexist' solution: 'Mortals, born of a woman, have but a short hour to live' for its obvious emphasis on mortality (rapid at that!) which is not the prime significance of the original Hebrew.7
As Janet Mackenzie says, 'The over-zealous elimination of bias can falsify history'.8
With those warnings about the risk of inaccuracy and banality in inclusive language, I still have to come down on the side of inclusiveness as a general rule. We don't have to go overboard, and we should remember that 'man' is often intended to refer to the whole human race9 and may be difficult to replace in some contexts. The website of the Northern Territory University sets out for its students the following guidelines that start out straightforwardly enough:
Ensure that your use of personal pronouns is inclusive:
and then this:
It certainly does! I first met s/he years ago in a report on language variation in Sydney and deplored its use then as I do now. You can't even pronounce it! He or she for occasional use is acceptable, but pluralising or using 'singular they' may be better.
'Singular they' is almost a non-issue now. It's here to stay. It's simply a return to usage that was perfectly legitimate before the prescriptive grammarians got stuck into it in the late 18th century.
In 1975, linguist Ann Bodine asserted that 'prescriptive grammarians have, at least since the end of the 18th century, claimed either that English has no sex-indefinite pronoun, or that he in fact is the English sex-indefinite pronoun'.11
Elizabeth Flann and Beryl Hill (in The Australian Editing Handbook, 2nd edition) write: 'The generic he is no longer acceptable to a great many readers, writers and book buyers, and they appears to be emerging as the most acceptable alternative. Editors … need to keep up to date with what is happening in the language'.12
I pushed 'singular they' for years from about 1986 onward13, 14 and was gratified when, in 1995, the Australian Government Attorney-General's Department supported its use in public documents prepared by them.15
Flann and Hill also warn us that inclusive attitude alone is not enough: 'questions of exclusion [my italics] need to be borne in mind at all times when dealing with manuscripts'. They quote the following sentence from a medical textbook: 'Doctors often have difficulty in communicating with their female patients because they have not experienced what it is like to be a woman' - [this] assumes that all doctors are men.16
There are some legal requirements to consider. These are set out in the Style manual: 'Linguistic discrimination can take various forms that may marginalise or exclude particular segments of the population - whether unwittingly or not'.17 There is no place in public documents for stereotyping, uninformed comment, prejudice or insensitivity.
To return to what triggered this rush of blood - a rash of references to sexist and non-sexist terms in a favourite email wordplay list WordFun.18 Comments included:
'Synthetic, artificial or manufactured are better than man-made.''A chair is not a good replacement for chairman or chairwoman. A chair is something made of wood or metal or cloth. It usually has fewer ideas than a decent chair(wo)man.'
'A chair is an inanimate object and many women prefer to be called Chairman or Madam Chairman.'
'On the BBC recently, I heard the term "personfully" used in preference presumably to the sexist "manfully" ' .
Going overboard is all too easy. Do we really have to put up with personhole for manhole? As the WordFun contributors note, it would be but a step to personkind for mankind, woperson for woman and personage for manage.
Finally, before I scuttle out and find somewhere to hide while you wade through the endnotes, if you were in Canberra in the mid-1980s, you will remember local ABC newsreader Kevin Chapman. One night, at the height of the frenzy for inclusive language at all costs, Kevin began the 7 pm news with 'Good evening, here is the news read by Kevin Person-person'.
© Elizabeth Person-ning Murphy
1 This is in quotes because the term is pretty much obsolete in 2005.
2 Tudor Day (ed.), The Secretary in Australia, Pitman, Melbourne, 1971.
3 Elizabeth M. Murphy (ed.), The Australian Secretary, Pitman, Melbourne, 1986 (formerly The Secretary in Australia).
4 Janet Mackenzie, The Editor's Companion, CUP, Cambridge, UK, 2004.
5 Elizabeth M. Murphy, 'Sex and Language', a lecture to students of Sociolinguistics at the Australian National University, Canberra, 1986 (these two examples referred to).
6 David Frost, Why 'inclusive' language adds up to bad English, c. 1993, <www.ad2000.com.au/articles>, viewed 22.03.2005.
7 David Frost, ibid.
8 Janet Mackenzie, The Editor's Companion, p. 33.
9 'Speakers of Old English (before 1000 CE) used man exclusively in the generic sense - they had other specific words for male and female persons: wer for the male and wif for the female. We see the earlier forms today in werewolf (man + wolf) and wife or housewife, now restricted to married women. Gradually the form man took over the semantic role of wer while still retaining its alternate generic function.' (extracted from: Elizabeth M. Murphy, 'Sex and Language', a lecture to students of Sociolinguistics at the Australian National University, Canberra), 1986.
10 Northern Territory University, Writing / Writing Style / Inclusive Language - Grammatical Issues, <http://learnline.cdu.edu.au/studyskills/wr/wr_pr_il_gi.html>, viewed 22.03.2005.
11 Ann Bodine, 'Androcentrism in prescriptive grammar: singular "they", sex-indefinite "he", and "he or she"', in Language in Society, vol. 4, 1975, pp. 129-146.
12 Elizabeth Flann and Beryl Hill, The Australian Editing Handbook, 2nd edn, Wiley, Australia, 2004, p. 45.
13 Elizabeth M. Murphy, 'Sex and Language', a lecture to students of Sociolinguistics at the Australian National University, Canberra, 1986.
14 Elizabeth M. Murphy, Effective Writing: Plain English at Work, Pitman, Melbourne, 1989, p. 74.
15 Attorney-General's Department, Corporations Law Simplification Program, A singular use of THEY, Simplification Task Force, Attorney-General's Department, Australian Government, 1995.*
16 Elizabeth Flann and Beryl Hill, The Australian Editing Handbook, p. 58.
17 Style manual for authors, editors and printers, 6th edn, Wiley, Australia, 2002, p. 55.
18 WordFun, Digest Number 649, <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WordFun>, viewed as subscriber 21.03.2005.
[*Editor's note: The Attorney-General's Department publication, A singular use of THEY, has been up on our website in full since June 2000, by kind permission of the department. See it at <www.editorscanberra.org/they.htm>]
There are always plenty of words to think about in a dictionary and this month, April 2005, marks the 250th anniversary of the first publication of a very special dictionary, Johnson's A dictionary of the English language, on 15 April 1755.
Who was this man Johnson, and why was his dictionary so special? It was by no means the first English dictionary, nor even the most comprehensive - Nathan Bailey's Dictionarium Britannicum (1730) had 48,000 entries in its first edition and 60,000 in the second, compared with Johnson's 43,000 - but it set a benchmark that was not surpassed anywhere in the world for centuries. (For comparison, the OED on CD ROM 2002 has 290,500 main entries.)
Samuel Johnson (1709-84) was the son of a bookseller in Lichfield, in the English Midlands. He was a sickly boy but an early and voracious reader, and when in 1728 he went up to Pembroke College, Oxford, he astonished his tutor with his knowledge of obscure Latin poets. However, he lived there in relative poverty and left without a degree after a little more than a year.
He next tried his hand at school teaching, but found it uncongenial. At the age of 26 he married a widow 20 years his senior, whom he found 'both attractive and intelligent'. With her marriage settlement he opened his own school, but this, too, soon proved a failure and they left for London in 1737. Meanwhile he was busily writing poetry, prose, a play, biographies of personalities of the day and a range of political satires. He also collaborated in a library catalogue and helped an old friend from Lichfield to prepare A Medicinal Dictionary.
What prompted this new English dictionary? Italians, French, Spaniards, Germans and Russians had all produced standard dictionaries of their languages. A need was widely felt in early 18th century England for a similar dictionary 'for fixing the English language, as the French and Italian'. Several well-known literary figures talked about compiling such a dictionary, but it remained just talk until 1746. Then a consortium of five London booksellers and publishers asked Johnson to do it. He prepared a 34-page Short Scheme for the Compiling of a New Dictionary of the English Language, and a contract based on this scheme was signed on 18 June. Across the Channel the French Academy had 40 distinguished scholars toiling for 40 years on a similar project - how could Johnson possibly complete the work single-handed in his projected 3 years? His characteristic reply: '40 times 40 is 1600. As 3 is to 1600, so is the proportion of an Englishman to a Frenchman.' In the end it took him nine years, but the French scholars took 55, with a further 18 for revisions.
Johnson hired six scribes and set to work. From a mountain of books he amassed what we would now call a corpus of literature. This covered mainly the period starting with Sir Philip Sidney (about 1580) but Chaucer and some other earlier writers were included wherever he saw the need. He selected words from these books by underlining the key word in passages that he marked with vertical lines in the margin. His scribes copied the passages, which became the 118,000 illustrative quotations, and then returned them to Johnson to work on the definitions. All sources were scrupulously acknowledged.
Johnson began work thinking he was to 'fix' the language (as the French Academy was doing), but as he progressed he recognised from his examples of actual usage that meaning 'is determined by consensus, not fiat'. His fee of £1,575, worth about $400,000 today, was not enough to support himself and his scribes throughout this time. He sought the patronage of Lord Chesterfield, who offered a paltry £10 but later tried to claim a dedication. Johnson showed his feelings in his famous definition of patron: 'Commonly a wretch who supports with insolence and is paid with flattery', and remained independent, supplementing his fee with the many other projects that he undertook in parallel. In 1752 he suffered the death of his much-loved wife; he never remarried.
As the dictionary neared publication, Oxford gave him an honorary MA, just in time to print it on the title page. The first edition appeared in two large volumes at £4.10s, but this high price resulted in slow sales - even when offered in 165 sixpenny parts! So Johnson prepared an abridgement in two smaller volumes, omitting the quotations. This sold well, averaging 1000 copies a year for the next 30 years, and for the first time a dictionary was becoming an essential part of every literate home. There were four revisions, and over the next fifty years editions were published in Dublin, Edinburgh, Philadelphia and even Heidelberg.
Johnson was famous but impoverished, but this changed when in 1762 the British government awarded him a life pension of £300 a year, 'not for any thing you are to do, but for what you have done'. However, financial security did not stop him writing and his next major publication, in 1765, was an 8 volume annotated edition of Shakespeare. In that same year he received an honorary Doctor of Laws from Trinity College, Dublin, and in 1775 a similar doctorate from Oxford.
His definitions are not always quite right: Pastern, 'the knee of a horse', for example, he admitted was wrong from 'pure ignorance'. Oats, 'a grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people', sounds thoroughly racist but may be no more than his barbed wit. You would be hard put to visualise a Network from 'Anything reticulated or decussated, at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections.' But in the main he is clear and very precise as to the meanings of even common words - take is given 113 numbered senses as a transitive verb and 21 more as intransitive! The OED still uses some 1800 of Johnson's definitions, marked 'J.'
Although not setting out to 'fix' the language, the dictionary gives us a unique insight into the language of the day and how it has changed - for example, a cadger was then an honest peasant who brought eggs, butter and poultry from the country to the market; a shirt was the 'under linen garment of a man'. Johnson was a devout Anglican and careful about which morally correct authors to consult and which words to include (although there are some notable, probably unintended, omissions such as literary). Purely vulgar words, like piss, fart and turd were allowed, but he left out the 'naughty' words. And when two ladies commended him on this, he replied, 'What, my dears! Then you have been looking for them?'
These were the very early days of etymology, although a theoretical Indo-European language had already been proposed as the possible ancestor of many our languages. Johnson occasionally made wild and improbable guesses at word origins or, as in the case of skilt (from its context, probably a poetic variant of skilled), said frankly, 'I know not either the etymology nor the meaning of this word'.
Football and cricket, tea and coffee, are there. Snuggle is a good word, but cuddle is 'low' ('not suited to dignified writing'). There are many scientific terms, more perhaps than you might have expected, from atom to zoophyte - but remember, the Royal Society of London had by now been going strong for almost a century. Its Fellows, such as Isaac Newton, Robert Boyle, John Ray and John Quincy, all contributed much to the corpus.
And how did Johnson himself see his great work? On the one hand, modestly: he defines lexicographer as 'a maker of dictionaries, a harmless drudge.' In his Preface he admits to 'a few wild blunders, and risible absurdities', but hopes that some will recognise its value: 'no dictionary of a living tongue ever can be perfect, since while it is hastening to publication some words are budding and some falling away'. On the other hand, he was always rather pleased with himself about it. Boswell once suggested, 'You did not know what you were undertaking.' To which Johnson answered, 'Yes, Sir, I knew very well what I was undertaking - and very well how to do it - and have done it very well.' A self-appraisal richly supported by the judgement of posterity.
Peter Judge
Sources: Selections from Johnson's dictionary by E L McAdam and George Milne, Papermac 1982, and by Jack Lynch, Levenger Press/Atlantic Books 2004, both of which have very informative introductions. Also, the articles on 'Samuel Johnson' and 'Dictionaries' in the Encyclopaedia Britannica on DVD 2005.
The Society welcomes Frank Guerts, Colleen Sheen and Wendy Monaghan as new full members, Connie Clement, Lyn Pysden and Gail Bird as associates, and Leonard Wise as a student member.
Canberra Society of Editors conducts training sessions throughout the year to provide ongoing training for editors who wish to maintain and/or advance their editing and publishing skills. These training sessions are also ideal for those wishing to enter the editorial field.
To launch the training program for 2005, two half-day training sessions have been planned:
• Copyediting: on Saturday, 7 May, from 9.00 am to 1.30 pm, Helen Topor will provide you with basic information about the skills and tools required for this key element in your work. Register by 29 April if you would like to attend.
• Working with Designers and Printers: this course has had to be postponed. It will now be held on Saturday, 16 July, from 9.00 am to 1.30 pm. Philippa Hays and Julie Bradley will provide some essential information to assist you in this aspect of your role. Registration now closes on Friday, 8 July.
All the information you need about content, cost and registration can be found on the web Notice Board at <www.editorscanberra.org>.
Further training sessions will be held during the year, so please keep an eye open for training news on our web Notice Board and in The Canberra Editor.
I welcome any feedback on the training sessions we have held and your ideas for future training. Find me at <shirley@ozonline.com.au>.
Shirley Dyson, Training coordinator
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 May 2005 and the copy deadline for the next issue is 29 April.
The editor welcomes contributions using Word for Windows, by email to ara.nalbandian@defence.gov.au
If by snail mail, then send them on a floppy disk, to Canberra Society of Editors, PO Box 3222, Manuka ACT 2603. If mailing, always provide a printout as well.
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