tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-276062112024-03-19T19:18:47.831-04:00words / myth / ampers & virguleoccasional essays on working with words and pictures<br>—writing, editing, typographic design, web design, and publishing—<br>from the perspective of a guy who has been putting squiggly marks on paper for over five decades and on the computer monitor for over two decadesDick Margulishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10169512038331158003noreply@blogger.comBlogger422125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27606211.post-14316378554109863682021-12-23T06:02:00.000-05:002021-12-23T06:02:00.176-05:00BLOG MOVED<p> My website was getting gray around the temples, but now I have a <a href="https://www.dmargulis.com/" target="_blank">spiffy new one</a>, and you can find any newer blog posts <a href="https://www.dmargulis.com/blog/" target="_blank">there</a>, if I get around to writing any.<br /></p>Dick Margulishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10169512038331158003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27606211.post-24311716342258332702021-05-04T11:40:00.001-04:002021-05-04T11:40:57.351-04:00Comma—chameleon<p> This is a brief technical essay for editors. Writers are free to listen in.</p><p>Why do we argue, er, debate, er, discuss commas so often? Why do we mostly all agree about one comma and have widely divergent views about another comma? (Okay, there are only three possible views for any given comma: needed, forbidden, and optional; so maybe "widely divergent" is the wrong formulation.) Why do editors insist on the rightness of their view?</p><p>Relax. There's room for more than one approach, and readers adapt smoothly and without confusion. You will be a better editor if you acknowledge that there are different ways to approach comma usage that are equally valid.<br /></p><p>Consider: We understand that the ur-comma was a breath mark, pure and simple. It was an aid to the lector, when few were literate and reading was done from the pulpit. But also remember that some modern writing is meant to be read aloud, whether to children or to a theater audience or at a poetry slam.</p><p>I recall an interview on NPR with Robert Alter, when he was still working on his translation of Genesis or perhaps when he had just completed it. The phrase that struck me, as he was explaining his frequent use of repetition and reduplication, was that "some people read with their eyes, and some people read with their ears."</p><p>So that's one axis: Do you use commas strictly analytically (following formal rules), or do you use them to guide the reader in the intended prosody of the sentence? Obviously, you want to have one consistent approach in a given text, and if you only ever edit that same kind of text (academic work in the humanities, say), then you will always use the same approach. But other kinds of texts may benefit from using a different approach.</p><p>Now let's look at the other axis, which extends from close punctuation (close-p) to open punctuation (open-p). Close-p is characterized by more punctuation in general than open-p, more commas and more semicolons, in particular. Open-p is characterized by a minimalist approach to commas, semicolons, and colons. If it is has more of anything, that would be the dash.</p><p>I've taken a stab (based on pure guesswork, mind you) at placing various sorts of prose on this plane I've defined. You might place them differently or think of better examples, and that's fine. <br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUQeCraNrg8kGFOk4HWMMkK0rTDULr3oJ71lxjKD-YITaNlsuTm5udQX8fB2bAHDU-iK8mdpV1X7zcnihtNggmw6oX7P-_pvl4XIF3R6zniHbDEZ59-rldRG0LK6PTKFaLltaP/s1692/CommaPlane.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1408" data-original-width="1692" height="328" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUQeCraNrg8kGFOk4HWMMkK0rTDULr3oJ71lxjKD-YITaNlsuTm5udQX8fB2bAHDU-iK8mdpV1X7zcnihtNggmw6oX7P-_pvl4XIF3R6zniHbDEZ59-rldRG0LK6PTKFaLltaP/w395-h328/CommaPlane.png" width="395" /> </a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><p>My main point is that all of these exist in the world, and chaos has not ensued. So saying, as some editors are wont, that style guide A or style guide B is the gospel handed down from above and all other possible approaches are wrong does not seem productive to me.</p><p>What makes sense to me is to realize that all of these styles are valid in specific contexts and that to the extent an editor can let go of the idea that one style is better than another in some absolute sense and can instead embrace the idea of choosing a punctuation style that suits the text at hand, that person becomes a better, more versatile editor.</p><p>We can still use analysis to describe the reason for using or omitting a particular comma, but we can do it in the context of understanding the range of possible styles.<br /></p></div><br /><p><br /></p>Dick Margulishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10169512038331158003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27606211.post-91088955632252090252021-01-21T09:00:00.002-05:002021-01-21T09:00:45.160-05:00The lowly speech tag<div data-contents="true" style="text-align: left;"><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="1v83r" data-offset-key="ek4qs-0-0"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="ek4qs-0-0"><p><span data-offset-key="ek4qs-0-0"><span data-text="true">I think it's time for a general reconsideration of the convention around commas and speech tags. I'm sensing some grumbling among the ground troops (fellow editors), and I think it may be time for some brave style guide author or three to tackle the problem.</span></span></p></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="1v83r" data-offset-key="6gnkh-0-0"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="6gnkh-0-0"><p><span data-offset-key="6gnkh-0-0"><span data-text="true">Here's how I see it. In the sentence "Juanita said 'I'm coming too,'" the quotation is a clause that is the direct object of the transitive verb <i>said</i>. Simple subject-verb-object (SVO) order, the canonical order in English. If, for variety's sake, we sometimes switch to OSV order ("I'm coming too," Juanita said.), we need a comma between the quotation and the speaker. Similarly, if we switch to OVS order ("I'm coming too," said Juanita.), we need a comma. And if we go all weirdlike and use VSO (Said Juanita, "I'm coming too.") we need a comma. In all three cases, we need the comma because of the inversion and not because of the presence of a quotation.</span></span></p></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="1v83r" data-offset-key="3fd99-0-0"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="3fd99-0-0"><p><span data-offset-key="3fd99-0-0"><span data-text="true">Now at some point (I haven't been able to pin down when this happened, but I want to say post 1900), writers started to reanalyze the situation and came up with the "rule" that there is always a comma between the quotation and the rest of the sentence. So they back-applied this idea to standard SVO sentences and we ended up with "Juanita said, 'I'm coming too.'" And that's the rule we all learned in school. Quite recently (<a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Constructing_Narratives/AojLv--TyfoC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22speech+tag%22&pg=PA13&printsec=frontcover" target="_blank">2005 is the first example I can find</a>, but that's probably not really the first time), we started calling the SV or VS part a speech tag, and now people debate whether something is or isn't a speech tag and therefore does or doesn't require a comma. But I think this is just a result of not analyzing the sentence grammatically in the first place.</span></span></p></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="1v83r" data-offset-key="6dsa1-0-0"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="6dsa1-0-0"><p><span data-offset-key="6dsa1-0-0"><span data-text="true">I think that if we start consistently dropping the comma in SVO constructions, we'll all be happier, and the style guides will catch up eventually.</span></span></p></div></div></div><p style="text-align: left;"> </p>Dick Margulishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10169512038331158003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27606211.post-57271957149804122312021-01-05T11:26:00.011-05:002021-02-02T08:01:43.118-05:00Judging a book by its . . . no, not just its cover<p style="text-align: left;"> For
most of my life, the public was willing to trust experts—in whatever
field—to render judgment on what was better or worse (an argument, a
product quality, an artistic work). The zeitgeist has shifted, and now
the cultural norm is to distrust experts and reject expertise as a basis
for judgment. This applies to book production as much as to anything else.</p><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><p style="text-align: left;">So if you have never taken the time to notice or have
never been exposed to high-quality books in the past and all you have
is the book in hand, with no formal education or training in print
production, you
might pick up a book in isolation and pronounce it well made. Okay,
fine. If a hundred people pick up a book in isolation and pronounce it well made, then well made it is, according to public opinion.</p></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><p style="text-align: left;">But now let me approach the question from an expert's perspective.</p></div></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><p style="text-align: left;">Over
the last fifty years, give or take, older, more expensive production
technologies have given way to newer, cheaper technologies. At the same
time, automation has raised the bottom (made it easier for unskilled
workers to turn out acceptable work). The average quality has gone up,
but the level of quality that top publishers used to fund has largely
disappeared in the interests of lowered costs and higher profits.</p></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><p style="text-align: left;">The
rationalization of publishing by the kids who came home in the 1980s
with their freshly minted MBAs and said "Dad, let's take the company
public; we'll make a killing" has resulted in a world in which the only
books publishing executives look at are their accounting books. No one
is competing on the basis of the look and feel of the finished product
anymore.</p></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><h3 style="text-align: left;"> Judging the physical object</h3><p style="text-align: left;">A given title might be printed in any of several different ways. </p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>It might be a print-on-demand (POD) book. This is a book printed one at a time in response to an online order. It is different from the book it follows down the production line and from the book that follows it. The publisher was offered very little choice in terms of paper quality. The machine operator is not a printing professional and, even if they are, does not have the opportunity to calibrate the color printing for the cover. The printer makes money while the machine is running, so there is little opportunity to calibrate even the black printing.</li><li>It might be digitally printed by a book manufacturer. This process uses basically the same equipment as the POD process. But as several copies are going to be printed at the same time, the operator has the opportunity to make needed adjustments to ensure quality, and the publisher is given a much wider range of paper choices.</li><li>It might be printed on an offset press. This is a method used for higher production volumes. Some offset presses are sheet fed, meaning the paper comes to the printer as large sheets on a pallet, and the press lifts one sheet at a time off the stack. Some offset presses are web presses, meaning the paper comes on a continuous roll and is cut into sheets at the delivery end of the press, after it is printed. Web presses run at higher speeds than sheet-fed presses. They are often (not always) less precise.</li><li>And there are a variety of other technologies, including high-speed inkjet web presses on one end of the spectrum and slower-than-molasses Espresso Book Machines on the other end (the kind you can see in a large bookstore where you bring in your own book on a thumb drive and they print it for you).</li></ul>The printing technology can have an effect on quality, so if you pick up a book to apply the criteria below, know that a different copy of the same book, sold through a different channel, might have been produced differently. (Was it purchased by clicking a link on Amazon? Was it purchased at an airport bookstore? Was it purchased at a chain bookstore? An independent bookstore? Direct from the publisher?)<p>In addition, there are several ways a book might be bound.</p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Softcover (available in several configurations)</li><li>Cloth (hardcover with cloth-covered boards, available in several configurations), with or without a dust jacket<br /></li><li>Image-wrap (hardcover with an image printed on it)</li></ul><p>With that preamble, and with a stack of books of varying ages and categories in front of you, here are the factors you should practice observing:</p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Pick up the closed book and look at all three cut edges. Are the pages flat or are they wavy? Is the book rectangular (check with a square)?</li><li>Lay the book on a table. If it's a softcover, does it stay closed, or does the cover curl up? If it's a hardcover, is the cover flat against the book or arched? How does the thickness and stiffness of the cover compare with other books of the same general type?</li><li>Is the design of the cover appropriate for the book's genre?</li><li>Is the cover attractive? Is it executed well? Does it look professional? Does it include all the text and graphic components expected for the type of book it is (shelving category on the back cover, bar code, publisher name)? Is the author's name spelled correctly? Does the title on the cover match the title on the title page? <br /></li><li>Open the book to the middle. If it's a softcover, is it a perfectbound book (pages glued to the spine) or does it open flat (cover separated from the back of the pages). If it's a hardcover, does it lie flat or snap closed?</li><li>Is the paper a pleasing color, texture, and weight, or does it seem a bit off, a bit too cheap?</li><li>Grasp a single leaf in the middle of the book and hold it up to a light. Is the type on the back of the page perfectly aligned with the type on the front of the page? That is, are the margins identical at the top and outside, or is one page just a smidge above or to the outside of the other? This is called backup; and if they're not the same, the flaw is called a backup error.</li><li>Now riffle through the whole book, keeping an eye on the running head (top line of text). If it moves up and down as you flip the pages, this is called head bounce. Riffle again, watching the outside margin for edge bounce.</li><li>Do the lines of type within the page exactly back up? This is only checkable if the two pages are just straight paragraphs of text. A lazy designer may feather the lines apart on one page to make the bottom margins align, but this is a serious design no-no.<br /></li><li>Now look at a page overall. Do the margins seem well proportioned and ample, or is there too much type crammed on the page for comfortable reading?</li><li>Half-close your eyes so you're looking through your lashes at a blurred page. Is the rectangle of type a uniform gray, or is it spotty, with light areas and dark areas?</li><li>Do facing pages balance (come to the same depth, so the bottom margins are the same across the spread)?</li><li>Are there widows (last line of a paragraph at the top of a page) and orphans (first line of a paragraph at the bottom of a page). Orphans are generally permissible in fiction, so you wouldn't deduct points there.</li><li>Looking at the type a bit more closely, are there ladders (three or more lines in a row that end with a hyphen), stacks (two or three lines that begin or end with the same word), rivers (noticeable streaks of white where the word spaces on several successive lines happen to line up), pigeonholes (huge word spaces), runts (very short lines at the end of a paragraph), bad breaks (hyphenated compounds where one of the components is also hyphenated at the end of a line; words misdivided at the end of a line; awkwardly broken names, and so forth)?</li><li>Was care taken with the copyediting and typesetting in general, so that punctuation is consistent and helpful to the reader, proper typographer's quotation marks, dashes, and ellipses are used, and so forth? Or did the designer just dump a half-edited Word file into the pages without giving it a second thought?</li><li>Is the typography and overall design of the pages consistent with the content of the book? Is it overdesigned to the point that the design elements distract from the content? Or is it underdesigned to the point that reading is annoying and uncomfortable? Is the design, in other words, interfering in the conversation between author and reader?</li><li>Flip through the book. Is <i>foreword</i> spelled correctly? Is <i>acknowledgments</i> (US) or <i>acknowledgements</i> (elsewhere) spelled correctly? Are the preliminary pages (<i>prelims</i>) numbered with lowercase roman numerals so that the book proper can begin on page 1 with arabic numerals? Does the copyright page contain all of the expected information? Does the book have an index (not all genres have indexes) that seems proportional to the text and well thought out?<br /></li></ul><p> Those are some of the factors a contest judge takes into account. Spend a few minutes examining some books yourself, and see what you can observe.<br /></p></div><br /></div>Dick Margulishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10169512038331158003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27606211.post-44595078474278439942021-01-03T19:47:00.004-05:002021-01-03T19:47:40.288-05:00Standing type<p><span class="d2edcug0 hpfvmrgz qv66sw1b c1et5uql rrkovp55 a8c37x1j keod5gw0 nxhoafnm aigsh9s9 d3f4x2em fe6kdd0r mau55g9w c8b282yb iv3no6db jq4qci2q a3bd9o3v knj5qynh oo9gr5id" dir="auto"></span></p><div class="bi6gxh9e"><span class="d2edcug0 hpfvmrgz qv66sw1b c1et5uql rrkovp55 jq4qci2q a3bd9o3v knj5qynh oo9gr5id">I
lost track. I produce an annual directory. As directories go, it's not
large—under 300 pages in 6″ × 9″ format. But I was looking forward to
splashing a diagonal sash across the cover bragging that this was the
10th edition, only to have the client point out that we started down
this road in 2011, not 2012, so it's actually the 11th edition. Dang.
Missed my chance last year. <br /></span></div><div class="bi6gxh9e"><span class="d2edcug0 hpfvmrgz qv66sw1b c1et5uql rrkovp55 jq4qci2q a3bd9o3v knj5qynh oo9gr5id">Most
of my clients are self-publishing authors with one or at most two or
three books in them. So it warms my cockles to know that I've been
providing good service to one customer for eleven years. He's happy,
because publishing this book has increased his consulting business
several-fold over the years. I'm happy because why wouldn't I be? <br /></span></div><div class="bi6gxh9e"><span class="d2edcug0 hpfvmrgz qv66sw1b c1et5uql rrkovp55 jq4qci2q a3bd9o3v knj5qynh oo9gr5id">But
I was thinking about the production process. Here's how we do it. I
export Word files from the InDesign file used the previous year. He
updates the Word files with tracking on. I copy the tracked changes back
into the InDesign file, update this and that, and we're good to go for
another year. In terms of physical inventory, this is frictionless and
weightless. <br /></span></div><div class="bi6gxh9e"><span class="d2edcug0 hpfvmrgz qv66sw1b c1et5uql rrkovp55 jq4qci2q a3bd9o3v knj5qynh oo9gr5id">But
it wasn't always so. The way this kind of catalog work used to be done
(think of telephone directories or auto parts catalogs) was with
<a href="https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100527766" target="_blank">standing type</a>.
If you have a vague notion of what a Linotype slug looked like—a bar of
metal the thickness of the type's point size, the length of the printed
line, and a bit less than an inch high—imagine the size and weight of a
single page of a phone book. Now imagine that multiplied by the number
of pages in, say, the Chicago White Pages or the Manhattan Yellow Pages
(the Red Book, if you remember that far back). Imagine the cost of all
that metal held in inventory, plus the space to keep it all within
reach. Because as new listings and address changes came into the plant
every workday, someone had to pull that page of type and make
corrections so that when the date came around each year to print the new
directory, the pages were ready to be locked into chases so new
stereotypes could be made and mounted on the press.</span></div><div class="bi6gxh9e"><span class="d2edcug0 hpfvmrgz qv66sw1b c1et5uql rrkovp55 jq4qci2q a3bd9o3v knj5qynh oo9gr5id">Standing
type tied up many millions of dollars in inventory before electronic
typesetting came on the scene in the 1970s. Printers were all too happy
to bid it good riddance.</span></div><div class="bi6gxh9e"><span class="d2edcug0 hpfvmrgz qv66sw1b c1et5uql rrkovp55 jq4qci2q a3bd9o3v knj5qynh oo9gr5id">I
just thought I'd say a little something about it before the term slips
into complete obscurity. Google Image Search has no idea what to do with
it. Neither do the multiple dictionaries indexed by onelook.com. But
now you know about it.</span></div><div class="bi6gxh9e"><span class="d2edcug0 hpfvmrgz qv66sw1b c1et5uql rrkovp55 jq4qci2q a3bd9o3v knj5qynh oo9gr5id">Happy New Year.</span></div><p></p><div class="" dir="auto"><div class="dati1w0a ihqw7lf3 hv4rvrfc ecm0bbzt" id="jsc_c_gpl"><span class="d2edcug0 hpfvmrgz qv66sw1b c1et5uql rrkovp55 a8c37x1j keod5gw0 nxhoafnm aigsh9s9 d3f4x2em fe6kdd0r mau55g9w c8b282yb iv3no6db jq4qci2q a3bd9o3v knj5qynh oo9gr5id" dir="auto"></span></div></div>Dick Margulishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10169512038331158003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27606211.post-63093255781701369222020-10-15T14:30:00.000-04:002020-10-15T14:30:23.713-04:00Mycelia of hatred<p>I've been thinking (always dangerous, I know). A common metaphor for hatred, bigotry, and discrimination of all kind is that a wind-borne seed falls on fertile ground and sprouts and blossoms. Another metaphor is that a spark ignites tinder and is fanned into a raging fire.<br /></p><p>I think neither of those is quite right. If we've learned anything in the last four years, it's that the hatred has always been there. It doesn't need a seed or a spark to bring it into existence.<br /></p><p>So let me propose a different metaphor, one that might actually have some predictive value: Hate is a fungus. More specifically, each type of hate, each type of domination and subjugation and indifference to the suffering of others is a fungus. And as with actual living fungi, there are no constraints on the emergence of new species to feed off of new substrates.</p><p>We think of the forest floor as being infiltrated with the mycelia of all manner of mushrooms. But in truth all kinds of soils are filled with fungal mycelia. They spread quickly and broadly, with some individual organisms spreading over many square miles. Yet we don't notice them until the season and weather provide just the right conditions for this vast network to send up the fruiting bodies we notice on our hikes. Yet they are there, spreading, absorbing nutrients and energy from their environment, all the time. </p><p>So it is with hatred. It spreads out of sight, underground. And when conditions are right, it emerges and becomes visible, forming clumps and clusters and great fairy rings of fruiting bodies that release another generation of spores to strengthen and magnify the population. When the conditions become unfavorable, the mushrooms disappear, but the mycelium continues to thrive out of sight.<br /></p><p>Other fungi spread above ground, forming the molds that digest abandoned buildings, roads, and the rubber dust cast off as your tire treads wear. But some of these are thin, invisible films that coat (and shield) the visible objects in our environment. White privilege comes to mind.</p><p>Okay, so much for the metaphor. But my serious point is that we have mathematical models for the growth of mycelium. And if I'm right, the same equations describe the mycelia of hatred and can be used to understand how it spreads and grows. The idea of uprooting it like an unwanted shrub or spraying it like a weedy lawn would be understood to not apply, to be the wrong approach. Instead, society could focus on managing the conditions that lead to outbreaks. Fungi are devilishly hard to eradicate, but they can be managed.<br /></p>Dick Margulishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10169512038331158003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27606211.post-52053924096516286462018-05-27T13:47:00.001-04:002018-05-27T13:47:07.655-04:00What you should expect when you ask for editing<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"> <span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">In a discussion on Facebook, a new editor said that in a copyediting course she had taken, the instructor was a strict prescriptivist about grammar. She wondered how strictly she should enforce the "rules of grammar" when editing.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">In the ensuing discussion, she was advised that some of what she had learned were what are called zombie rules (I think Geoff Pullum, on Language Log, is responsible for that turn of phrase), rules like not splitting an infinitive and other relics of the ill-begotten attempt in centuries past to make English grammar conform to Latin grammar. (Spoiler: it doesn't.)</span></span></span><br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><br /></span></span></span>
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">The young editor asked how to identify these zombie rules, and in the context of the discussion, this is what I said. I thought it might be helpful to others, so I'm posting it here as well:</span></span></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">As
several other people have already commented, it's good to follow
linguists and editors trained in linguistics. The modern (i.e., since
late nineteenth century) idea of "grammar" is that it's a description of
the language as it has evolved, not a set of arbitrary rules endeavoring to tell people how they should speak ("grammar" in the sense that schoolteachers use the word).<br /><br />That
said, one of the features linguists describe is register, sometimes
called diction. In natural speech communities in all cultures and
language groups, speakers distinguish between formal and informal
register (linguist John McWhorter commented recently on the strange
flattening of that distinction by a certain elected official who shall
here remain nameless). So, in a sense, the grammar of formal diction is
different from the grammar of informal diction, even though together
they compose the grammar of the language taken as a whole. And register
can be broken down further. The informal register you use with your
parents may differ from what you use with your peers or with your
toddlers, and the formal register used in accepting an award from the
local Rotarians may be different from what you would use to address the
Nobel awards banquet in Stockholm.<br /><br />Further, the way we write differs markedly from the way we speak, in any register.<br /><br />We
do expect schooling to teach students the dialect of the dominant
culture, the idea being that if they learn that, they will be able to
get a decent job and earn a living. And that's the genesis of the
schoolteacher's approach to grammar: follow these rules, and you won't
be thought stupid by rich white dudes. <br /><br />But that's
not the editor's role. We should take a more subtle approach: we know
the standard dialect (the dialect of the socioeconomic elite) and can
correct text to match that if we're hired to do so. But we can also
respect the fact that all speech communities have their own perfectly
valid dialects (each with its own various registers), and we can be
flexible enough to edit in those contexts too. (This comes up mostly but
not solely in the context of fiction.) <br /><br />If you
limit yourself to the minutiae of copyediting and proofreading and do
not wish to think hard about the questions of usage and style informed
by a passing familiarity with linguistic principles, then the general
idea is to do no harm: just fix the little stuff, and don't "correct"
the author on the basis of the kind of rule you're asking about here.
If, on the other hand, you also are charged with line editing or
substantive editing, then you do need to think about these questions.</span></span></span></blockquote>
If you are a careful writer with a distinctive voice, you should expect an editor to preserve that voice. If an editor tears apart your perfectly fine prose to make it conform to rules she learned in fifth grade, she has done you a disservice. You deserve better than that. Dick Margulishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10169512038331158003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27606211.post-79691474403348284592018-03-09T07:54:00.000-05:002018-03-09T07:54:21.911-05:00Switching hats, changing gears, taking your medsDear certain particular author (if this doesn't apply to you, then it doesn't apply to you),<br />
<br />
You have decided to publish your book yourself. Great. I'd love to help you do that. Please understand, though, that while writing a book requires all the free-flowing creativity you can muster if it's going to result in anything people will want to read, publishing is a business that requires a more disciplined creativity.<br />
<br />
If you are going to publish your book, then you are going to be a publisher, and that means you are running a business, not an atelier. You have to take off your writer hat and put on your publisher hat.<br />
<br />
And when you are wearing your publisher hat, I beg you, I implore you, at least until we get the product out the door, after which you can be your wild genius self once again, please take the meds your doctor prescribed.<br />
<br />
Thank you.Dick Margulishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10169512038331158003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27606211.post-70505480401368425782017-08-22T09:15:00.003-04:002017-08-22T09:15:56.860-04:00Making a point. Or three points. Or an ellipsis.<div data-contents="true">
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="fhvf8" data-offset-key="eunin-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="eunin-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="eunin-0-0"><span data-text="true">Someone asked a question today on Facebook, in an editing group, about a particular use of ellipsis points. The question had to do with whether there should be space before or after the ellipsis in that situation. The details of the question don't matter, but the question exposed a common fallacy.</span></span></div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="eunin-0-0">
</div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="eunin-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="eunin-0-0"><span data-text="true">People (and by people, I mean specifically authors and copyeditors) often confuse punctuation conventions with composition conventions. I want to take a moment to go back to first principles.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="fhvf8" data-offset-key="cbpbk-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="cbpbk-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="cbpbk-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="fhvf8" data-offset-key="38qdl-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="38qdl-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="38qdl-0-0"><span data-text="true">Punctuation is part of our writing system. While the marks and their uses have evolved over time, they predate printing, and their modern forms predate the typewriter, which was introduced in the latter part of the 19th c. There are only a few marks of punctuation, and you can write them all with a pen easily enough. So, purely from the writer's point of view, you can space your three dots any way you please.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="fhvf8" data-offset-key="aqcn2-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="aqcn2-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="aqcn2-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
The traditional compositor, standing at his type cases, had access to hundreds of different types to represent many alphabets (even in the 15th c., texts of mixed Latin, Greek, Arabic, and Hebrew were not uncommon) and all the various accented letters, ornaments, and so on, that might be called for by a book. Among these were variants on specific characters for use in different circumstances. Examples include small caps, dashes of different lengths (the handwritten dash is whatever length you write it; it's still a dash), a special-purpose types that might never occur in the manuscript but that were needed for a typeset book.</div>
<div data-contents="true">
</div>
<div data-contents="true">
</div>
<div data-contents="true">
<br />
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="fhvf8" data-offset-key="8b04a-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="8b04a-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="8b04a-0-0">Among the latter were dot leaders, the rows of dots typically used in a table of contents or in various other sorts of tables. These were styled in a few different ways. They might be spaced one em apart (an em is a square of type of the point size being used). Those were called one-em dot leaders. They might be spaced two to the em (two-em dot leaders). And they might be spaced three to the em (three-em dot leaders).</span></div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="8b04a-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="8b04a-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="8b04a-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="8b04a-0-0">When digital fonts and desktop publishing were being developed, computer programmers went to compositors to learn about typesetting. Somewhere, in some conversation, someone confused the three-em dot leader (…) with ellipsis points (. . .), which traditionally were spaced dots. That error became embodied in the Unicode standard, and the name of … is officially the horizontal ellipsis. However, traditional typesetters don't see it that way, and most professional compositors, to this day, will replace it with evenly spaced points that are also spaced, by the same amount, from surrounding text.</span><br />
<span data-offset-key="8b04a-0-0"><br /></span>
<span data-offset-key="8b04a-0-0">They will do this, if they are conscientious and detail-oriented, regardless of how the author and copyeditor have formatted the ellipses in the manuscript. The author is responsible for indicating the desired punctuation (an ellipsis), not for knowing composition conventions. The copyeditor, who probably ought to know something about composition but in many cases doesn't, should not get tied up in knots about whether there is a space before the …, after it, or both but should let the compositor take care of that detail.</span><br />
<span data-offset-key="8b04a-0-0"><br /></span>
<span data-offset-key="8b04a-0-0">I hasten to add that many books are produced by graphic designers who know less about composition best practices than most copyeditors. So practices have to be adjusted to circumstances. But in the ideal world, publishers would hire skilled compositors to set the type instead of relying on graphic designers.</span></div>
</div>
</div>
Dick Margulishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10169512038331158003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27606211.post-28589221238225701212017-07-06T07:58:00.003-04:002022-02-02T08:41:40.213-05:00Evoking an era in typeAs typesetting technology has evolved over the centuries, the practices of compositors have evolved as well, both in response to advances in technology and in response to economic forces. Any perceptive student of type, whether a designer or an antiquarian book collector or a reenactor in a period print shop, can look at a printed page and have a pretty good idea of what century it was printed in and perhaps what country, too.<br />
<br />
The lay reader may not focus on the details or have a comprehensive historical model in mind, but a skilled typographer can design a page that will evoke a particular time and place, at least subliminally, for any reader who takes in the page as a visual object in addition to seeing it as a repository for a stream of words.<br />
<br />
Recreating obsolete typesetting styles is not something that’s called for every day, and I don’t do it every day. But I’d like to show you three projects that illustrate what I’m talking about.
<br />
<h2>
19th c. America</h2>
Janice Campbell, at <a href="https://everyday-education.com/1857-mcguffey-readers/" target="_blank">Everyday Education</a>, wanted to publish a facsimile edition of McGuffy’s Readers. Mostly this consisted of cleaning up scans of the original pages, but the publisher wanted to include a modern introduction contextualizing the relevance of this series in the modern school environment.<br />
<br />
My challenge was to integrate the new frontmatter, including a title page, copyright page, table of contents, and the lengthy new introduction in a way that complemented the original pages, so that there would not be an abrupt and jarring transition. It was sufficient to choose a font that was similar enough to the original to give the page a similar color and feel overall but that still met modern standards for readability and legibility. The introduction was long, and I wasn’t trying to make reading it a painful experience.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="1" data-original-height="710" data-original-width="450" src="https://dmargulis.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/SixthEclecticReader_Page_020.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A scan of an original McGuffy's Reader page</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="1" data-original-height="710" data-original-width="450" height="640" src="https://dmargulis.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/SixthEclecticReader_Page_ix.png" width="405" /> </td><td style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A page from the modern frontmatter</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<h2>
17th c. England</h2>
The progenitor of the Horton family in America was one Barnabas Horton, born in England in 1600. Jackie Dinan spent years delving into primary sources from the period to produce an award-winning biography of her husband's ancestor, in which she quoted extensively from 17th c. documents.<br />
<br />
My first challenge was to ensure that I chose a typeface that existed and was used in England during the man's lifetime. When we think of the Colonial period in North America, we think of Caslon. After all, it was William Caslon's types that Benjamin Franklin used, right? But Caslon wasn't born until after Barnabas Horton died. So that choice would have been anachronistic. I ended up choosing a digital version of Jenson that closely follows the Jenson types English printers imported from the Continent in the 17th c.<br />
<br />
Then I wanted to evoke the kind of page layout and typesetting current during the era (using ligatures like ct and st, for example) but without intruding excessively on the reader's consciousness (as would be the case if I had also used the long s). I ended up with something a little bit affected, I'll admit, but I think it worked.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://dmargulis.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/London.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="785" data-original-width="540" height="400" src="https://dmargulis.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/London.jpg" width="275" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A page from <i>Leviathan, </i>published in 1651</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="1" data-original-height="424" data-original-width="450" height="376" src="https://dmargulis.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Barnabas.png" width="400" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A partial page from <a href="http://barnabashorton.com/" target="_blank"><i>In Search of Barnabas Horton</i></a> (Pynsleade Books, 2015)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<h2>
Mid 20th c. England</h2>
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Sarah Dronfield approached me about a <a href="https://www.saltsarkar.com/proofreading-across-the-black-waters/" target="_blank">project</a> to reissue an out-of-print novel published in England in 1940. She sent me a scan.</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="1" data-original-height="267" data-original-width="450" height="236" src="https://dmargulis.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/NovelScan.png" width="400" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Scan from <i>Across the Black Waters</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<br /></div>
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The normal way to reissue an old novel is just to apply a contemporary template. In this case, there was a request to match the format of the original, so I matched the margins and the style of the chapter opening.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="1" data-original-height="267" data-original-width="450" height="237" src="https://dmargulis.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/NovelNull.png" width="400" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A standard template applied</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Could I match the typeface? As a matter of fact, I could. I knew that the original was typeset using a Lanston Monotype machine, and I was able to track down an excellent match of the original font.</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="1" data-original-height="267" data-original-width="450" height="237" src="https://dmargulis.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/NovelFont.png" width="400" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The font matched</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
But this was still set using modern techniques the Monotype was not capable of. Could I match the spacing, particularly between sentences, and match the original line for line? Yes I could.</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="1" data-original-height="267" data-original-width="450" height="237" src="https://dmargulis.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/NovelLine.png" width="400" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A dead-on match</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
I proceeded to do a test for several pages, during the course of which I realized that the original book had been typeset by an inexperienced operator. England was in the war by then; perhaps the printer had to make do. Or perhaps the publisher put the job out to the low bidder, as publishers sometimes do. For whatever reason, this was shoddy work, far beneath what the equipment was capable of in the hands of a skilled operator.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
So I concluded that matching the original line for line, which would have been an expensive proposition, was not giving us what we wanted, which was to match the look and feel of the original but do it the way it should have been done in the first place.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="1" data-original-height="267" data-original-width="450" height="237" src="https://dmargulis.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/NovelGood.png" width="400" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The finished test</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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And that's what I'll do, as soon as the publisher's fundraising campaign succeeds.</div>
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Your eyes may not be attuned to the slight differences in the last few images, and that's fine. As I said, the point is to evoke a time and place subliminally, not overtly.</div>
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<br />Dick Margulishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10169512038331158003noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27606211.post-79044599930169195182017-04-04T21:25:00.000-04:002017-04-04T21:25:27.317-04:00A framework for thinking about book typography<span><span> <span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span>While typography
evolved from classical and medieval roots, the modern body of knowledge
that forms the basis for best practices in commercial (keyword that I'll
get to in a minute) book typograp</span></span><span><span><span>hy
really developed in the last few years of the 19th c. and the first few
decades of the 20th. Until the 1960s, <i>graphic arts</i> programs taught a
set of mechanical arts to bright kids who were not headed to college.
Today, these same kids become IT techs and staff the genius bar at the Apple store. The requirements were the ability to learn a bunch of arcane
facts, manual dexterity, and some amount of visual sense. You didn't
have to be a creative genius. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span><span>Graphic arts programs taught core skills—copyediting, markup (specifying type), typesetting, page makeup, imposition (later lithographic stripping), platemaking, press work, and bindery operations.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span><span>Beginning in the 1960s, roughly, a
parallel movement started training more artistically inclined students
in <i>graphic design</i>. Mostly, graphic designers were involved in
advertising, magazine layout, movie posters, and so forth—media where a
sizzling layout was more critical than readability of the text. With the
advent of desktop publishing, the demand for people trained in graphic
arts dried up. Today, there are lots of graphic design programs, but
good luck finding an old-style graphic arts program.</span><br /><br /><span>So
what do I mean by commercial book typography? I mean producing readable
text that follows a bunch of rules that were pretty standard across
publishing houses (balanced spreads, no widows, ladders, rivers . . . ). And if you did all that, the book was good enough to sell commercially.
It might not get you into the AIGA Fifty Books of the Year selection,
but you could hold your head up.</span><br /><br /><span>So when we talk
about learning book typography, we're really talking about that old
graphic arts curriculum, at least the parts of it that still apply, and
those same commercial standards. It's a learnable discipline for anyone
who meets those same basic requirements. It's not magic, but it does
take practice and either hands-on training or a lot of reading. </span><br /><br /><span>Now
I'll grant you that a lot of publishers today have stopped applying
those standards and have begun to accept pushbutton typesetting, with no
human intervention, as a way to cut costs. That's a reality in today's
world. But it's not what I think of when someone asks about book
typography.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span>Dick Margulishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10169512038331158003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27606211.post-21119784512749233452017-02-24T18:31:00.003-05:002017-02-24T21:46:43.011-05:00Jargon as shibboleth<div>
Yesterday, a colleague, a man who was trained in the law in his native England and has lived in Israel for many years, no dummy he, asked in an editing forum about the meaning of something he read in the Wall Street Journal: “ABB Ltd. said it would likely book a $100 million charge related to a ‘sophisticated criminal scheme’ it said was orchestrated by the
treasurer of its South Korea unit, who has gone missing.”</div>
“Just wondering what ‘book . . . a . . . charge’ means.”<br />
<br />
I replied that it was bizspeak for “show a
charge against earnings on the company's books.” He then said that having once been in charge of the books of a public company, he would have just said they had “written off” the amount.<br />
<br />
This led me to think about the way business reporters write (not all of them, certainly, but a significant percentage). I think the business
press is not unlike the sports press in its constant creation of
new shibboleths to separate those in the know from the unwashed
masses. If you don't keep up with the latest slang, the latest bizspeak, you're obviously not part of the in crowd, the people in the know, the winners. You're a loser. You're not welcome here.<br />
<br />
I can see how this attitude might evolve in a company that promotes based on social cues rather than actual job performance. But I'm an editor, not a corporate ladder climber or a business journalist. So my interest is in clear communication between author and reader. Unless the author is hellbent on selling as few books as possible to a narrow audience, I'm always going to recommend reducing the use of jargon and writing clearly and to the point. The book will be better for it.Dick Margulishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10169512038331158003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27606211.post-30955361145302835652016-06-07T13:51:00.001-04:002016-06-07T13:52:22.559-04:00Printers, publishers, and . . .Earlier this morning, on a mailing list, someone trying to sort out a
list of printers began to ask a question by positing "There are many,
many on-demand book printers/publishers online, some with very low
prices."<br />
<br />
I responded as follows:<br />
<br />
Stop. Right. There.<br />
<br />
You're dumping alligators, seaweed, hippopotamuses, and pond scum into
one bucket just because they all live in water. So let's try to sort
them out into categories. Then it will be much easier to compare
services and prices.<br />
<br />
<b>REGARDLESS OF WHAT COMPANIES CALL THEMSELVES
OR SAY THEY OFFER</b>, what we're interested in is what the are and whether
they provide the services we need. So let's use our own bafflegab-free
definitions and ignore the marketing materials.<br />
<br />
===============CLIP 'N SAVE=====================<br />
<ul>
<li> A publisher is someone who puts money at risk to produce and market a book.</li>
<li>
A publishing services company is someone who provides services such as
editing, design, indexing, or proofreading to publishers.</li>
<li> A book packager is a company that prepares books for publication on behalf of a publisher.</li>
<li> A printer is someone who owns printing equipment and accepts customer files for printing.</li>
<li> A book manufacturer is someone who prints and binds books under one roof.</li>
<li> Offset printing is printing from metal plates hung on a press and is typically used for 300 or more copies of a book.</li>
<li>
Short-run digital printing is using digital printing equipment to
produce one or more copies of a book for delivery to the publisher (or
to a fulfillment warehouse).</li>
<li> On-demand printing is using digital
printing equipment to produce a single copy of a book for direct
delivery to a retail customer on behalf of the publisher.</li>
<li> A print
broker is someone who accepts a job from a publisher and then forwards
it to selected vendors for the required services.</li>
<li> A vanity press
is a company that combines the services of a publishing services
provider and a print broker and overcharges for both, making it
impossible for a publisher that contracts with them to make a reasonable
profit. Otherwise known as pond scum.</li>
</ul>
===============CLIP 'N SAVE=====================<br />
<br />
Now, WITHIN A CATEGORY, it is possible to compare companies and
evaluate whether one provides better quality or better services than
another, and that can be a productive exercise.<br />
<br />
There are book
manufacturers who specialize in working with amateur publishers (high
school yearbook staffs, for example) and have customer service reps
(CSRs) who are adept at hand-holding.<br />
Some of these companies also do a
superb job of book manufacturing. Others tend to cut corners.<br />
<br />
In
contrast, there are book manufacturers whose CSRs are nothing more than
traffic managers (friendly, competent, polite traffic managers). Any
technical questions are forwarded to a technician, and the answer that
eventually comes back may or may not be clear. These companies work
directly with professional print buyers at publishing companies and with
professional book designers, customers who are expected to provide
trouble-free files for printing and clear specifications for the job.
Within this subgroup of book manufacturers, some companies focus on
quality and some focus on price.<br />
<br />
Similarly, with short-run
digital printers, there are companies that specialize in book
manufacturing for publishers, and there are others that specialize in
church cookbooks, machinery service manuals, and programs for the local
high school football awards banquets. And, oh yeah, if you have a book
of your weekly newspaper columns from the local shopper, they'll throw
that together for you too. So, again, you can compare on quality and
price.Dick Margulishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10169512038331158003noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27606211.post-62892069168638476622014-05-02T09:20:00.002-04:002014-05-02T09:30:54.555-04:00Instructions to authors who think an Excel worksheet is a tableWell, it has been a very long time since I posted anything, and for that I sort of apologize. I guess my allotted social networking time has been absorbed by Facebook. However, in a conversation on the InDesign list, something came up that leads to a blog post, so I can link to it later. That something is tables.<br />
<br />
This is directed to people who work in Excel a good deal of the time and who would like to see their worksheets reproduced in a book for which they are preparing a manuscript.<br />
<br />
<b>Print it.</b><br />
That's right. Print your worksheet. The part you want shown in the book. You probably know the size of the book page by now, and I'm guessing it is not 8.5 × 11 inches. More likely it is 6 × 9 inches or thereabouts. So set up your page margins to limit the printed area to, say 4.5 × 7.5 inches. (On US letter paper, you would do this by making the top and bottom margins 1.75 inches and the side margins 2 inches.)<br />
<br />
Okay, what you have now is approximately the way your worksheet will look in the printed book. It's permissible to run the table broadside (so the book has to be turned 90 degrees to read the table). The compositor may typeset your table rather than running it as an image of your actual worksheet, but the amount of type that can be squeezed into the page doesn't change much when that step is taken. So if the information on your test print is too tiny to read, then it will be too tiny to read in the book as well.<br />
<br />
The key thing to keep in mind is that your worksheet can have an enormous number of rows and columns, and you can navigate around it just fine on your computer monitor. But a printed table in a book is limited to the size of the printed page. You can't just select a large region of your worksheet and shrink it down to page size and expect it to be legible.<br />
<br />
<b>What does this mean to you as an author?</b><br />
It means that you have to think about the way information is organized for presentation to the reader. The way you have it organized now may perfectly suit your workaday purposes, but it may not work for your audience. So you need to select and organize the information in a way that will make sense to a naive reader. If you have a great deal of information to present, arrange it into a limited number of columns but allow it to run to a large number of rows. This will be printed on consecutive pages, and readers will understand it. If you instead have a limited number of rows running across a great many columns, there is no convenient way to make that comprehensible in a book. (Foldout pages are expensive and generally not available for short-run books. Trust me. Yours is a short-run book.)<br />
<br />
<b>What else?</b><br />
<b> </b>After you create a new worksheet organized for the reader's benefit, provide that as an actual Excel file to your editor. You may also want to provide an image of a table in your Word manuscript file, to show how and where you want the table to appear. But that is not sufficient in itself. The Excel file is needed as well, so the compositor has the table contents to manipulate and not just a picture that will then have to be typeset from scratch.<br />
<br />
<b>One more thing . . . equations!</b><br />
Another problem that sometimes arises is the confusion between Excel formulas and equations. If you are explaining to the reader how to set up a worksheet, by all means cite your formulas just as you have them. But if you are expressing a mathematical truth, use an equation editor, or at least don't complain when your editor uses one. As an Excel user, you probably don't think about whether variables are set in <i>italics</i> or not. But in traditional mathematical notation, the choice of type font carries information (real information, defined by Claude Shannon as that which resolves an uncertainty). A letter set in italics is a variable. The same letter set in roman is a constant. In boldface it's (usually) a vector or a matrix (depending on the context), and so forth. Greek letters are part of the picture, and faking them (using lowercase u instead of Greek μ, for example) is a no-no. In Excel, none of this is relevant. But for an equation on a book page, whether it's a display equation or part of running text, it's important. I'll leave it up to you and your editor whether you assign variable names to business quantities or spell them out in their entirety (<i>net profits </i>= . . . vs. <i>P</i> = . . .). Just follow the conventions and everyone will be happy.<br />
<br />
<b>Okay, that's it.</b><br />
Set up the table with the book page in mind and provide the file to the editor. Follow mathematical notation conventions. Just doing those three things will make the whole editing and production process much smoother for everyone.<br />
<br />
Thank you for your cooperation.<br />
<br />Dick Margulishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10169512038331158003noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27606211.post-28838088316692969012013-02-03T19:33:00.000-05:002013-02-04T10:56:23.662-05:00Where in the world is the Press DemocratI am exhausted from an all-weekend training seminar and therefore not in a civil mood toward anyone and shouldn't be posting at all so maybe you should just delete this before reading it as a kindness to me.<br />
<br />
In this McLuhanesque Global Village Virtual World Age of the Internet, there seems to be a presumption that no one cares where you are in the physical world. I cannot begin to tell you how many links I have followed to newspaper websites to learn about someone's local story (posted on Facebook, posted to a mailing list, posted wherever)—good news, funny news, sad news, or bad news—only to be left scratching my head because the newspaper can't be bothered with datelines or with any indication on the news page of where the paper is published.<br />
<br />
In today's episode, I followed a link from a mailing list post and then had to click twice more to find the About page, where I learned that the Press Democrat is published in Santa Rosa, in Sonoma County. Now it happens that I know enough geography to know that Sonoma County is in California, so I didn't have to read all the way to the end of the paragraph. But it would be so much simpler if the city where a paper is published were part of the header or footer of every page, as it is on a print edition.<br />
<br />
I know I cannot influence managers of newspaper websites to change their practices, but maybe by whining here I can influence you, when you post to a forum or a mailing list, to put at least the city and state where they live in your signature lines, to clue people in to where you are in the world.Dick Margulishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10169512038331158003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27606211.post-875597887436675552012-11-30T09:49:00.001-05:002012-11-30T09:49:50.081-05:00New interview on self-publishingTom Santos, one of the most active members in the Connecticut Authors and Publishers Association (CAPA) has a regular slot on his community access television station. He interviewed me in September, and I found the DVD of the show in the pile of mail that awaited me when we returned from our adventures in the Galapagos and Quito. I've just <a href="http://www.dmargulis.com/interview.asp">uploaded it to my website</a>. Take a look.Dick Margulishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10169512038331158003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27606211.post-76855946212213836842012-08-10T15:25:00.000-04:002012-08-10T15:25:53.568-04:00Kind words from a clientDear Dick,<br />
<br />
Although I am usually a careful researcher before I make a major move, I called you to help me compose my book on no more than instinct. <br />
<br />
What a great decision it turned out to be. I had an idea of how my aunt's 90th birthday celebration book should look, but I didn't know how to get there. With my cousins as my clients, I conducted interviews and wrote copy. That was the easy part. They gave me their albums of photos, some as old as my aunt, others hot off the digital camera,and I stayed up nights worrying about combining the two elements into the book of which we could all be proud. There was no doubt that I had to turn the next steps over to someone. That's when I contacted you.<br />
<br />
Our first meeting gave me the confidence that you could do it. As the weeks passed, I saw you take my materials and produce a result that I proudly presented to my aunt and cousins last week. Your experience, professionalism, creativity and easy-going nature made the process a pleasure. You even met my somewhat unrealistic deadline.<br />
<br />
Thank you for the wonderful book that my family will treasure for generations.<br />
<br />
Judy Goldwyn <br />
As You Recall<br />
46 Elder Street<br />
Milford CT 06460<br />
(203) 209-8098Dick Margulishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10169512038331158003noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27606211.post-51814577608524534212012-05-21T15:10:00.000-04:002012-05-21T15:10:44.068-04:00Bulgarian ignoble; Cleveland fustyOne of the strategies spammers use to get past Bayesian spam filters is to include, in their hidden text, lists of infrequently used words. The unedited list below from such an email contains gems of unintended poetry. As a writing exercise, you might select any string of six consecutive words from this list and construct a story that incorporates them.<br />
<br />
Without further ado . . .<br />
<blockquote>horsdoeuvre washout northern duty hebrews reverential. egghead indignant scholar leatherwork saucy nomenclature igloo desert mousetrap towboat print typewritten electret albeit ibidem condescension alternate divisible huge. quaint czechoslovak fallen chauffeur reverential adjudge grim authenticate stargaze haphazard. emulsification condescend scull armistice eighth grandiose lancaster peer derail. whiny malarial crazy centimeter v harry borax barbital clever conversion. basilica affix hearted staple thanatolog northumbria alabaman dumbbell nevada score sacrament reverential fetish dexter only shortcut vogue enemy habeascorpus. print yule lacie corpus atonal tall smug grasshopper pedigreed.<br />
<br />
headsmen. stick gypsy terrain binding.<br />
<br />
beth monaco mortician. catastrophe frontiersman refract scales locksmith. elsalvadore maam lifelong boom indignant burnout oratory candid live oceanside ivory berkshire keypunch extemporaneous centrist. krypton granny dowel ci superlative syllabi eighth motto. alsace delight riot job insinuate notorious damp rhodesia firebreak downcast principal provocation guillemot. alphameric architect cerebrate terrapin rubble zero accuracy homonymy hartford knob gyrfalcon you habitude fritter seismolog elm boast refresh contra candid irreverent portulaca.<br />
<br />
agony slat sclera advice historic galvanic mackinaw museum.<br />
<br />
highwayman bacterial spangle maiden administrate autocrat hyperbola fragmentary solace turk brine. polygyn torment chapel.<br />
<br />
grief mongolian beaker epistolatory elsalvadore rely.<br />
<br />
longsuffering saith cordage crease secondary creed pizzeria apparition astringent poetic morale let hightail emphases councilman prepare carob interpolate. stalactite clay proboscis duchess.<br />
<br />
logarithm hovel froze tangibly sovkhozy sweat arizona horsy crow penetrably pine decisive guillemot attest. booth cue dispensary technocrat khartoum subtract equivalent thessalonians madest java wed knapsack scrimmage pet machination defy girl large encode binaural luther. cent capacity eyewitness. loquacious elsalvadore symmetry eighth florentine prefab roommate wield waylaid lieu. jewelry scour chessboard dependent satchel genius divisor kennel georgia perorate prefix watt crease issue citadel lifetime noble spent flack bombproof testbed calibrate solace. altruism rind alway nevada southerner. distaff mandatory egypt elsalvadore leapt revolutionary.<br />
<br />
chap slag eradicate newfangled pastry meliorate gingham mutably perspicuous aloud. boredom atrophic astir vivid cohesive polity shrug exculpate antipodes budgetary yemen monk fritter privilege agrarian autonom eminencegrise atlanta stifle.<br />
<br />
nevada prisoner solder advocate bacterial sarsaparilla galore incommunicado crow turbaned ombudsmen sepulchral trapping minuscule kenyan accost yeomanry typic delivery. etch rear contour transfuse phobia drunk rhododendron are point.<br />
<br />
prerequisite red slander wingmen byte last frontiersman cilia scan slowdown notorious cambodian blink pendulous cue revelation wast counsel amble equal alabaman. reject hardline winsome atonal maelstrom reticulum mile genotype doest soignee icon pastor script samovar mimetic learn burrito crosstalk tether pour react. assiduous coast jewelled sprint eucalyptus.<br />
<br />
philadelphia testate topograph toll ovary rector. pension cytolog grapheme dynamite essential wastebasket fragment southerner reticulum rapture homogenize bulgarian histrionic bavaria viaduct ferry airmass decoy allergic carrel irrevocable. budgetary reception life plate cater unicef distort naval mousetrap tuba wheelchair treason sixteen tuft thwack flack chirp doctorate block heard.<br />
<br />
repentant astringent tie postpone mallet magnum terrain java suite siren. infectious gullibly solicitous inevitability defacto saguaro skewer glade boron multiplicity blest wheelchair inure roost commodity corral. tangibly orthopedist dispensary painstaking hartford mensurable passersby chairperson upgrade delight allay shlemiel blanch cortices. berkshire amphetamine outside matthew goblet soliloquies smash attach wont leatherwork python kerchief huddle. shamrock injure scad pathogenesis chew perfuse falsehood locale lewd prejudice amicably interpolate spearhead ionosphere had retrorocket sacrament declension entrance.<br />
<br />
whop bulgarian ignoble mutably elicit beam conciliate hocuspocus strip epa portulaca introductory blister tombstone swoop. dexter houseful fierce slab confidante submarine reject harrass wont astringent foothill hen burnout. success lounge sorption firebreak bureau. slowdown ducting. nihilist slug pantry. centigrade binaural tiff copyright facade ducting engross unicef pantomime. increase inhale kerosene surly.<br />
<br />
santaana ombudsmen alphameric chimeric egypt staircase scrota cleveland fusty propriety treasure trapping grandmother macaroni barbarian tablespoonful. infix buckeye repast atrophic. subtract palindrome mantrap orthopedist whop gaslight crewman lifetime bystander accuracy equidistant pleurisy o pyrrhic comely violet flightpath.</blockquote>Dick Margulishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10169512038331158003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27606211.post-3698217546127562142012-05-20T02:23:00.001-04:002012-05-20T02:26:34.266-04:00Why it's important to work with native speakers of the language you intend to publish inI am sitting in a hotel room in Trieste, which is at the moment in Italy, although it is walking distance to Slovenia and has flown many flags over the millenia, including its own as an independent city-state under UN protection after the Second World War.<br />
<br />
A city with such a varied history naturally has much to offer tourists, and we have scheduled a full day of sightseeing following the end of my wife’s conference. In her conference bag was a highly produced tourist guide in English, a large-format map with attractively designed blocks on the back describing suggested touring options. This is the official publication of the tourist agency and carries no advertising. Thought went into this.<br />
<br />
I am reading about James Joyce, who lived here twice. The writing and editing is fine. A native speaker of British English edited the copy for this translation. But the typesetting was done by someone who does not know English well. The text in the second column begins like this:<br />
<blockquote>Even his most famous work, “Ulys-<br />
ses”, was planned in Trieste, whe-<br />
re he also wrote some of its most<br />
significant chapters.</blockquote>There is no variety of English in which “where” is two syllables, but to someone who speaks a Romance language, “where” can look like two syllables.<br />
<br />
Certainly there are ways to avoid such traps. Choosing the correct hyphenation dictionary for the language you are typesetting is helpful, even if most compositors forget to do it. But being a native speaker is safer.Dick Margulishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10169512038331158003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27606211.post-41001099133200162852012-04-06T07:47:00.000-04:002012-04-06T07:47:18.721-04:00Book design is no laughing matter. Okay, it is.<a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/chip_kidd_designing_books_is_no_laughing_matter_ok_it_is.html?source=linkedin" target="_blank">Knopf book designer Chip Kidd’s TED talk</a>Dick Margulishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10169512038331158003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27606211.post-76772007614646042002012-03-21T16:42:00.000-04:002012-03-21T16:42:35.418-04:00Sproin-n-n-n-n-gMarch 19: PG Azalea<br />
<br />
March 20: Andromeda<br />
<br />
March 21: Forsythia; flowering quince budded with a couple flowers open<br />
<br />
Oh my, this is early.Dick Margulishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10169512038331158003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27606211.post-233566587482057862012-02-24T18:50:00.001-05:002012-02-24T18:52:42.406-05:00To be honest . . .I shouldn’t have to tell you this. Your parents should have taught you that honesty is the best policy. But maybe you forgot, or maybe you just suppressed it because it was hard to implement.<br />
<br />
But if you are going to invest months or years of your life in writing a book and seeking publication or thousands of dollars of your own money to self-publish, you really ought to be honest with yourself about why you want to do that.<br />
<br />
There are many reasons individuals give for writing books, and all of those reasons are valid. But the book has to match the reason. When you come to me and say you’ve written a novel, I expect the manuscript you send me to be a novel, not a thinly disguised vendetta against your ex or a memoir about how a lousy surgeon or a hack lawyer did you wrong. If you tell me you’ve written a how-to book, don’t send me a political screed. (And if you tell me you’ve written a political screed, don’t send me a how-to book.)<br />
<br />
Because I’ll find out. There will be no secrets that you can keep from a good editor. But lying to yourself and lying to your editor can put you in an awkward position: you’ve committed to publishing something entirely different from what you said it was going to be. And looked at in bright sunlight, when all is said and done it may not be a book that you want to spend time and money marketing, even though you’ve spent time and money writing it and publishing it.<br />
<br />
If your real passion is to stand on a soapbox and tell people in the park what a horrible place this world is and how you would make it better if you had the power to do so, then you may have no passion left when I excise your soapbox declamation from your action-adventure novel (because it’s out of place there).<br />
<br />
Before you start writing a book, decide why you want to write it.<br />
<br />
Honesty matters.Dick Margulishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10169512038331158003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27606211.post-40154144470891077862012-02-22T14:35:00.001-05:002012-02-22T14:37:28.468-05:00Logical punctuationThis post is about commas, periods, and quotation marks. If you are already stifling a yawn, just move along.<br />
<br />
In the United States, commas and periods go inside quotation marks, regardless of logic. Colons and semicolons go outside the quotation marks, regardless of logic. And question marks and exclamation points go in or out, depending on the logic. That is our convention. You learned it, or should have, in elementary school.<br />
<br />
In the UK (and other places where British English is written), the convention is that logic rules in all cases. Thus, a comma or period may occur outside the quotation marks if it is not part of the material being quoted.<br />
<br />
Fine. You knew that.<br />
<br />
And you may also know that some Americans, particularly people with some background in computer programming, would very much like it if American editors and typographers would switch to the British system, as this would greatly simplify the problem of rendering computer code unambiguously. But let’s not get into that issue just now.<br />
<br />
What I want to talk about here is the history of the divide between the U.S. and UK conventions.<br />
<br />
There are several stories floating around—urban myths—that setting the period inside the quotes arose because compositors might otherwise lose or break those fragile, small periods, back in the days of hand composition. I can tell you, having set type by hand myself, that this is nonsense. First, most punctuation occurs in the middle of a line of type, not at the end. Second, the period is no more fragile or likelier to be dropped than a quotation mark if it should happen to occur at the end of a line. There would be no reason for a compositor to care one way or the other. Please stop spreading that story.<br />
<br />
<b>So what’s the true story?</b><br />
The true story is that the divide is of recent origin. British typographers followed the same convention as American typographers well into the twentieth century. The switch to logical punctuation in the UK took place within the memory of people now living. I have not tracked down a definitive date, but the change did not occur until at least the 1930s and possibly a decade or more later, in any case long after the bulk of composition was done on machines, not by hand. Just as the British eventually adopted the metric system and we Americans dug in our heels, so too in this case, the right-pondians made a conscious decision to right what they felt was a logical abomination while we stayed true to the older system.<br />
<br />
But what was the point in the first place? I’m still digging, but my guess is that the principal consideration was aesthetic. With metal types, placing a period or comma after a quotation mark creates an unsightly gap in the line and thus a pigeonhole on the page. For most of the history of printing from moveable type, that has been something to avoid if possible. With modern typesetting software, the problem can be mitigated through prudent kerning, but that’s a quite recent development.<br />
<br />
Will we in the U.S. adopt the British system? Maybe in a few gigaseconds.Dick Margulishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10169512038331158003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27606211.post-30127650802856387942012-02-13T16:35:00.000-05:002012-02-13T16:35:27.972-05:00ComcastWhat part of “customer service” do they not understand? Enough said.Dick Margulishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10169512038331158003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27606211.post-5427005163058813532012-02-06T23:18:00.000-05:002012-02-06T23:18:08.049-05:00Good Goods at Yale Rep is the real goodsYale Rep is a little like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates. “You never know what you’re gonna get.” Well, that’s not entirely true. It is a repertory company, after all, and you can pretty much assume that when they do Shakespeare or Molière, you’re in for a good night of theater.<br />
<br />
But when they do a world première from a young playwright who recently graduated from Yale School of Drama—well, let’s just say the results can be uneven. We’ve seen our share of unmemorable first plays from playwrights who haven’t lived enough to know anything about life. Oh, you can expect a great set and brilliant staging, and a cast that gives it their all. But sometimes, frankly, there’s not a lot to work with.<br />
<br />
Tonight was not <i>that</i> night. Tonight was the other kind—the serendipitous discovery of a brilliant young playwright, who took a throwaway class exercise and fleshed it out into a wonderful entertainment. The playwright, mature beyond her years, is Christina Anderson, and attention must be paid.<br />
<br />
<i>Good Goods</i> is an actor’s play, with juicy roles all around, the kind of characters that are caricatures of themselves and really can’t be overacted. Everyone in the cast had fun (one more than the others, but I won’t spoil the surprise for you). And so did the audience.<br />
<br />
The set and the staging were up to the Rep’s high standards.<br />
<br />
Go. You’ll enjoy.<br />
<br />
And keep an eye on Ms. Anderson.Dick Margulishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10169512038331158003noreply@blogger.com0