Friday, September 18, 2009

Editor/Publishing Jokes

There seems to be a dearth of jokes portraying the editing profession. We editors practice an intense vocation. Over years and years of copy-editing and proofing, so much grammatical crud deposits upon us that we begin to resemble intellectual gargoyles - with eyeglasses and pens - poring over parchments with a sense of hellish vengeance. Every day you learn something new and every day some standard changes. The learning curve is unending and arches over a limitless stylistic landscape. Humour, in the life of an editor, if any, is dark and grammatically correct. But there is no denying that our obsessive-compulsive profession has its moments of quintessential humour, laced with shock, awe, irony, disgust and downright despair. I hereby 'solemnly' declare -- yes, editors can be funny too! (in a weird sort of way) :)

My colleague R was inspired to search for jokes from our profession after reading my previous post about Emma and her numbskull suitor. It was a not an easy task. However, she unearthed a few good ones. I'm reproducing one here and giving the link to a few more collected by Picapolemics.

A reporter dies and goes to journalist heaven, where St. Peter issues him a harp and a set of moderate-sized wings. "These seem kind of small," the reporter complains. "Well," says St. Peter, "Wing size here is determined by how much abuse you suffered in your earthly life. See that guy with the butterfly-sized wings? He was a publisher. And the person with condor-sized wings? She was a night city editor."

Just then a squadron of F-16s roars overhead, forcing the two to hit the dirt.

St. Peter stands up, dusts himself off and mutters: "Damn copy editors."

See more here - http://www.geocities.com/picapolemics/jokes.html

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Fraandships

Emma got a friend request on Orkut that said, "Your eyes is very attractive." She turned down the request because of wrong subject-verb agreement.

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Em dash

A dash that is of the width of one 'm'.

HTML — &mdash or &#8212
Chicago — 6.87
Wikipedia — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Em_dash#Em_dash

Usage:
Has several different kinds of uses. Basically used to set off a section in a sentence that has an independent meaning or a 'life of its own' and adds some meaning to the rest of the sentence. It does the task that can normally be done by a comma, parenthesis or a colon.

(I'm not giving any examples here coz the Internet is full of examples.)

As an editor and a writer, I hate the current hegemony of the em dash in books and newspapers. It is almost vulgar the way newspaper editors all over the world are resorting to the em dash instead of investing some intelligence to use the correct punctuation. When you have perfectly good grammatical tools for the purpose, why use em dashes? Em dashes are taking over commas and colons, and in some cases, over ellipses and semi-colons. Also, I hate not having single spaces on both sides of an em dash.

Em dash is a beautiful dash. Lets use it, not abuse it. I believe that an em dash is best used for major and impactful setting-off, rather than minor or customary setting-off, which can be taken care of by commas and colons and the like.

One of the better definitions is given by this website — "...is used to show a break in thought or a shift in tone."

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Tips for Academic Writers - 1

  • Ask the publishing house what referencing style do they follow - APA, MLA or house style. Style your references and citations accordingly. Ask the publishing house for a copy of their house style guide and any other guidelines for authors/editors that they might have.

  • Please stick to one kind of spellings and usages - British or American - and mention this to your publishers when you submit the manuscript.

  • If you quote someone directly in your text, please give the page number in the citation (even if the quote is just a few words). By page number, I mean the page number of the page of the referenced source from where the quote has been taken. This means that you have to be meticulous in your pre-writing research.

  • Make sure that you are clear about the level that each heading and sub-heading (sections and subsections) in your text belong to. Make sure that the editor can at one glance distinguish between headings 1, 2, 3, etc. Use the styling option in MS Word or manually change the font size and style of the levels. It would even help if you insert tags before your headings indicating what level that heading belongs to, e.g., [heading 1] The Crisis of Healthcare.

  • Every table, figure, graph, illustration, photo, etc. should have a title/caption and a source. If the item is your own creation, please mention that. If all items are your own creations, mention that in the preface. And as far as possible, each of these elements should be cited and there should be some text or call-out that point to each element. (The element should be placed after the call-out.).

  • Photos - photos and scanned illustrations are tricky. For a photo to be print-worthy, it has to be scanned in high resolution, ideally 300 dpi plus. Consult your commissioning editor or production editor on what resolution and what file format they can accept.

  • More about photos - All photos, illustrations, maps, etc., should be covered for copyrights, permissions and other legalities. They should be backed by permission from their creators, publishers, and, in case of maps, from the concerned government. For instance, the maps of India should present clarity on the territorial boundaries of India and be vetted by the Surveyor General of India. Clarify with your production editor/commissioning editor about the kind of permissions you require for each element.

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

En Dash

A dash that is of the width of one 'n'.

HTML Code – &ndash, &#8213
Chicago 6.83
Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/En_dash#En_dash

Signifies:
  • Relationship → proposition―hypothesis relationship; Hindu―Muslim unity.
  • Range → 10―15 years; pp. 125―58.

Synonyms for Above and Below

Above: before, foregoing, aforementioned, aforesaid, aforestated, antecedent, preceding, prior, previously.

Below: next, afterwards, subsequent, succeeding, following, ensuing, later.

Sunday, July 19, 2009

What is a good line-end word break?

On dividing a word at the end of a line:

Break the word at a syllable. For instance, if the sentence ends with 'organization', you may break it at any of the following:
Or-
Organ-
Organiz-
Organizat-

Also see this excellent guide from Dictionary.com - http://dictionary1.classic.reference.com/writing/styleguide/division.html

Its vs It's

Its = The dog's tail (possessive pronoun).
It's = It is (contraction).

See more: