Are you obsessive enough to be an editor?

Robyn Colman

Some editors, I have heard, worry about being right-angle people (my graphic-designer friend’s polite phrase for ‘anal retentive’). Of course editors are worriers by nature – can a good editor ever relax before a deadline and without a drink? But I think the real question is not ‘Am I too obsessive about things?’ but ‘Am I obsessive enough?’ So I have devised a little quiz to help you place yourself on the scale of obsessiveness.

Office
1(a) Do you like to line up the objects on your desk so that they are parallel or at right-angles to each other before you start work?

Yes

No

1(b) Do you need to line up the objects on your desk so that they are parallel or at right-angles to each other before you start work?

Yes

No

2 Do you clean your desk weekly or more often than weekly?

Yes

No

3 Have you sorted and stored your pens in different colour groups – all the pinks, all the greens, all the purples, all the reds, all the blues, all the blacks? (You don’t have pink or purple pens? Tsk.)

Yes

No

4 Have you sorted and stored your pencils in different capacities – 2B, 3B, blue pencil, etc.

Yes

No

5 Do you clean your eraser?

Yes

No

6 When you put a new toner or ink cartridge into your printer do you immediately order or buy another one?

Yes

No

7 Do you need to be restrained in shops like Officeworks, Pepe’s Papierie and kikki.K?

Yes

No

8 Do you back up more often than once a day?

Yes

No

9(a) Do you archive old work files from your computer?

Yes

No

9(b) Do you archive old paper files?

Yes

No

10 Do you have a book diary or a portable electronic diary?
both

Book

Portable electronic

Both

11 Have you been saving items specifically for your accreditation portfolio since 2003?

Yes

No

Home
12(a) Are your clothes stored by type (all trousers together, all shirts together, all t-shirts together, and so on)?

Yes

No

12(b) Are your clothes stored by colour?

Yes

No

12(c) Are your clothes by colour within type or by type within colour?

Yes

No

13(a) When you hang out washing, do you hang socks and pyjamas (if worn) in pairs?

Yes

No

13(b) When you hang out the washing, do you like to hang things in categories – all socks together, all shirts together, all tea towels together?

Yes

No

13(c) Do you like to match the colour of pegs for each item or pair of items (for instance, do you like to use the same colour of peg for each of a pair of socks, and two or three pegs of the same colour for each towel)?

Yes

No

14 Do you use an iron more often than ‘rarely’ or ‘almost never’?

Yes

No

15 Do you have more than one ‘miscellaneous cooking tools’ category – for example, one for spoons, ladles and whisks, another for wooden spoons and another for Teflon-coated implements?

Yes

No

16 Are books by the same author in your library shelved in order of publication or in alphabetical order of title?

Yes

No

17 Do you clean your glasses every time you put them on?

Yes

No

18 Do you always know where your house and car keys are?

Yes

No

19 Do you know the call numbers of your favourite radio stations in case the power goes off and the one-touch programming is lost?

Yes

No

20 Do you make lists?

Yes

No

21 When you leave the house or office, do you try to walk on or over the same number of cracks in the footpath with each foot?

Yes

No

Scoring
1(a)

Yes: 5

No: 0

1(b)

Yes: 5

No: 0

2

Yes: 5

No: 0

3

Yes: 5

No: 0

4

Yes: 5

No: 0

If you don’t have use numbered B pencils, deduct 5. HB is not good enough.
5

Yes: 5

No: 0

6

Yes: 5

No: 0

7

Yes: 5

No: 0

8

Yes: 5

No: 0

9(a)

Yes: 5

No: 0

9(b)

Yes: 5

No: 0

10

Book: 5

Portable electronic: 0

Both: 5

The scoring is not a mistake, it’s just that I have a prejudice against portable electronic organisers but respect someone who has a belt and braces approach.
11

Yes: 5

No: 0

12(a)

Yes: 5

No: 0

12(b)

Yes: 5

No: 0

12(c)

Yes: 5

No: 0

13(a)

Yes: 5

No: 0

13(b)

Yes: 5

No: 0

13(c)

Yes: 5

No: 0

14

Yes: 5

No: 0

15

Yes: 5

No: 0

16

Yes: 5

No: 0

17

Yes: 5

No: 0

18

Yes: 5

No: 0

19

Yes: 5

No: 0

20

Yes: 5

No: 0

Your memory may be good but what about the anxiety factor?
21

Yes: 5

No: 0

How did you go?
0–70: You need to worry more.

75–110: You are obsessive enough to be a good editor, though remember, it’s not just about being neat and clean. (There are also the Australian Standards for Editing Practice.)

115–135: You are mad — possibly too mad to be good at your job, but then again …

© Robyn Colman 2006
www.word-wise.com.au

Lost in globalisation

Pamela Hewitt

Editors are vulnerable to criticism every time we put fingertip to keyboard or pen to paper. The words we write are scrutinised, whether they are corrections to a manuscript, an informal email or even a scrawled note to our child’s teacher. Some people take a special delight in picking up errors made by editors.

The other day, I was accused of the egregious crime of misspelling. Now, I’m pleased to be alerted to any mistakes, even by an unsigned email that lacks a subject line. (Critics are bolder when anonymous, I find.)

The ‘error’ in this case was the spelling of the word enrol and its derivatives, which appear several times on my website. As many would know, this is not an error but a regional variation in English spelling. In Australian, New Zealand and UK English, among others, the word is enrol. In US English, it’s enroll.

Since I live and work in Australia, I use standard Australian spelling on my website and in my courses. Australians are exposed to a great deal of US text and so read it without difficulty. We also have many UK editions in our bookshops and the slight differences between North American or British English and Australian spelling present few problems for tri-dialectal Australian readers. The same is not always true in the opposite direction.

While most Australians read American and British English fluently, they don’t all have the ability to write it. It takes someone with an intimate knowledge of varieties of English to pick up all the words that have a different shade of meaning for the target audience.

The differences between US and Australian English come up in my interview with Australian author, Dorothy Johnston, in Issue Number 2 of The Fine Print. When one of her novels was republished in the US, she found that spelling variations were only the beginning of the task of English–English translation.

As it happens, the correspondence from my email critic was timely. I recently submitted an article for publication in a US journal and although changing the spelling of words for the US reader was a simple matter (color and organization, for example), I was surprised to find that the highly literate journal editor hadn't come across the term dogsbody (the closest US English equivalent is gofer, a word most Australians understand but few would use naturally).

I love the word dogsbody and didn’t know that it wasn’t in common use in the US. Rather reluctantly, I changed it to drudge. Not quite the same thing but close enough. I did a bit of digging and found that, although he didn’t invent it, James Joyce used dogsbody in Ulysses, and it seems to have taken on its modern meaning from about the time of the book’s publication in 1922.

He stopped, sniffed, stalked round it, brother, nosing closer, went round it, sniffling rapidly like a dog all over the dead dog’s bedraggled fell. Dogskull, dogsniff, eyes on the ground, moves to one great goal. Ah, poor dogsbody! Here lies poor dogsbody’s body.

James Joyce, Ulysses, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1973 (1922), p. 52

Just to thicken the plot, dogsbody originally meant pease pudding boiled in a cloth. Maybe the original dogsbodies were the ones who had the task of preparing this delightful dish. How could anyone not love a word like that?

Another editorial query was my use of the phrase argue the toss. Although I am far from sporty, a moment’s reflection suggested to me that the toss is a cricketing term. (When two teams begin play, the umpire tosses a coin and the winner chooses whether to bat or to bowl. Only a bad sport would argue the toss with the umpire — dispute who won the toss.) The Macquarie Dictionary defines it as ‘to go on arguing after a dispute has been settled’. The phrase is so deeply embedded in Australian and British English that most people don’t think of its origin when they use it.

Once alerted to these small differences, I found it easy to find alternatives to terms that would exclude a US audience. But the experience convinced me that the content of my website, including the courses, should be translated into a parallel US English version. I'm discussing the possibility with an American editor now. I have a feeling it will be an interesting process.

In the transition, I doubt that matters of the enrol/enroll variety will take the most time, thought and care. I’m braced to lose many of my jokes, having found from bitter experience that they don’t always manage the long swim across the Pacific. (Sometimes they can’t even make it across Sydney Harbour to the North Shore.) And there is some hard research to be done to find equivalent texts and organisations to match the Australian ones I use.

Won’t it be fun, though? I’d love to hear your stories about language being lost or found in translation from one type of English to another.

© Pamela Hewitt 2006
www.emendediting.com

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Naming rights

Janet Mackenzie

Galloping technology has many effects, one of which is to play havoc with language. This has resulted in new definitions for words such as mobile and text, and other terms have become obsolete or misleading.

An example is the profession formerly known as book editing, which for convenience I will refer to here as the PFKBE. Those who are unfamiliar with the PFKBE will find its knowledge base listed in Australian Standards for Editing Practice. Now that many of its practitioners work on screen publications rather than books, the PFKBE needs a new title.

There are many types of editing, of course, and the designation book distinguished this group of editors from those with similar titles whose duties differ significantly. For instance, the tasks of the PFKBE mostly concern the written language and so are distinct from the editing of film and video; and PFKBE practitioners generally do not control content in the way that editors of newspapers and magazines do.

A word commonly applied to the tasks of the PFKBE is copyediting, but it is inadequate. The copyeditor is generally seen as having a limited brief to attend to minor solecisms — summarised dismissively as ‘caps and commas’. The PFKBE, in contrast, covers project management and collaboration with the author of a document, as well as responsibility for its logical or narrative structure and the register and level of its vocabulary.

What we need is a word that highlights the important tasks of the PFKBE with a broad definition such as ‘the action or process of preparing for publication’. Amazingly, the English language in its infinite richness and diversity can oblige.

The word is redaction. It appears in The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary with exactly that meaning, first recorded in 1803. Its verb, redact, is noted as a late Middle English word revived in the nineteenth century with the definition ‘to put (matter) into proper literary form; to work up, arrange or edit’. The agent noun is redactor. The terms exist; they can be claimed and promoted until they gain acceptance.

If the PFKBE is redactive in this matter, perhaps the Institute of Professional Editors will be renamed the Redaction Institute — or is that a redactio ad absurdum?

© Janet Mackenzie 2006

Technical, moi?

Pamela Hewitt

What’s a nice girl like me doing in cyberspace? I’ve always been a word-on-the-page person. I read. I write. I edit. I teach. So what am I doing using web technology, digital imaging and electronic design software to pioneer online professional editing courses and electronic publishing?

It’s the old story. I hoped technology would give me the freedom to spend more time writing and creating new work. But when you set about saving time with the aid of technology, sometimes you let yourself in for more than you bargained for.

Let me explain.

As well as being an editor, I’m a qualified teacher. I enjoy the creativity of designing and presenting courses and I love the contact with students. For the past several years, I’ve combined these two passions — in language and teaching — to run workshops and give lectures on editing, as well as editing manuscripts.

Teaching editors and writers is inspiring and fun. The drawback is that if you do it properly, it takes a long time to research a new course. Running a workshop once or twice is barely viable. In order to recover the significant development costs, you need to present the same workshop many times over.

My courses were popular and I was often asked to repeat them. After a few times, presenting the same workshop loses its flavour, until it’s like chewing cardboard.

One day I had a brainwave. I’d put my courses online. People could download courses whenever they wanted and pay for them online. Piece of cake.

Oh, and while I was at it, I might as well establish an online journal about editing. I’d put the word out and soon fabulous articles would come tumbling in. Highly regarded editors would jump at the chance of joining the editorial board and we would have, for the first time, an independent, online Australian journal for editors and writers. Nothing could be simpler. Do I hear cynical laughter?

Well, as a matter of fact, it all happened! And just to prove that it wasn’t a flash in the pan, we did it again. The first two issues of The Fine Print are available free, online and the third is in production. It seems to have struck a chord. The response has been enthusiastic and positive.

The courses were a more complicated affair. Developing a website with an e-commerce gateway took longer than I expected. It wasn’t just a matter of researching and writing hundreds of thousands of words of courseware especially designed for web delivery. You also chew up hours removing obstacles you didn’t even know existed. You think you’ve anticipated every possible hitch and then there’s a problem with the DNS. Or the ‘includes’. Or you have to make decisions about arcane, liturgical-sounding activities like transferring hosts.

I’ve been running my own business for ten years. I was used to estimating the time a job would take and then adding a bit extra for unforeseen events. But websites are different. They’re a kind of Bermuda Triangle for time.

When the first series of courses went live, it was the culmination of an enormous effort. There was more involved in web development than I could have predicted when I blithely decided to embark on the project. Maybe I’d never have begun if I’d realised … But it’s been more than worthwhile.

Along the way, I also learnt many new skills in rapid succession. Perhaps more importantly, I learnt to trust my instincts about what works and what doesn’t in the electronic world.

Learning new skills

Over the past year I’ve acquired and learnt several new software packages, including Dreamweaver, InDesign and Photoshop. It’s dizzying to pick up skills at the same time as developing content but it’s also been great fun.

I’ve become a terror with a digital camera. All my friends will attest to it. I photograph meals at restaurants, patterns in the footpath, scaffolding on building sites. You never know when an image might come in handy on the site.

It might sound crazy to attempt to pick up so many new skills in such a short time. And yet, everything I’ve learnt meshes neatly into my existing skills. Although people still associate blue pencils with editors, we don’t use them any more. These days I rarely mark up on hard copy. Most editing is now done on screen. Editors moved into the information economy long ago.

And this is a lesson I’d pass on to anyone who wants to develop new technical skills—don’t underestimate what you already know. Trust your knowledge of your market and your business. If you’ve been operating successfully in business, you’re bound to know a good deal about the market.

You can build on this knowledge as you move from one form of delivery to another.

An unanticipated bonus of web development was the teamwork. As a freelancer, I’d almost forgotten how much I enjoyed working with designers, illustrators and all the other people whose skills go to putting a journal and a website together. I relished every aspect of the process—briefing the artists, responding to the roughs and, best of all, seeing the finished product on the screen.

My learning curve has been not so much steep as nearly perpendicular. I cringe when I see the faltering steps I made only months ago. Along with everyone else picking up complex new skills, the more you learn, the more you see that there is to find out.

What’s next?

Another aspect of working with websites is that you’re never finished. There’s always something to change, something to update. Even in the unlikely event that your business needs don’t change, the technology will.

I know that taking my business online will mean maintenance as far as I can look into the future. Luckily, I have some plans.

As a matter of fact, the other day, I had a brainwave. When my courses are all online and running smoothly, why not offer them in MP3 versions too? I can just see would-be editors and writers listening to courses as they jog around the harbour foreshore or travel to work listening to a Discman or an IPod.

It might be the next stage in online education. I’ve already found the perfect voice coach. And as well as podcasting, there’s the video plan …

© Pamela Hewitt
www.emendediting.com

The Emend Editing courses most relevant to this article are Page to screen Editing for the web and Wired words Onscreen editing for PC and Mac.

Please contact me if you have any comments on this article or if you'd like to reproduce it.