A window into your editing

Anil Dash shares the story of a job seeker who sent a resume electronically with "Track Changes" enabled. That means a Word-savvy employer can see exactly how you edited your resume, all the tweaks to job titles and dates. Or, as Anil puts it, "It just means your potential employer can actually watch your lies being written in front of them."

The Track Changes function can be a handy way to edit a document but keep the original intact. You can go back later and decide if you want to keep all your changes. But without fixing the document at the end, everyone else can see the changes, too.

Safeguarding your document isn't as easy as turning off Track Changes before hitting send. Microsoft offers instructions:

1. On the View menu, point to Toolbars, and then click Reviewing.
2. On the Reviewing toolbar, click Show, and then make sure that a check mark appears next to each of the following items:
Comments
Ink Annotations (Word 2003 only)
Insertions and Deletions
Formatting
Reviewers (Point to Reviewers and make sure that All Reviewers is selected.)

If a check mark does not appear next to an item, click the item to select it.

3. On the Reviewing toolbar, click Next to advance from one revision or comment to the next.
4. On the Reviewing toolbar, click Accept Change or Reject Change/Delete Comment for each revision or comment.
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 until all the revisions in the document have been accepted or rejected and all the comments have been deleted.

This seems to make the Track Changes function less convenient after all.

Stick-to-itiveness

Verbal Energy has another post, this one reconsidering when adolescent words (those undergoing a change in meaning) should still be used. (Her last post was on the oft-misused nonplused, discussed here.)

She discusses "madam," the "niggardly" case and "thrice."

Just the facts

Some files for quick fact-checking on the Google IPO filing:

A letter from the founders
The prospectus
Risk factors -- a note on their competition
Financials

Google management
Google history
Google timeline

And this site tracks news on the Google IPO.

Repeat after me

I have the best job in American journalism.

Don't use "presumptive nominee"

Doug Fisher, who teaches journalism at the University of South Carolina and runs the Common Sense Journalism blog, illustrates how a word that's correct may not be the one you want.

We should not call Kerry the Democrats' "presumptive nominee." It has been published thousands of times, and it's not wrong, but it can be misleading. Many people read presumptive as presumptuous.

Fisher slipped in a sentence on a recent quiz in a copy-editing class:

Smith said it was presumptive/presumptuous to think he'd do that.

More than a third of the 50 students -- juniors and seniors majoring in journalism -- got it wrong.

So what do you change it to? "Likely" or "probable."

On a similar note, if you think this advice is unfounded and use the term anyway, don't call Kerry a presumptive candidate. He has officially been a candidate since Sept. 2.

Today's exquisite corpse

For background, see this.

This is a coincidence, I swear. But today's exquisite corpse comes from Bill Walsh's "Lapsing Into a Comma." It's a great follow-up to yesterday's corpse -- about capitalizing proper nouns, even when companies (or people) don't cap them in logos.

In many, perhaps most, cases, these logo affectations aren't even intended to indicate the preferred style for proper names. E.E. Cummings, for example, used capital letters in his signature. I might sound like a lonely voice on this issue, but Tennis magazine and, believe it or not, Amazon.com illustrate the way capitalization is supposed to work in the grown-up world. For more than 20 years, Tennis magazine was tennis on the cover (it only recently dropped the mod '70s logo) and TENNIS in its own articles (a lot of publications like self-referential caps) -- but Tennis in real life. And those writers who try to be oh-so-modern and oh-so-accommodating by writing "amazon.com" might want to double-check the way the on-line bookstore refers to itself outside logo-land (and even in some of its myriad logo styles). That's right: It's Amazon.com.

If you're disturbed by Walsh's use of the hyphen in online, rest assured. He came around in his next book.

At least it's not written in stone. ... Oh.

Read the last item in this Washington Post column -- about a typo carved in granite.

Let them eat!

My illustrious co-worker Jamie Knodel is organizing an AP-style potluck dinner in a few days. Everyone must bring an item that has an entry in the stylebook. Many have signed up already, with:
tollhouse cookies
Coca-Cola and Scotch whisky
cheddar (lowercase) cheese but Monterey Jack
blond brownies
Roquefort cheese
Churches (of Christ) fried chicken
Dr Pepper and Dixie cups
crawfish (not crayfish) etoufee
french fries and ketchup
yams

Any other ideas? High points for creativity.

Today's exquisite corpse

For background, see this.

Today's is from the runaway No. 1 British best-seller "Eats, Shoots & Leaves," by Lynne Truss. There aren't five rules on Page 23, so I'll just go with part of the rule that takes up that page. We're still in the introduction here, talking about how capitalizing a sentence and ending it with a period haven't always been a part of the written word.

The initial letter of a sentence was first capitalised in the 13th century, but the rule was not consistently applied until the 16th. In manuscripts of the 4th and 7th centuries, the first letter of the page was decorated, regardless of whether it was the start of a sentence. ... Nowadays, the convention for starting a new sentence with a capital letter is so ingrained that word-processing software will not allow you to type a full stop and then a lower case letter; it will capitalise automatically. This is bad news, obviously, for chaps like e.e. cummings, but good news for those who have spotted the inexorable advance of lower case into book titles, television captions, company names and (of course) everything on the non-case-sensitive internet, and lie awake at night worrying about the confusion this is spreading in young minds.

When I see E.E. Cummings written in lowercase (when not attached to a poem), my heart hurts and my head spins. (Please see "I love K.D. Lang and her music, but ...")

I'll give her a pass on Internet, I guess, and I am glad to see non-case-sensitive hyphenated before it.

But to lowercase a name in a book about punctuation? I'm nonplused.

Style vs. substance

The New Yorker has an interesting piece on what it takes to change house style at the New York Times.

Among the many peculiarities of Times house style—such as the tradition, in the Book Review, that the word “odyssey” refer only to a journey that begins and ends in the same place—one of the more nettlesome has been the long-standing practice that writers are not supposed to call the Armenian genocide of 1915 a genocide.

Any of you who have worked on a stylebook committee (or who worked at a paper with some stilted style rules) should appreciate this.

When to run a correction

Slate's Jack Shafer discusses when papers should correct the mistakes of their sources.

For example, the Washington Post published a story in 2002 that the administration suspected that al-Qaeda had received VX nerve agent from Iraqis. (Still with me?) That turned out not to be true, but no one ever heard about the claim again.

Does the paper owe it to readers to follow up on that story? At what point should a reporter go back to the sources and say, hey, how 'bout that VX?

The reporter on the story, Barton Gellman, makes a good point: There isn't a "nothing new here" section of the paper every day to give updates on these things. Writers are busy covering news. But he agrees that he should have followed up -- he says six to nine months later.

It's easy to let those stories slip under the radar (how many stories do you think Gellman had written in the nine following months?), but copy editors can help. How many times have you heard a colleague say: "What ever happened to that girl who was hit by that car?" "Did we ever find out how that new business was doing?" "What's the status on that project?"

Finding out can be as easy as a phone call or e-mail, or it could spark a much-needed folo.

Watch those comments

U.S. intelligence agencies consider tracking blogs.

Call me Miss Manners

A writer laments the disappearance of phone etiquette, longing for the niceties of "hello" before diving into the purpose of the call.

His first example of bad manners?

My son answers the phone and immediately hears an editor wanting to know if I really, really want to use a word in a way so much at variance with good taste, common language usage, Associated Press style and good taste. Or that new events have made the whole premise of a column nonsensical and what do I propose to do next?

It's easy to rush through those phone calls to reporters at home. We're talking deadlines here, people.

But you'll get much better results from your call if you start with a "How do you do?"

A little context

Becoming familiar with a place's history and significance can help put current events into perspective. I enjoyed reading Slate's Explainer on why Najaf is such a holy place: The assassinated father of the Shiites is buried there.

Today's exquisite corpse

For background, see this.

Today's is from Patricia O'Connor's "Woe is I."

The ics Files

Figuring out the mathematics of a noun can be tricky. Take the word mathematics. Is it singular or plural? And what about all those other words ending in ics -- economics, ethics, optics, politics, and so on? Fortunately, it doesn't take a Ph.D. in mathematics to solve this puzzle.

If you're using an ics word in a general way (as a branch of study, say), it's singular. If you're using an ics word in a particular way (as someone's set of beliefs, for example), it's plural.

"Politics stinks," said Sonny.
"Sonny's politics stink," said Gopher.
Statistics isn't a very popular course
The company's statistics are often misleading.

Headline advice

Cyberjournalist boils down the tips from an ACES session on online hed writing.
• be specific enough to hook readers
• have key words that refer to past stories in the news that are on people's minds during watercooler chat
• be written in a conversational tone
• be simple and straightforward
• give the pertinent information since online hedlines don't typically follow newspaper design strategies such as drop heds
• find a blend of sensationalism and exaggeration
• use "magic" words that everyone is curious about (e.g., babies, spam, the Web, viruses, taxes, reality TV)

Most of these apply to headline writing offline, too. And although the "sensationalism and exaggeration" advice seems like sacrilege, I'd describe it as going just a little over the top. I haven't tooted Slate's horn lately, so ...

Compare their front-page heds with the heds on the actual article:

Front page: Her Freudian Slip Is Showing (with pic of Condi Rice)

Inside: Condi's Inner Life: What Freudian slips do — or don't — tell us about politicians.

Front page: Goodbye, Friends. Hello, Sitcommercials!

Inside: Customers Like Me: Verizon uses race to make you look.

Front page: The Spies Tenet Can't Control

Inside: What's With Our 15 Intel Agencies? The CIA, we know. But what are the other 14?

These heads seem appropriate for Slate. Is that because it's online? I don't think so; they'd work just as well in a print magazine. But the tone online tends to be lighter, even in the Web portals for print newspapers.

Haven't I seen you somewhere before?

Compare this grammar column with this one.

Better yet, I'll save you the trouble: They are almost identical. That's not a big deal; they're both credited to Stephen Wilbers, who offers training in business writing. I read one weeks before the other, but that isn't a big deal, either.

What caught me off guard is that when I read the one published today in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the byline read "Special to the Star-Telegram." What does that mean? I'd assume the paper got some expert to write a column for them. But if the Startlegram published the same column as the Minneapolis Star Tribune had weeks earlier, I'd assume it was syndicated or distributed. If that's the case, the "Special to the ..." byline strikes me wrong.

Wilbers says at his Web site that he writes a weekly column for the Strib. I searched the Strib's site and found two others (you will have to register): Put your editing skills to the test and No cheer in using commas wrongly.

The use of "special" by the Star-Telegram isn't necessarily wrong. It can be used to mean "something that is not part of a regular series." But I've always read it to mean unique.

Today's exquisite corpse

For background, see this.

Today's is from John Bremner's "Words on Words," copyright 1980. It's just happens to be a classic.

AMBIGUITY
You could lead a happy life thinking it's better to be fooled occasionally than to be suspicious constantly. But not on a copy desk. With accuracy, consistency, fairness and imagination, suspicion is a cardinal virtue for a copy editor. Not only must a copy editor know something about everything and where to find out everything about anything, but also he must distrust his own mother. If his mother tells him she loves him, he should check it out.

Suspicion is especially important when a copy editor writes headlines, which are set larger than body type and attract more attention than copy. ... A headline writer must check and recheck a head for clarity and single meaning or he may find himself with another embarrassing headline story to add to his reminiscences.

A headline doesn't tell an accurate story if its language is ambiguous, open to more than one interpretation. For example, in some contexts an innocent noun is found guilty of having more than one meaning: "Beauty Unveils Bust at Ceremony." ... "Mr. McClusky Will Give / Free Goose to 4-H Girls."

Sometimes the culprit is a verb: "Missouri Pacific to Drop / Passengers from 3 Trains." Or: "Avoid Having Baby / At the Dinner Table." Worse: "President Eats Turkey, / Lays a Cornerstone." ...

Be suspicious.

Quickly, what's an adverb?

Indian teacher aims to be listed in Guinness as world's fastest grammarian.

He says he can teach

tense in 30 seconds; change the voice in 50 seconds; indirect speech in one minute and 20 seconds; punctuation in one minute and 10 seconds; clauses in one minutes and 25 seconds; simple, complex and compound sentences in one minute 55 seconds; figures of speech in three minutes.

The only question left to be answered: Why?

Do you belong to ACES?

ASNE's release of employment numbers has sparked conversation on the ACES board and at Prints the Chaff: If there are 10,708 copy editors and designers out there, why are 10,000 of them not members of ACES?

The idea that rings most true with me is "tangible benefits." I'd venture that most copy editors think ACES is a great organization. But we all do a quick cost-benefit analysis before we pay a membership fee.

ACES lists the tangible benefits of joining on its Web site: the quarterly newsletter, the annual directory of members, access to the discussion board, reduced fees for the national conferences, and reduced conference fees with organizations such as the Society for Newspaper Design and the American Press Institute.

It was the reduced fees for the national conference that eventually spurred me to join. I think that's the biggest lure of the list.

The quarterly newspaper could be more a must-have if it was less person-driven and more issue-drive (see Copy Editor). The membership directory has been fun to browse through, but it doesn't help me at work every day. And the message board is easily accessible to nonmembers.

So, what is ACES to do?

We need to come up with great benefits besides the yearly conference. Although the conference is first-rate, from what I hear, we will never be able to get everyone to go -- because of money, because of time, and because someone always needs to stay home to put out the paper. (It's also interesting to note how many people attended the last conference compared with overall membership: 390 attendees, 700 members. And how many members have never attended a conference? It could very well be that the conference discount drives ACES membership.)

I like Vince Tuss' idea of discounts and incentives. Copy Editor offers two-year subscribers a copy of "Lapsing Into a Comma" by Bill Walsh. (And, at $128, it's still more expensive than ACES membership.) Vince also suggests discounts on items not exactly tied to work, like Apple, Starbucks, The Onion.

Any other ideas?

An exquisite corpse bonus -- take a deep breath

John McIntyre submits this exquisite corpse that was too long for the comments section. It's from H.W. Fowler, Modern English Usage, revised by Sir Ernest Gowers, from the entry on Americanisms. And, yes, it is one sentence. (For background, see this.)

Our growing preference for PHRASAL VERBS over simple ones with the same meaning ("meet up with," "lose out on"), the use of the plain SUBJUNCTIVE without an auxiliary in such a sentence as "he is anxious that the truth be known," the effects of HEADLINESE LANGUAGE, especially as an eater-up of of prepositions ("world food production" for "production of food in the world"), the obliteration of the distinction between SHALL and WILL that the few who understood it used to consider the hall-mark of the niceties of English idiom, the foothold gained by the American "I don't have" at the expense of the English "I haven't got" (see DO 2), the victory of "aim to do" over "aim at doing," the use of "in" instead of "for" in such a phrase as "the first time in years," the progress made by DUE TO towards the status of preposition and of LIKE towards that of a conjunction -- such things as these, trifling in themselves, are cumulatively symptoms of surrender by the older competitor to the younger and more vigorous.

Now, just a little bit smarter

I had no idea how calories were measured until I read this Slate Explainer. Fascinating.

Today's exquisite corpse

For background, see this.

Today's is from the New York Times Manual of Style and Usage, copyright 1999.

anthems. Use quotation marks around their titles: "The Star-Spangled Banner." Lowercase the national anthem.

A close call

James Kilpatrick's language column covers the difference between tint and shade, curtain and drapery, further and farther, founder and flounder. And a bonus: the etymology of "mnemonic."

The adjective owes its curious orthography to Mnemosyne, the Greek goddess of memory, daughter of Uranus and Gaea and the mother by Zeus of the Muses.

Exquisite corpse -- for editors

Inspired by this post on Languagehat, I think it's time for some 23/5 Exquisite Corpses of our own.

First, some background. Exquisite Corpse is a surrealist technique "exploiting the mystique of the accident," according to an Exquisite Corpse site. (I first found this site looking for this site after hearing its editor, Andrei Codrescu, on NPR.)

The first Exquisite Corpse explains the origin:

Based on an old parlor game, it was played by several people, each of whom would write a phrase on a sheet of paper, fold the paper to conceal part of it, and pass it on to the next player for his contribution.

The technique got its name from results obtained in initial playing, "Le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau" (The exquisite corpse will drink the young wine).

Caterina.net suggested a variation: Take the fifth sentence from the 23rd page of a book and post it.

Here's an editor's version: the fifth rule (or last rule if there aren't five) on the 23rd page of editing books. One a day, until I run out or get bored with it. (And with long, long rules, I will condense.)

Today's is from the spiral-bound Associated Press Stylebook from 2002:

attorney general, attorneys general Never abbreviate. Capitalize only when used as a title before a name: Attorney General Griffin B. Bell.

Eats, shoots and never leaves my blog

OK, OK, one more mention of Lynne Truss' book. Then I promise ... that there will probably be more. C'mon, guys, it's an editing blog.

This link is to another story in the New York Times, written by author Edmund Morris. The lead brought a smile to my face:

A Manhattan real estate broker has just notified me, on heavy stationery, that ''the New York market is remaining vibrant with the goal of buying a home being a principle interest for purchaser's to either upscale or downscale their homes.''

Syntactical incoherence aside, it is difficult to say what is most annoying about this sentence: the dropped comma, the misspelled adjective, the superfluous apostrophe, the split infinitive, the grating use (twice) of ''home'' as a commercial noun. I am tempted to reply, ''It is against my principal's to consider such illiterate letter's,'' but doubt that the sarcasm would register. As the journalist Lynne Truss notes in ''Eats, Shoots & Leaves,'' her forcedly jovial punctuation primer, ''the world cares nothing for the little shocks endured by the sensitive stickler.''

This is a different review, however. Morris is not thrilled with this book. For example, after Truss apologizes for calling apostrophes punctuation's fairies: "I'm sorry about the fairies, too, but I'm sorrier about her prose style, which is cloying even if you know where Minehead is, and have a stomach for mixed metaphor."

Morris mixes in some examples of greats who have broken the rules to great effect.

Truss errs in saying that P. G. Wodehouse eschews the semicolon, but I can see why she thinks so. He uses it, on average, once a page, usually in a long sentence of mounting funniness, so that its luftpause, that tiny intake of breath, will puff the subsequent comma clauses along, until the last of them lands with thistledown grace. By then you're laughing so much, you're not even aware of the art behind the art.

He even lets a few compliments slip through -- but not many.

Her scholarship is impressive and never dry. I didn't know, for example, that ''dash'' derives from the Middle English dasshen, ''to break.'' But she's a few years off in ascribing the first use of direct-speech quotation marks to ''someone'' in 1714. Daniel Defoe splattered them all over his ''True Relation of the Apparition of One Mrs. Veal'' in 1706.

This review is a different take on a book many of us will read (if the bookstore ever restocks it).

But some editors (ahem) may be glad to know that reviewers can look at this book with a critical eye.

A lost cause?

This story about falling standards of grammar includes the usual litany of causes: text messages, e-mail, quick TV reports.

But check out the last quote from a language expert, who wants to abolish the apostrophe:

"It's better than having apostrophes littered through the text where they're not supposed to be and having the community in a constant state of nervous anxiety about where they're supposed to put the apostrophe," she said.

I bow my head.

Trademark humor

All this brand-names talk reminds me of a "Simpsons" episode, "The Otto Show."

Otto the bus driver hits a new low when he is fired (after arriving to school late because of an impromptu concert on the bus). Bart happens upon him while throwing away a chutney-flavored Squishee from the Kwik-E-Mart.

Bart says, "Otto-Man? You're living in a Dumpster?"

Otto replies: "Ho, man, I wish. Dumpster-brand trash bins are top of the line. This is just a Trash-Co waste disposal unit."

Casualty check

And while we're on the topic: "Casualty" does not refer only to people who have died. It can be a serious or fatal accident. It can be a person or thing injured, lost, or destroyed. And it can mean a military person lost through death, wounds, injury, sickness, internment, or capture or through being missing in action.

What I'm getting at here is that you have to find a different word if you are talking about the number of soldiers who have died.

Check those Dover photos

Some of the 361 casket photos on the Memory Hole are from people who died in Afghanistan, not just Iraq. Also, several organizations, including NASA, are reporting that most of the first page of the Memory Hole gallery includes photos from astronauts who died when the Columbia shuttle disintegrated.

So how can you tell if you ran the Columbia photos? SpaceRef.com has an example of one. They say they can tell because a man in brown slacks and a dark jacket is Deputy NASA Administrator Fred Gregory. The site says Columbia photos have been published by the Washington Post and CNN Headline News and distributed by the Associated Press and Reuters.

AP has a screen grab of the first page of the Memory Hole gallery, so you can also check that.

And here is NASA's press release.

UPDATE: Newsdesigner has a list of the papers (with Newseum links!) that ran front-page coffin photos.

The mark of the beast

Poynter's Matt Thomspon covers trademarks -- and when it's OK to use brand names in everyday copy. If you need a copy, can I Xerox it? When Bob is fired, does he take his Rolodex with him? When titles are dumbed down, are they Headlines for Dummies?

Having a product become a household name may be positive for start-ups. But it becomes a problem when companies have to worry about the dilution of trademark. They don't want their product's name to become generic because then they won't have a basis for their trademark and anyone could use the name. That's why it's worth it for them to pay armies of lawyers to send cease-and-desist letters to newspapers with haphazard mentions of "kleenex" and "dumpsters" and "googling."

Thomspon shares a great story about the Mail & Guardian newspaper of South Africa. It published a story about a new dumbed-down form of cricket, with the headline "Cricket for Dummies." The publishers of the "For Dummies" series of books, Wiley Publishers, told the paper to cut it out.

But the newspaper had a good defense. It wasn't writing a how-to on cricket. It wasn't using the phrase in a way that would compete with the books. It asked, "How can a company trademark words of the English language in such a way that we cannot use them for editorial purposes?"

The publishers have no problem with it: "Any words placed in front of 'for dummies' are not permitted by third parties."

Ridiculous, I say. I think John McIntyre of ACES agrees in the article. He pushes for restraint -- no need to use trademarked terms for metaphors, for example -- but that doesn't mean the letter writers are always right. And he shares a great anecdote about social workers in Maryland that is worth the price of admission alone.

Also, I'm glad to see Thompson covering issues with an editing bent. You may remember his article on copy-editing blogs.

>Trademark Law for ... Dunderheads [Poynter]
>Thompson interview with McIntyre [Poynter]
>Cricket for Dummies [Mail & Guardian]
>Voertsek for Dummies [Mail & Guardian] (Thompson wrote that voertsek means "bugger off.")
>Trademarks for Dummies [Mail & Guardian]
>Is Anyone Editing Their Copy? [Poynter]

By the numbers

The American Society of Newspaper Editors has released its Newsroom Employment Survey for 2003. The data includes (yes, includes!) a breakup of sex by profession, including copy and layout editors.

It says there are 10,708 people working on copy and layout desks in the United States. Of these, 59.0 percent are men, 41.0 percent are women.

The gender gap is less egregious for copy editors than for any other group. Percentages of women:

Copy/Layout editors: 41.0 percent
Reporters: 39.5 percent
Supervisors: 33.4 percent
Photographers: 25.9 percent

Though copy editors make strides in the gender gap, they fall short in diversity. Only 11.3 percent are minorities, a lower percentage than any other category, save supervisors. The best? Photographers, at 15.9 percent.

Find out more:
>Tables from the 2003 Newsroom Employment Survey
>Minority newsroom employment inches up in 2003 [ASNE]
>No News in Newsroom Census: Gender Gap Persists [Women's eNews]

Things to do in Denver when your paper's being redesigned

Everything you wanted to know about the Denver Post's redesign -- at least, everything I could cobble together.

Newsdesigner shares some quotes from Visual Editors, from someone who went to the SND Quick Course in Denver and from the paper's managing editor for presentation and design.

From Visual Editors is this information: The redesigned paper will launch May 4, and it will remain a broadsheet.

Tom Mangan offers seven tips for surviving a redesign.

1) Get with the program. I know this is hard, but don't fight the change -- it'll happen whether you like it or not, so save your whining and grumbling for the bar after work and do your damnedest to be a good little do-bee and accept your fate. The suckage will be profuse, but it will be temporary. Remember, after you get a tooth pulled, your gums heal up and the hole in your jaw goes away.

A phenomenon on this side of the pond?

I went to Borders today to buy "Eats, Shoots & Leaves."

They were out.

The clerk said the store had sold out of their 14 copies fairly quickly. More will be in tomorrow or the next day.

I checked out the stats on Amazon when I got home and found a few interesting things.

First, the book is second on their Top Sellers list, second only to Bob Woodward's book. Ahead of three books on the South Beach Diet. Ahead of Richard Clarke's book. Ahead of "The Da Vinci Code" and an Oprah's Book Club selection. Wow.

Second, Borders was going to sell me the book for the list price of $17.50. Amazon.com has it for $12.25. Then I see this section that says "Available for in-store pickup now from $10.50." And, what do you know, I can get the same copy of the $17.50 book for $10.50 at the same store by going through Amazon.

I like saving $7, but I have a question for those of you who know such things: How does this affect the author's cut? Would she make a higher percentage from Borders than from Amazon? Does it matter? What if I bought a book an author's Web site?

Do editors and blogs mix?

Wired has an interesting story on the lessons from BloggerCon, a blogging conference at Harvard last week. The story says many bloggers, including some former journalists, are saying journalistic standards shouldn't apply to blogs. (No kidding, although when my blog publishers can afford for me to hire an editor, I intend to do so.)

OK, you can't expect single-person blogs to have the same standards as big organizations. That's a given. But some people are against Big Media's having blogs at all.

Some journalists-turned-bloggers see the entrance of big media companies into the blogosphere as an intrusion into an emerging literary form, which should be free of editors and centralized authority.

Give me a break. You can't have it both ways: People want some flavor in their news, but only the little guy is allowed to spice things up.

The story includes a couple of editing references: On the New York Times' campaign blog: "The Times blog also includes words and phrases liked 'nixed' and 'bunk up' that would ordinarily make a copy editor apoplectic. " My heart flutters at the mere mention.

But Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine misses having an editor.

Without an editor, Jarvis said he has had the complete freedom to become a blowhard.
"I plan on writing an entry soon," said Jarvis, "which I will call 'Blogging made me an asshole.'"

I guess we can add that to our resumes: Write headlines, edit for grammar and style, cover up reporters' inner asshole.

The future of AP

Associated Press is working on customized content. "The one-size-fits-all, which has been the AP approach, probably won't stay competitive forever," says Tom Curley, AP's president and CEO.

Corrections at The Times

I'm finally getting around to reading my "Kill Duck Before Serving: Red Faces at The New York Times." I doubt it's something I'll read straight through. But the introduction I can handle, and this caught my eye. It's written by Allan Siegal, about the introduction of computers to newspapers:

An economic salvation for the papers, no doubt, but a pity: those regiments of keyboard operators and proofreaders were the best-educated of craft workers, and their incidental discoveries rescued many a writer's reputation. Word processing, by contrast, ensures a narrow kind of accuracy -- "what you see is what you get" -- but leaves reporters at the mercy of their own typing and proofreading.

... Editors form the last bastion. Normally an article for the daily paper passes through at least three pairs of hands -- those of a story editor, a copy editor and finally the copy chief. The Times's copy desk, probably the largest in American journalism, numbers 160 men and women, each hired with years of experience. They are chosen for their news judgment, their grasp of language and their flair for arcana. Their first duty is to check stories for fairness, logic and coherent structure. They also write headlines. In remaining moments -- if moments remain -- they check first names, middle initials, dates, places and, for example, whether The Times's "house style" calls for East Side or east side, catalog or catalogue.

Food for thought.

Siegal also mentions this quote from Arthur Sulzberger that is worth repeating: "I don't think we lose anything by admitting our errors. Rather, I think it strengthens our position."

We command you to speak well!

The Prague Post published a story April 1 about parliament tacking on an amendment to a media bill requiring nationally broadcast commercial radio and TV news programs to use correct grammar.

Media types were not amused.

"Language is a living and constantly evolving thing, and punishing broadcasters for using language evolving in a different direction than that which appeals to communist deputy Ivana Leva is ridiculous," said a programming director, referring to the sponsor of the bill.

Leva taught grammar for 30 years and couldn't believe the amendment caused such a ruckus. "I, as a Czech teacher, had to speak correctly in the classroom, and moderators should, too, because where are people supposed to hear proper Czech if not in the media?"

The law doesn't specify what good grammar is. How could it? Nor does it list the consequences of bad grammar.

The story has a box with some common Czech phrases you might not hear anymore if such a bill were passed. And a picture of the sponsor.

Also, a nice headline: Parliament backs good grammar; Shoddy grammar is a thing up with which parliament will not put.

Yes, I considered that this might be an April Fool's joke. I mean, it's crazy, right? But here is a story from another source confirming that when the amendment went to the Senate, it was voted down.

Prisoner of war or hostage?

Is Pfc. Keith Maupin, being held in Iraq, a prisoner of war or a hostage? Testy Copy Editors debate the point -- although, I'll warn you, there is no consensus.

No nationality required

I repeat my plea (from Oct. 17): Let's call an astronaut an astronaut no matter what country he's from. Singling Russians out as cosmonauts when we have Dutch and Chinese astronauts is ludicrous.

And while we're on the topic of space, a reminder: Although AP style allows for NASA on first reference, it does require the full name -- the National Aeronautics and Space Administration -- to be spelled out at some point in the story.

Lacking a plot

My favorite quote so far today:

Ms. Mathams, 65, claims eight generations of relatives in the graveyard. “There’s Fred’s sister and her husband,” she said, gesturing to a grave after a dizzying tour of her family tree that somewhere included an explanation of where Fred fits in, exactly. “They were engaged for 40 years before they got married because his father didn’t approve.”

It's from a New York Times story on closing English cemeteries. A good read.

Tighten up

Tom Mangan has a good post about fixing dangling modifiers.

Writers get it wrong as often as they get it right. I think a sharp rap on the knuckles with a pica pole would properly discourage writers from backassward sentence structure, but they would avenge the affront by filing their stories later and longer. Don't need that. Besides, if writers got everything right I'd be wandering a street in San Francsico with a "please help" sign written in crayon.

Condi, Condi, what shall we call ye?

Condoleezza Rice's actual title is assistant to the president for national security affairs, not national security adviser.

I don't much relish the idea of writing Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs Condoleezza Rice. And nor should you.

So, is it OK to call her national security adviser? Sure. That's what everyone calls the position. But, because it is not the official title, I wouldn't capitalize it before her name.

Some agree. Some don't. Some can't make up their minds.

Spreading the word

For those of you editing (or reading) the editorial pages of newspapers and magazines, watch out for "pollutocrat," a word coined by a reader of online environmental magazine Grist in a contest last year.

The word didn't catch on like the magazine had hoped, so its contest this year is to spread the word: The Pollutocrats Must Not Prevail Letter to the Editor Contest.

This fabulous contest sets the readers of Grist on unprepared editors as unto sleeping villagers awakening to the baying of a pack of eco-hounds. The pollutocrats must not prevail, my hounds. We must spread the alarm to the electorate.

The contest seems innocent enough. But watch out for form letters, which are a no-no on editorial pages and seem encouraged by the contest's rules (emphasis mine):

Write and send one or more letters to the editor that use the word pollutocrat. The letter(s) can address the environmental issue of your choice -- national politics, local concerns, environmental justice, toxic chemicals, cars, whatever. The same letter or different letters may be sent to as many publications as you wish. Admissible publications include almost everything: newspapers, newsletters (e.g., of national organizations, hometown churches, schools), Internet publications (excluding blogs and other personal journals), radio, academic journals, magazines, etc.

Happy hunting!

The Case of the Vanishing Tenses

Ruth Walker of Verbal Energy has a great post about disappearing tenses. Everything seems to be in the now these days.

She tells of a weatherman who says, "Thursday it rains."

Not, "Rain is predicted," not "it should rain," not even the concise but bold prediction, "it will rain." No. "Thursday it rains."

Welcome to the 24/7 news cycle. Who needs a future tense? After all, the guy said "Thursday."

But it's not just the future that's disappearing. It's the past, too. Consider ubiquitous present-tense headlines. (She points to this, showing that for people who aren't native English speakers, headlines might as well be a language unto itself. She also directs to this study showing that in headlines there is "the suppression of spatial and particularly temporal markers." Yeah.)

What about the old style of using imperatives in heads, such as "Fire Police Chief"?

Possibly these were understood as variations on the passive voice still common today ("Police Chief Fired"). But their potential for misinterpretation would seem to have been considerable. Imagine, for instance, to describe exuberant behavior by college students on break, a headline reading "Paint the Town Red," with a subhead, "And Then Set It Ablaze."

Still, I'd rather use a present-tense verb than no verb at all.

>Getting into tense situations [Verbal Energy]
>Newspaper Headlines [Learning English]
>Discourse analysis of newspaper headlines [University of Sydney]
>Verbs? Not needing them [A Capital Idea]

You want answers? We've got answers!

Australian copy editor and blogger Paul Wiggins was able to track down the story behind Lauris Edmond's quote mentioned here.

It is actually from a poem called "The Active Voice," which makes more sense. It is from a collection of her poems called "50 Poems, Lauris Edmond: A Celebration." It's published by Bridget Williams Books (P.O. Box 5482, Wellington, New Zealand), 1999.

Stop by

Good stuff at Newsdesigner, including Chicago Sun-Times' "Man Bites Dog" hed and a better-late-than-never entry on Fallujah photos.

Calling all designers

The New York Times is hiring "news design editors" -- one full time and permanent, and one part time.

We layout and output the foreign, national, metro and business sections, and the inside of the culture section.

The job requires someone who is at ease working on deadline to produce clearly designed pages. You'll work with photo editors, graphics editors, art directors, section editors and copy editors, so we're looking for someone who can smoothly manage all these relationships -- and their often-clashing interests.

Flexibility in a hours is a must: Expect to work many nights and weekends.

Experience in copy editing will be helpful.

We're in the process of installing a new software system, so you should be open to learning new computer programs and methods. Familiarity with Windows and Quark (on Mac) are a plus.

Contact:

Alan Robertazzi
Acting Editor, News Design
The New York Times
229 W. 43rd St.
New York, NY 10036
212-556-1274
alrob(at)nytimes(dot)com

Don't feel ready to throw your hat in that ring? The Boulder Daily Camera is looking for a copy editor who can also design. (Where would I rather live ... New York or Boulder? OK, New York. But that's my East Coast bias talking. It's a closer call than you might think!)

Be a part of a dynamic department that creates a high-quality product daily. The Daily Camera newsroom is seeking an enthusiastic, detail-oriented individual with strong editing and design skills to fill our opening for a full-time copy editor. Primary responsibilities are to edit copy and design news pages. Must possess excellent teamwork, interpersonal, communication and customer skills as well as the ability to work well under pressure and meet deadlines. Positive attitude and ability to thrive in a climate of change are essential. Work schedule includes nights, weekends and schedule changes.

Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience required, preferably in journalism. Previous experience as a copy editor is preferred. Strong command of grammar, style, punctuation and usage; creative headline-writing skills; an ability to compose captions quickly and effectively and sound news judgment are essential.

We offer competitive pay and excellent benefits, including a choice of medical insurance, dental insurance, life, AD&D, long term care plan, managed disability insurance, a company-funded pension plan, employee stock purchase plan and 401(k) investment savings plan. Please send a resume with salary history and requirements to the Sue Deans, Daily Camera, P.O. 4579, Boulder, CO 80306, or by email at deans(at)dailycamera(dot)com. EOE

And, no, I did not edit their postings. Maybe pointing out errors will help you get a job. (But probably not.)

Who was determined to strike where?

The White House declassified a memo this week that Bush received as his "president's daily brief" on Aug. 6, 2001. What was the name of this memo?

Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S. [Guardian UK]
Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US [KC Star]
Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US [Boston Herald]
Bin Ladin Determined to Strike Inside the US [Boston Globe]
Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in the US [Boston Globe]


Is it "Bin Ladin" or "Bin Laden"? Is it "US" or "U.S."? "In" or "Inside"?

The Smoking Gun has a copy, so we can answer that question for sure: Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US.

Does capitalization matter? If you think so, the T in to is capped, but the I in in is not.

And while we're on the subject, there's no reason to call this a PDB just because the White House does. That B stands for brief, and that's good enough for me.

There's an expert for anything

Earliest Known Uses of Some of the Words of Mathematics [link via Languagehat]

Quick AP reminder

SAT is the official name of the former Scholastic Aptitude Test or Scholastic Assessment Test. There's nothing to spell out anymore, just like AARP and NARAL Pro-Choice America.

(As silly as NARAL's new name is, I'm glad it was changed. Saying NARAL stands for the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League is silly. In Wichita, there's a distributor called MASSCO that is supposed to stand for Maintenance and Supply Co. Give me a break.)

Here's information on the new SAT, which will start for the class of 2006.

Quote of the day

This may have been said years ago, but I read it today. He's talking about New Zealand:

"It's true you can't live here by chance: you have to do and be, not simply watch or even describe," wrote Wellington poet Lauris Edmond, who died in 2000, in The Active Voice. "This is the city of action, the world headquarters of the verb."

And what an appropriate publication for such a quote: The Active Voice. I love it.

I haven't yet been able to discover what The Active Voice is, but I have found out that the quote is on a literature-as-art piece in Wellington. It is part of a Wellington Waterfront project that sets in concrete the words of writers with local ties.

One more reason our jobs are safe

"Monkeys are able to grasp simple rules of grammar but the key principle common to all human languages is beyond them, new research has shown."

>Learning a language is no monkey business [Sydney Morning Herald]

If at first you don't succeed ...

Headline writing is a thankless task. For the latest proof, see this column by the Hartford Courant's reader representative, Karen Hunter.

When UConn won the national championship, it was huge news there. An even bigger story was that it made the impossible possible: The women could win the next day.

So, sum that up in four words.

The first edition of the paper carried this front-page headline: Halfway there. Many argued that the headline writer was only halfway there. The hed plays down the men's victory.

Sports Copy Desk Chief Scott Powers agreed: "`Halfway There' was poor. I thought it diminished the Monday night accomplishment of the men, and I think if I were a fan I'd be upset. There are a lot of people who are fans of the men and not fans of the women, and vice versa. Although there is a lot of overlap in fandom, those who root for the men had a right to complain. Putting that headline above a picture of the UConn men might have conveyed that the UConn men are halfway someplace. They went all the way. Couldn't have done more. I know it was replaced, but unfortunately that seems to carry more weight inside The Courant's walls than it should.

Powers' next quote is interesting for several reasons -- it's harsh on the paper and it opens a can of worms that isn't further addressed.

"There is a finality to the paper that comes to your doorstep. People who live east of the [Connecticut River] got a sub-par paper because of early deadlines, compared to what readers west of the river got. They shouldn't be penalized for living where they do, but they don't get the same quality paper. ... If you lived east of the river, you didn't get a keepsake paper."

The second-edition headline was much better. Written by reporter Dom Amore, it captures both sentiments without down-playing the men: 1 Crown, 1 To Go.

That had its critics, too, people who wanted their keepsake "UCONN WINS" hed. But Hunter points out:

The Sports staff produced two sections a day - one devoted to the tournament, the other covering the usual sports events - in addition to contributing daily front-page and A-section stories. A 116-page glossy magazine will be published April 18, three commemorative posters are available and books about each winning team are in the works. UConn fans should be able to find something worth collecting among all of that.

It's tax time

A Kansas columnist offers some revenue generators in the Topeka Capital-Journal for the cash-strapped state. You can tell he's a word guy:

• A $10,000 tax on public officials who use "grow" as a transitive verb. Trees grow tall and people grow old, but if politicians want to grow the economy and grow the government we would prefer they pick a word that lets us know who is picking up the tab. ...

• A flat $50,000 tax on anyone who uses the word "synergy" without a good reason. ...

• A $25,000 per-publication fee on newspapers that use the term "undocumented alien" without defining it. Are there documented aliens? If "undocumented" means no legal address, should we call these folks alien aliens? ...

• A $500,000 geek tax on people who talk about "blogs" and "blogging" as though the rest of us have a clue what they are talking about.

Funny, I was with him till that one.

Evolve.

Tired of reviews yet?

Here's another piece on "Eats, Shoots & Leaves," this one from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. It includes some anecdotes from her days as a copy editor.

"I was a terribly arrogant sub," she says. "I used to move whole bits around. Now, of course, I can't stand for my writing to be changed.

It also says she got the idea for the book during her popular radio show.

A radio show. On grammar and punctuation. What is this mystical land they call England?

I disapprove of the headl