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What every designer needs to know about people

Behavioural psychologist Dr. Susan Weinschenk (@thebrainlady) teamed up with the folks at UserTesting.com to offer a free webinar about some of the things designers have to keep in mind about the way our brains work. Weinschenk is the author of 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know about People (as well as the upcoming book How to Get People to Do Stuff). She couldn’t cover all hundred of her points in the webinar but gave us a run-down of ten of her favourites:

10. People pay attention only to what is salient

Weinschenk showed us a photo of several pennies that had its components—the year, the face, etc.—shuffled around into various positions and different directions. Even though we all handle pennies practically every day, it wasn’t easy to identify which was the correct penny in the photo. Weinschenk used this demo to show that people don’t see everything in front of them; they’re going to notice only what’s most important or most interesting to them.

9. People use peripheral vision to get the gist of the scene

Research by Adam Larson and Lester Loschky published in the Journal of Vision revealed that we can identify objects in the periphery more quickly and accurately than we can identify objects in our central vision, particularly if the information we’re receiving is emotionally charged or may indicate danger. We tend to process stuff that’s in the periphery unconsciously. A lot of design is focused on the central vision—what’s considered “prime real estate” in design—but Weinschenk suggests that we shouldn’t neglect the space around the centre and could use it to evoke a certain emotional reaction in the user.

8. Readers assume that if an instruction is written in a hard-to-read or overly decorative font, the task it’s asking you to do will be hard

Weinschenk notes that there isn’t much difference in the way we read serif versus sans-serif type, as long as it’s large enough and readable. If an instruction is in a hard-to-read font, however, not only do users overestimate the amount of time the task would take, but they are also less likely to follow the instruction, reducing compliance.

7. Miller’s Law is an urban legend

Miller’s Law states that we can store 7±2 items in our short-term memory. More recent research shows, however, that we can really remember and deal with only three to four items at a time.

6. Too many choices can be demotivating

People love to have choices, but having too many can turn them off. Sheena S. Iyengar of Columbia  University and Mark R. Lepper of Stanford published a study in which they offered one group of consumers a choice of tasting six types of jam and another group a choice of twenty-four choices. Although only 40% of the first group stopped to taste the jam, compared with 60% of the second group, 30% of the tasters purchased jam, compared with 3% of the tasters offered more choice. This point is especially important when considering navigation or know how many items to show on one screen.

5. Most mental processing is unconscious

Daniel Kahneman, author of Thinking, Fast and Slow, documented two levels of thinking:

  • System 1 thinking is fast, intuitive, effortless
  • System 2 thinking is analytical and takes conscious effort. (This is what you do when you’re solving a complex math problem in your head, say.)

Most of the thinking we do is System 1 thinking (System 2 thinking is something we have to engage, and when that happens we have a physiological response: our pupils dilate). As a result, most users are susceptible to priming.

Numbers are powerful priming tools; Weinschenk gave the example that saying “Limit 12 cans of soup per person” compelled consumers to buy an average of seven cans, whereas saying “No limit” compelled consumers to buy an average of three cans. Seeing the number 12 primed them. This point is particularly important when it comes to money, because researchers have discovered that the presence or discussion of money changes people’s behaviour. Weinschenk encourages us to build a relationship with a client first, before mentioning the price of a product or service.

Interestingly, Weinschenk told us that if a riddle or puzzle is written in a hard-to-read or overly decorative font, people get it right more often than when the same riddle is in a readable font, suggesting that the decorative font triggers System 2 thinking. She proposed the radical idea that you should use harder-to-read fonts when you want a user to stop and think carefully about something.

4. People have mental models

People come into new situations with preconceptions and expectations based on their past experiences. Everything has an interface, and that interface conveys the model on which the product is based. The better you understand that mental model and create your product to conform to it, the easier your product will be to use. Weinschenk suggests that, before you do any actual design work, you build in a step to purposely design a conceptual model that matches your user’s mental model.

3. We have two types of communities: those with weak ties and those with strong ties

Anthropologist Robin Dunbar analyzed the optimal size of a community of various species and applied the model to humans. For us, a community of 150 people or fewer is usually a “strong tie” community—we know all of the members personally, and we know the relationships between members. Falling outside of these criteria are “weak tie” communities. “Strong” and “weak” are used as anthropological terms here; strong isn’t better than weak, but designers should be aware of what kind of community they’re designing something for.

2. Speaker and listener brains sync together

Researchers Greg J. Stephens, Lauren J. Silbert, and Uri Hasson discovered that when a speaker successfully communicates something to a listener, their brains sync up: functional MRI scans show that the same areas of the brain light up in both parties, an effect not seen with writing and reading. Incorporating multimedia in your communications—audio in particular—is much more powerful having than text alone.

1. There’s a part of the brain that makes us focus on faces

The fusiform facial area (FFA) is a part of the brain that processes visual information about human faces. Faces can instantly convey emotional information and so are very powerful images for designers to use. Weinschenk showed us that as a corollary, images that distort the normal proportions of a human face can be extremely off-putting.

***

Many of these points have interesting implications for editors and plain language specialists. I’m especially intrigued now about the threshold at which System 2 thinking kicks in. Weinschenk showed that System 1 thinking often leads to the wrong answer when a problem is logically tricky. How can we improve our communications so that we can ensure the correct message gets through without having readers engage their System 2 thinking? And how do we, along with designers, find fonts that will spur System 2 thinking when appropriate but that don’t reduce user compliance?

Fact-checking timesavers

Checking facts in the realm of general knowledge is a part of a copy editor’s job, and for some genres, like history or biography, it can be one of the most time consuming. Fortunately, a couple of really simple tools can help make the fact-checking process a little less tedious.

Record a macro to create a list of terms to check

I used to fact check as I worked through a manuscript, interrupting my own reading to plug a name into Google. This practice was probably a relic of working on hard-copy manuscripts, and it took me much longer than it reasonably should have to realize how dumb I was being. Instead, I now copy the terms into a separate document and deal with them all at once in a focused fact-checking session, then I go back to the manuscript and fix any discrepancies. Handily, the list of terms you create in this process can also serve as the basis of the word list in your style sheet.

To cut down on the number of keystrokes you have to input to make your word list, record a simple macro in Microsoft Word. (If you’ve got Word 2008, you’re out of luck here, but you can still copy and paste manually and use the tool in the next section to save you time.)

  1. Open a new document, and save it, giving it a descriptive name (e.g., [Project name] word list).
  2. Open your manuscript document in Word. *Note: your word list and the manuscript must be the only two documents open in Word for this macro to work.
  3. Highlight the term you want to copy.
  4. Under Tools, point to Macro, then click Record New Macro.
  5. Give your macro a descriptive name, and assign it a shortcut key combination. Click OK.
  6. Input the following:

On a Mac

  • Command + c (copies highlighted text)
  • Command + ` (tilde key; switches to the other open document)
  • Command + v (pastes copied text)
  • Return
  • Command + ` (returns to manuscript document)

On a PC

  • Ctrl + c
  • Alt + Tab
  • Ctrl + v
  • Enter
  • Alt + Tab
  1. Under Tools, point to Macro, then click Stop Recording.

Now anytime you want to copy a term into your word list, all you have to do is highlight it in your manuscript document and press your macro’s shortcut key combination.

Note that your word list doesn’t have to be limited to names; it can include any search terms you’d plug into Google (e.g., Indian Act 1876)

Once you’ve got all of the terms copied out of the manuscript, you may want to scan the list and tweak it a bit so that a Google search will return meaningful results. For example, very common names (e.g., John Smith) may need more specific context (e.g., John Smith Jamestown), or you may have to put quotation marks around terms you want to search exactly.

Use SearchOpener to do multiple Google searches at once

Plug your word list into SearchOpener and click Submit. Then click Open All to have each search open in a separate tab. Now you can go through each of the tabs to confirm your list of terms, refining your searches as needed.

If your list of search terms is long, you may want to do this process in batches, but the approach will still save you time, and it certainly beats copying and pasting each term separately into Google.

Book review: Book Was There

As a professor of literature at McGill University, Andrew Piper is, in essence, a professional reader, and he brings this experience to his latest book, Book Was There: Reading in Electronic Times (University of Chicago Press), in which he offers a very personal meditation on our evolving relationship with reading. In what ways is a physical book more than its content? How have screens and digital technologies changed the way we understand, interact with, and share texts? Writes Piper in the book’s prologue,

This book is not a case for or against books. It is not about old media or new media (or even new new media). Instead, it is an attempt to understand the relationship between books and screens, to identify some of their fundamental differences and to chart the continuities that might run between them. (p. ix)

Their “fundamental differences” dominate the content of the book, since the similarities between books and screens are perhaps more obvious. Piper wonders whether, in the era of ebooks, we have become a culture of skimmers—the slipperiness of digital text and the immediacy of the page turn on e-reading devices mean that we don’t give ourselves the chance to digest what we read. Exacerbating this problem is a glut of content:

We have entered into an exponential relationship to the growth of reading material. Like many parents or educators, I worry that the growing expanse of reading pulls us apart, not just socially, but also personally. The incessant insistence on the functionality of reading—that there must be some “value” to it—only amplifies this problem. When there is so much more to read and when we are always reading for some purpose, we are only ever “catching up.” (p. 129)

The social aspect of reading is key to Piper’s book. Reading in itself is an act of isolation, yet by reading, we develop a common culture that socializes us. We catalyze that socialization by sharing what we read, and Piper notes that whereas sharing a printed book is a meaningful act—not only do you give something up to another reader, but by doing so you also make public your appreciation and endorsement for that book—sharing digital content may not carry the same weight:

If I do not have any collection of digital files in the same way as my books, will I be able to give them away in the same manner? When I pass down my books to my children, I imagine I will be sharing with them as sense of time. Books are meaningful because as material objects they bear time within themselves. (p. 107)

As much as Piper attempts to remain above the fray in the oft-promoted argument that digital reading and ebooks spell the death of print, his text is tinged throughout with nostalgia for print books—or, at least, for their former primacy as the authoritative sources of human knowledge. He argues that each time a new technology replicates a book’s functionality in terms of conveying content, we try to load it with features that replicate other aspects of a printed book, whether it be the ability to hold it in our hands, turn pages, or jot down marginal notes. The relationship between print and digital texts, however, doesn’t have to be antagonistic; their co-existence could have benefits to understanding:

The use of multiple channels—speech, scroll, book—is the best guarantee that a message will be received, that individuals will arrive at a sense of shared meaning. Like the book’s ability to conjoin the different faculties of touch, sight, and sound into a single medium, according to the tradition of the Codex Manesse the book itself is imagined to reside within a more diverse ecology of information. When we think about media death, about the idea of the end of certain technologies, we do well to remember this medieval insistence on the need for redundancy, the importance of communicating the same thing through different channels. (p. 7)

As much as he is a champion of the printed book (downplay that fact as he may), Piper acknowledges that some digital technologies can be used to enhance our understanding of text. I like this example:

Feature Lens, which was developed by the Human–Computer Interaction Lab at the University of Maryland, is a program that allows you to view meaningful semantic patterns within large structures of texts. For Tanya Clement, who undertook an analysis of Gertrude Stein’s famously difficulty and repetitive novel The Making of Americans (1925), the interface revealed a range of structural patterns so far unnoticed by readers. (p. 141)

Although Book Was There raises some interesting points, I didn’t find any of what Piper wrote particularly revelatory, and because the text was so personal to him, there were portions to which I just couldn’t relate and that made me feel disengaged from the book. Maybe I’m not well-read enough to appreciate the author’s many literary references, but their liberal use, often in places where I would have found historical or scientific examples more persuasive, made some of his conclusions seem tenuous. He reads a lot into shared terminology between the print and digital worlds—pages and page views, the faces of Facebook and the faces of typefaces, etc.—extracting meaning where I simply see a metaphor to allow users to relate to new technologies. Although I appreciate Piper’s enthusiasm for this topic, I would stop short of recommending this book to anyone looking for objective and rigorous insight into the act and consequences of reading. Instead I’ll cross my fingers and hope that Alberto Manguel will one day decide to update A History of Reading to encompass the digital age.

PubPro 2013—January update

I just sent this note out to my PubPro 2013 mailing list, and I thought I’d post it here, too. Apologies to subscribers who are getting this twice.

I hope you’ve all had a good start to 2013. Some exciting developments on the PubPro front: Ingram and Friesens have come forward as event sponsors, meaning we’ll get to feed our volunteers lunch and book an additional room for sessions. We’re on the constant lookout for more help, though, so if you have any ideas for sponsors we could approach, please let me know. The more we can get on board, the lower your event fees will be.

With our unconference less than three months away, I thought I’d devote this month’s update to FAQs about presenting.

Do I have to present?

Nope—only if you want to.

All right, I want to. Should I give a presentation or lead a discussion?

Presentations are better suited to disseminating expert knowledge…

Say you’ve developed a great system for archiving all of your royalty-free images. By allowing all of your designers to search the database, you’ve cut down on duplicate payments for identical images and have been able to use the same image for multiple projects, saving an estimated $2,000 a year. You want to tell others how you created the system and give a demo of how it works.

… whereas discussion groups are better for ascertaining how others approach a particular problem that you face.

You’re thinking of creating a proofreading test for new freelancers, but you’re not sure if it’s worth it or how to write or administer such a test. You want to see whether and how others test their freelancers and what they’ve learned from their experiences.

That said, the sessions can take on any format and be as interactive as you wish. Maybe you want to give a brief presentation to set the tone and offer context but then open it up to a discussion. Go for it—there are no rules.

What about the time limit?

Okay, there is one rule. We’d like to accommodate all speakers and keep the event on schedule, so please stick to the forty-minute time limit, including Q&A. Each room will have a volunteer time keeper who will give the speaker a five-minute warning and a one-minute warning.

Do I have to make slides if I’m giving a presentation?

Nope—only if you think they’ll help. If you do make slides, bring them on a USB flash drive. They should be in PDF or PowerPoint format. Keep a backup somewhere in your email or in the cloud.

What happens on the day of?

Arrive early and give a one-minute pitch of your presentation or discussion to the crowd at the opening session. Based on how participants respond, we’ll add your topic to the schedule. Once the schedule is set, participants can attend any sessions they choose.

What’s with this whole voting thing? I don’t want to spend time putting together a presentation if I’m not going to be able to give it.

We’ll have plenty of slots to accommodate presentations; voting is mainly for room assignments, since the rooms that we’ve reserved accommodate different numbers of people.

One issue we may run into is that multiple people may wish to present about the same thing. In that case, it’s up to you to decide whether you’d like to go ahead with your presentation. It’s not necessarily a bad thing to have several sessions on the same topic, because it gives participants an alternative if they want to attend a different session at the same time as one of them.

Note, however, that if several people pitch the same discussion topic, we may consolidate those into a single session.

What if there are two sessions I want to attend at the same time?

Shortly after the event we’ll be asking all presenters to send us their notes and slides. We’ll package them up in a folder and share that with all event participants. It may not be the same as being there for the actual session, but it’s the next best thing.

Will there be WiFi?

Yes! So it’ll be possible to demonstrate online tools, live-tweet tips you’ve picked up, etc.

***

That’s it from me for now. If you have any further questions about presenting or about the event in general, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. You can find more information about PubPro 2013 on our main event page.

The making of a profession: Why do editors need a national association?

David Harrison, secretary on the Editors’ Association of Canada’s national executive council, spoke at Wednesday’s EAC-BC meeting about the making of a profession. Are editors there yet? And can EAC be considered a true professional association? In addition to exploring the answers to those questions, Harrison also gave us an update on some of EAC’s initiatives at the national level.

What defines a professional?

Harrison was in a good position to speak to this issue, since he spent much of his career developing the program of professional studies for the Certified General Accountants Association. He explained that according to the Canada Revenue Agency, only select groups of people—doctors, lawyers, accountants, and the like—are recognized professionals. Harrison distilled the definition of a profession down to these attributes:

  1. Use of skills based on a body of knowledge
  2. Education and training in these skills
  3. Competency ensured by examinations
  4. Continuing professional development
  5. Code of ethics/conduct
  6. Self-governing body
  7. Identity, shared values (i.e., a community)
  8. Portability of designation

So where do editors sit? Over EAC’s thirty-four-year history, the organization has grown from a small group of freelancers to an association of more than 1,500 members, it has established a set of professional standards of editorial excellence, it has issued publications and regularly offered professional development opportunities, and it has developed a rigorous set of certification exams and created the designation of Certified Professional Editor, which is portable across the country. What we don’t have is a professional code of ethics. What’s more, a few pockets of editors have organized themselves outside of EAC’s umbrella—including the Professional Editors’ Association of Vancouver Island and the Manitoba Editors’ Association, and so in some ways the EAC isn’t a fully national professional association. Unlike most professional organizations, EAC doesn’t require its members to have a certain level of competency, nor does it have the power to restrict people without a certification designation from taking on certain work. Frances Peck pointed out, however, that you do need a certain number of years of experience before you can be a voting member of the organization.

Anne Brennan, in the audience, asked why EAC doesn’t have a code of ethics. I jumped in at that point, because I was on the code of ethics task force that explored the issue about a year and a half ago. The Professional Editorial Standards do include some ethical aspects—including being respectful of authors and fellow editors, adhering to deadlines, etc.—but if we established a code of ethics that we expected members to follow, then we’d have to enforce it, and as an organization we simply don’t have the policing power to do that. What we may do, in the next revision of the PES, is pull out those ethical elements and flesh them out into a more explicit list of ethical principles that people can choose to honour. (EAC does have a code of conduct that governs how members ought to behave with one another.)

What’s happening at the national level at EAC?

Volunteer relations

This is a high priority for the organization, which wants to make volunteering rewarding enough that it truly becomes one of the perks of membership. Ideas being explored include establishing a volunteer database that matches people to interests, as well as training, support, and recognition programs.

Training and professional development

Webinars are a proposed addition to the association’s professional development programs. These will allow members to attend training sessions no matter where they are, freeing the professional development chairs at each branch from having to reinvent the wheel.

Publications

An ebook edition of Editing Canadian English (3rd edition) is in the works.

l’agrément en français de l’ACR

The francophone members hope to develop a French version of certification.

Governance

A governance task force is redrafting association bylaws and procedures to meet new federal government legislation for not-for-profit organizations.

Membership survey

EAC will soon release the results of the 2012 membership survey, which will give us a clear picture of the membership’s demographics, as well as members’ typical fee structures and rates. Harrison couldn’t share much with us, but he did mention that EAC members most valued branch seminars, followed by the Online Directory of Editors, followed by EAC’s publications.

***

A couple of years ago, EAC was restructured such that the national executive council no longer had representatives from each branch or province. Although the executive council now includes a western regional director and an eastern regional director, I think that not having a B.C.-based representative at the national level last year made our branch feel as though it was in the dark about what was happening elsewhere within the organization. David Harrison’s involvement on the national council and his updates at our branch meeting have helped me, at least, feel a bit more engaged.

Book review: Indexing Names

This review appeared in the Winter 2012 issue of Bulletin, the Indexing Society of Canada’s newsletter.

***

“It’s just a name index. It should be pretty straightforward.”

How many times have we heard that from a client—or even said it to ourselves? In Indexing Names (published for the ASI by Information Today), editor Noeline Bridge and her authoritative team of contributors dispel the myth that name indexing is easy, and they deftly show how multi-faceted and nuanced names can be.

Divided into four parts, the book tackles name indexing from a variety of angles. The first part offers guidelines based on nationality and ethnicity; it features chapters on languages commonly seen in English text, such as French and German, as well as less prominent languages, including Hmong and Te Reo Māori. The second part of the book addresses name indexing by genre, including biographies and art books. In the third part the authors look at particular issues such as fictional, corporate, and geographic names. The book’s final part offers readers resources, including a detailed chapter by Janet Russell about how to interpret an entry in the Library of Congress Authorities.

The book’s first section provides eye-opening historical and cultural context that helps explain why names in a particular language are structured the way they are—and what that means to indexers. Discerning between a tribal affiliation and a surname that has evolved from a patronymic may seem like hair splitting, but the book’s contributors convincingly show why these distinctions are important; running throughout the text of Indexing Names is an emphasis on the need to respect not only the author but also the culture of the work’s subject matter. Thus, although Indexing Names does help indexers solve immediate problems—such as identifying where to break a name with multiple prefixes—its raison d’être is much more profound. Its unwillingness to prescribe one right approach is perhaps the book’s greatest strength.

In her introduction, Bridge underscores the many considerations in name indexing, and Sherry L. Smith echoes this theme as she takes the reader through her thought process, giving indexers a method or system to apply rather than just a set of rules to follow. Seth Maislin follows with a fascinating exercise in analyzing how we recognize a name as a name; through it he shows how challenging it is to create a computer program that will perform automated name indexing—further evidence that indexing names isn’t as easy as some may think.

Indexing Names is vast in its coverage, and each chapter is detailed and comprehensive. However, despite (naturally) having a thorough index, the book could benefit from a few features to improve usability and navigation. A table of contents at the start of each chapter, for example, would allow readers to find specific issues by heading. And although many of the chapters, in the first section in particular, address parallel topics, they aren’t structured in a parallel way. This lack of homogeneity means that the voices of individual contributors can shine through the text, but it also means readers must relearn how to find what they’re looking for with each chapter. This is particularly true for the format in which similar information is presented—sometimes in tables and sometimes as indented paragraphs, for example. Occasionally titles or URLs of important resources are buried in narrative paragraphs, making quick identification and retrieval more difficult.

These minor issues are certainly not enough to keep me from recommending Indexing Names. For anyone working in the genres of biography, history, or genealogy, this book is a must-have. You don’t need to read it cover to cover for it to be a useful tool, but to get the most out of the book, you’d be advised to read through relevant chapters, highlighter in hand, before embarking on a project. I would love to see this book one day become an online resource, both for searchability and extensibility. Within the confines of a physical book, an important resource such as Indexing Names can’t be as exhaustive as users might like, whereas if the book inspired an indexer to create a chapter on Russian names, say, a dynamic web resource could easily support this kind of addition.

An e-Interview with Noeline Bridge

This interview appeared in the Winter 2012 issue of Bulletin, the Indexing Society of Canada’s newsletter.

***

Editor of Indexing Names Noeline Bridge has been an indexer for more than 20 years. She has published numerous articles on indexing and is the co-author of Royals of England: A Guide for Readers, Travellers, and Genealogists. Recently Iva Cheung interviewed her by email about Indexing Names, which was edited by Noeline and was published this year by Information Today [ITI].

IC: What motivated you to compile Indexing Names?

NB: Two interrelated and rather vague thoughts led to the book: that I’d thought on and off over the years that I’d like to write a book on some aspect of indexing; then, publishing articles and making presentations on names, this vague idea turned into a book on names. Also, over the years, other indexers had been producing books about indexing but one devoted to names wasn’t one of them. My conversation with John Bryans at the Information Today booth at a conference was the trigger. I was perusing the books on display, and John remarked that he wished more indexers would write books. I found myself asking, “So you would be interested if I wrote a book on indexing names?” To which he replied, “My response is, ‘When can you get it to me?’” A short time later, a posting on Index-L [an indexing listserv] mentioned the need for a book on indexing names. After drawing a few deep breaths, I responded to say that I was thinking about doing this, knowing I was making a commitment and would be doing it.

IC: How did you find, approach, and select contributors? Did you give them content guidelines?

NB: I’ve always collected listserv postings about names for my presentations and articles, so I went through those looking for expertise and writing skills, and also ASI [American Society for Indexing]/ITI’s books on indexing. As my outline took shape, I dived into the listings of indexers available on the indexing societies’ websites, looking for relevant interests and experience. I thought it would be easy to secure writers and articles, that everyone would have the same reaction I do when asked to write, leaping at the opportunity and producing the article! I was naive. Quite a few people turned me down—nicely, I must add!—but several referred me to others, some of whom agreed, while others referred me to others, and so on, or suggested another relevant topic that ultimately bore fruit. Over time, a few writers dropped out, inevitably and understandably—indexers qualified to write chapters for books are very busy already, and when their lives became complicated by health or family issues, the added burden of writing proved to be just too much for them. A couple of others just never produced their chapters after showing initial interest. For very important chapters I later found substitute writers or included that material in my own chapters. Other ideas, I just had to drop. Seeing how difficult it was to secure writers, I imposed only a few guidelines for fear of putting off potential writers. Enid Zafran, ASI’s editor for their books, wanted substantive material, which I did too. I asked for lots of examples along with background information—historical, where relevant—so that indexers could make informed decisions when examples didn’t match their requirements. I decided to worry about length later, just asking them to write what they wished in the meantime. Editing would come later.

IC: In the book’s introduction, you write that as you worked on the book, its direction changed and that the final product is “not the names indexing encyclopedia that I had envisaged.” What was that initial vision? And if you could add any material to the book now, what would you choose to add?

NB: When the book was a vague idea, I had various equally vague ideas, like some vast compendium of short pieces on names belonging to as many nationalities and ethnicities as possible, or a compilation of all published articles on the subject, or… I wasn’t sure. However, when I approached Enid about the book, quite naturally she wanted an outline as soon as possible. So I had to produce one fast, realizing that only when I had at least a temporary outline could I approach possible writers. I still wanted as many national/ethnic names as I could get, but my compiled listserv messages were often about specific issues regarding names indexing, and names in particular genres of books. So then I came up with the divisions in the book, feeling rather uneasily that it would look like three books in one, and even wondering if I should produce three books. But the latter idea disappeared when I confronted the realities of securing writers, so only the one book was feasible, at least at the time! Outstanding material that I was dearly hoping to include was North American Native names; someone was interested initially but then dropped out, and although I tried hard, I never found a substitute. Others were more Asian names and at least some African ones, a chapter on local history (lots of name issues there!), religious names outside of Christianity (although some of that material was covered in other articles), and, somewhat similarly, European royalty and aristocracy.

IC: What I appreciate about the book is that it offers context and suggestions but isn’t overly prescriptive. It’s a guide, not a strict set of rules. And there is a recurring emphasis on respecting the author and reader in almost all of the contributions. Was that the effect you had hoped for?

NB: I’m glad you noticed and appreciated this aspect. As I mention in the book, I am a former library cataloguer, where we had to use a prescriptive, rules-based approach—as big databases must—to ensure uniqueness and matches for each person’s name. As a freelance back-of-the-book indexer, I came to realize that in this indexing context, genre and reader and authors’ and publishers’ styles often dictate especially how long or short, formal or informal, an indexed name should be. Consequently I changed my terminology from rules to conventions or guidelines in my articles and presentations. Reading the contributors’ chapters expanded my own flexibility and sensitivity to genre, styles, and user issues.

IC: You note in your chapter “Resources for Personal Names” that references are increasingly Web-based. Any plans to turn Indexing Names into a Web resource?

NB: No, I don’t think so. Although many websites remain surprisingly stable, other valuable ones arrive and depart or change their URLs. All URLs have to be checked often, and especially just before publication deadline, a time-consuming process—and frustrating when one tries to discover if the website is now under another name or has simply been pulled. Also, because books have to be finalized many months before publication, at least some URLs aren’t going to be current when the book comes out. Web-based resources are, I think, the stuff of journal articles but not published books.

IC: You wrote the index for Indexing Names—how intimidating was it to compose an index for a book by indexers about indexing?

NB: It was always on my mind that indexers would be using my index and judging it not only by how easily they found needed information but also how I’d structured it. One of my first index users pointed out to me that he’d looked up “stage names” and not found an entry, although there is a chapter on the names of performing artists—a See reference I should have thought of! And perhaps there are others… I shudder to think!

PubPro 2013—December update

I just sent this note out to my PubPro 2013 mailing list, and I thought I’d post it here, too. Apologies to subscribers who are getting this twice.

PubPro 2013 is taking shape! We’ve got a schedule nailed down and are now redoubling our efforts to try to reach as many B.C.-area managing editors and publication production specialists as possible. We’re also on the lookout for sponsors to help keep costs down for all participants.

Schedule

Here’s how the day will look:

9:15–9:30 Check-in and coffee
9:30–10:15 Opening remarks
Speakers pitch topics, participants vote, and program is set
10:20–11:00 Sessions
11:05–11:45 Sessions
11:50–12:30 Sessions
12:30–1:10 Lunch
1:15–1:55 Sessions
2:00–2:40 Sessions
2:45–3:35 Networking tea*
3:40–4:00 Event debriefing and closing remarks
4:00–4:30 Chair yoga**

*What’s the networking tea?

The networking tea is a special session that allows you to continue your conversations with your colleagues outside the confines of a formal session, and it also puts you in the same room as some of the professionals you might want to hire. Pre-registered freelancers will join us all for a tea or coffee and will get an opportunity to chat and swap business cards with you.

**And chair yoga?

Unwind at the end of the day with a relaxing but invigorating session of yoga led by editor and yoga instructor Irene Zafiris.

Boosting attendance

Response to our initial outreach efforts has been enthusiastic and encouraging. It’s looking as though we’ll have representatives from academic publishers, course developers, custom publishers, self-publishers, educational publishers, journals, magazines, book packagers, policy research institutes, trade book publishers, technical publishers, and more. Still, we’re asking for your help in spreading the word about the event, because the more people we can get out to this unconference, the more interesting it’ll be. We’d be so grateful if you’d let your network know about PubPro (bearing in mind that not everyone who does managing editor–type stuff is called a managing editor). The event’s official hashtag is #PubPro2013.

Sponsorship

To help keep event fees low, we’re reaching out to sponsors for $150 contributions. If you have any suggestions for potential sponsors—businesses or other organizations that might like to reach publication production professionals from across B.C.—please let us know. EAC-BC’s professional development co-chairs Tina Robinson and Eva van Emden have set up a special Gifttool page to make contributing easy. That page also details what we’re offering in return for the support and what the contribution would allow us to do.

That’s it from me for now. I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season and great start to 2013. If you have any questions about PubPro, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Personal editorial checklists

I’ve written at length—some would argue ad nauseam—about the utility of editorial checklists, but until now I’ve focused mainly on checklists that publishers can use for communication and quality control. Just as powerful are personal checklists that any editor, freelance or in-house, can develop for him- or herself. Obvious items to include on such a list are actions that you have to take with every document, regardless of source or genre: running a spell check, eliminating double spaces, and so on. The real power of the personal checklist, however, lies in its ability to cover up your editorial Achilles’ heel.

We all have one (or several). If you’re lucky, you’re aware of it but may still feel powerless to do much about it. Editorial Achilles’ heels are those troublesome little problems that, for whatever reason, your brain just can’t seem to figure out. They’re usually relatively minor grammatical, usage, or spelling issues, but on full display they can really put a dent in your credibility as an editor.

For me, the word “embarrass” was problematic for the longest time—I never could remember how many r’s it had, no matter how many times I read, wrote, or typed it. Spell check was my saviour in that case, but it was no help for another of my weaknesses: I would routinely miss when an author wrote “grizzly” when she meant “grisly.” I think the first time I heard a news anchor say “grisly,” I had no problem imagining a gruesome crime scene being akin to the aftermath of a bloody bear mauling. The synapse formed, and it stubbornly would not let go.

Having identified that weakness, the solution was straightforward: on my personal checklist, I added “Search for ‘grizzly.’ ” The error didn’t come up that often, but that quick check saved me from embarrassment more than once.

At Ruth Wilson’s EAC-BC talk about style sheets this past spring, she emphatically discouraged editors from using style sheets to document these kinds of editorial weaknesses. “You don’t want to display your ignorance,” she said, noting that style sheets are a part of your communication with the author and other members of the editorial and design team. The beauty of personal checklists, in contrast, is that nobody has to know about them, and they can include as many items as you need. Of course, as with all truly useful checklists, personal editorial checklists should be written down; mental checklists are just as fallible as the mind that owns them.

The best part of keeping a personal editorial checklist, though, is the moment when you’ve finally beaten that errant synapse into submission and no longer need a written reminder. Sure, it’s a tiny victory, but for an editor who has finally learned the proper way to spell “embarrass” after however many decades, being able to take an item off the checklist for good is still worthy of a small celebration.