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Book review: Science in Print

After reviewing Darcy Cullen’s Editors, Scholars, and the Social Text, which offered an insightful introduction to the world of scholarly publishing in the humanities, I found myself wondering which principles and practices within that book also applied to publishing in the sciences. I was hopeful that Science in Print: Essays on the History of Science and the Culture of Print, edited by Rima D. Apple, Gregory J. Downey, and Stephen L. Vaughn (published by the University of Wisconsin Press), might shed some light on the issue.

In 2008 the Center for the History of Print and Digital Culture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison sponsored an international conference on the culture of print in science, technology, engineering, and medicine; nine of the conference sessions were chosen to be included in Science in Print, released earlier this fall. The essays include

Meghan Doherty’s piece on how William Faithorne’s The Art of Graveing and Etching, a manual on the engraver’s craft, reflected standards of accuracy that he also applied to engravings for the Royal Society, which in turn reinforced scientific rigour among Royal Society members;
Robin E. Rider’s look at the importance of typography in late-eighteenth-century and early-nineteenth-century mathematical textbooks;
Lynn K. Nyhart’s overview of a decades-long series of publications, all arising from a German expedition to sample plankton in the world’s oceans;
Bertrum H. MacDonald’s tribute to the Smithsonian Institution’s role in scientific publication and information interchange between Canadian and American scientists in the late 1800s;
Jennifer J. Connor’s semi-biographical piece on George M. Gould, who in the late nineteenth century edited several medical journals and advanced ideas of editorial autonomy within medical journal publishing;
Kate McDowell’s probe of how evolution was presented in children’s science books between 1892 and 1922;
Sally Gregory Kohlstedt’s look at how textbooks and teacher resource books approached the burgeoning interest in nature study in the early twentieth century;
Rima D. Apple’s investigation into the influence of various publications, particularly government dietary guidelines, on fostering the primacy of meat in the American diet;
Cheryl Knott’s comparison between the reaction to Stewart Udall’s environmental treatise, The Quiet Crisis, published in 1963, and the reception to the book’s twenty-fifth-anniversary edition, published in 1988.

Being a bit of a math and typography nerd, I found resonance in Robin Rider’s essay, in which she says,

The visual culture of mathematics, done well, offers “enormous advantages of seeing,” as Edward Tufte would say. Readers learn much from the way mathematics is presented in type. Good typography highlights and reinforces ideas; indifferent typography (or worse) obscures ideas and stymies the reader. (p. 38)

—particularly since that last sentence applies just as well to non-mathematical texts.

Although not addressed as a specific topic in the book, the issue of the motivation behind academic publishing does rear its head in more than one essay. Both Lynn Nyhart and Jennifer Connor remark that the contributors to scientific and medical journals are generally not paid for their contributions. Writing about medical editor George M. Gould, Connor says,

After [publisher] William Wood of New York refused him permission that same year to reprint articles from its medical journals in his Year-Book—a digest of material that reached, according to Gould, thousands of readers—he distributed a circular about the relations between the medical profession and “lay publishing firms of medical journals.” Publishers do not pay physicians for their contributions, he noted, although they presumably profit from them; and, in this case, no other publisher—even those who do pay contributors—had objected to reprinting extracts. But above all, this publisher’s decision was wrong because it prevented the dissemination of medical knowledge. (p. 116)

Lynn Nyhart argues that publishing itself motivated scientific progress:

Maintaining the commitment to publish, I would suggest, was in fact what made these projects successful and important as science. (Conversely, the lack of a strong commitment to publishing following many voyages often resulted in the collected specimens languishing in boxes for years without ever being analyzed.) (p. 67)

Science in Print also looks beyond the academic realm at trade and popular science publishing, and the closing chapter by Cheryl Knott makes reference to Priscilla Coit Murphy’s book What a Book Can Do: The Publication and Reception of Silent Spring, saying

According to Murphy, it is the book (as opposed to the author) that launches social and political movements as it takes on a life of its own in ways the author and publisher could not have foreseen. (p. 201)

Knott reinforces this concept by showing how the evolution of the environmental movement and a changing political climate affected the success of The Quiet Crisis, an environmental book by former U.S. Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall. It became a best-seller after it was first published in 1963 but saw a tepid reception when it was expanded, updated, and reissued in 1988. Knott discovered that readers often cite and recommend the original edition, even if they’d clearly read the newer one. She notes, “Such mix-ups indicate that many readers do not make the careful distinctions between editions that collectors, bibliographers, and librarians make.” (p. 217) In my experience, although publishers are aware of this reality, they are sometimes in denial about it as they try to find new ways of repackaging and marketing existing content. How do you capitalize on the cachet of a successful original edition while offering readers the new information they need?

***

Although Science in Print did offer me some new perspectives and gave historical context to the development of scientific publishing, particular in North America, I have to say that didn’t enjoy the experience of reading the book as much as I would have wanted, for a variety of reasons. I’ve been struggling for weeks to write a cohesive review of this book (and some may remark that I’ve failed), likely because I found that Science in Print itself lacks cohesion. I’m no stranger to reading and reviewing anthologies; despite being an assembly of contributions from different authors, they must still have an internal rhythm and logic—like a good album put together from a collection of singles. Science in Print takes too much of a scattergun approach, attempting to present numerous topics ostensibly connecting science and print culture that are really quite disparate. Perhaps a more effective approach would have been to select more of the conference sessions to publish but to group them by topic or genre and issue each of these as a separate volume, which would have allowed for more meaningful comparisons among contributors’ viewpoints.

And although I understand that scholarly presses generally don’t do much substantive editing, this is once instance in which a manuscript really could have benefited from a skilled stylistic editor’s hand. Take, for instance, this opening to one of the essays:

Educators in the early twentieth century faced the dilemma of how to build the skills of teachers so that they could teach directly from nature in a new progressive pedagogy emerging in the late nineteenth century known as nature study. (p. 156)

Most stylistic editors would be able to offer at least a couple of suggestions to make that sentence more engaging and approachable while conveying exactly the same information. (I should say that I don’t mean to pick on this one contributor—whose content was otherwise pretty interesting—I just wanted to offer an example.)

Finally, one aspect of the book that may have contributed to my discomfort while reading is the design (ironic, given Robin Rider’s astute analysis of the importance of good typography): the pages are dense, the type is small, and the lines are long. Robert Bringhurst, in The Elements of Typographic Style, writes, “Anything from 45 to 75 characters is widely regarded as a satisfactory length of line for a single-column page set in a serifed text face in a text size… A line that averages more than 75 or 80 characters is likely to be too long for continuous reading.” (v. 2.4, pp. 26–27) Science in Print definitely falls into the latter category. I would suggest that readers try the ebook and reflow the text to a comfortable line length, but it appears that the only available ebook version is a fixed-layout PDF. I haven’t read any other books published by University of Wisconsin Press, but if this book is based on a standard design template, the press may benefit from revisiting that template and revising it for readability.

Salute to a fallen Canadian cultural institution

I was going to make this week’s post a self-indulgent look back at the past year on my bloggiversary (as the kids call it), but given the sad news that D&M Publishers has filed for creditor protection, I wanted to say a few words about the company—and the people—that made my years in book publishing so rewarding.

I started at D&M during my Master of Publishing degree as a lowly intern (though pretty much everyone there did their best not to make me feel lowly at all), doing all manner of random tasks, from sending out review copies and archiving editorial material to staffing the front desk while the receptionist was away. Getting to spend time in several departments gave me a solid appreciation for the effort everyone was making. It really was, as Brenda Feist, sales and marketing assistant at the time, said, “amazing to see how many people it takes to make a book happen.”

My main tasks, though, were editorial—proofing inputting, proofreading books and marketing materials, and a bit of indexing. I learned from the best: Nancy Flight and Lucy Kenward patiently showed me the ropes, insisting on the highest standards and gently but firmly nudging me to improve myself. From Managing Editor Susan Rana I learned the best practices in book production as I watched her shepherd project after project through multiple hands and to tight deadlines. The company’s art department was also an inspiration: headed by Peter Cocking, D&M’s team of designers produced gorgeous books that routinely swept the Alcuin Awards.

During my internship, I embarked on a project to produce an informational handbook for authors to guide them through the editorial process, explaining the steps and the people involved in transforming a manuscript into a finished book. Little did I know that working on the handbook would sow the seeds of my interest in editorial efficiencies and systems. Later I would carve a niche role within the company of improving documentation and communication with authors and freelancers and developing quality-control methods to continue the company’s tradition of high editorial standards.

D&M offered me a contract to stay on once my internship was over, and I gladly accepted. There I was exposed to brilliant, inspiring authors and to books on a wide-ranging array of topics, from Aboriginal art to Vancouver architecture, from mouth-watering cookbooks to eye-opening biographies of influential Canadians, from history to current affairs and public policy, from environment to sport. I wish I’d retained more of what I read over those years.

To Scott McIntyre, thank you for all you have done. Thank you for trusting me with some of your best authors, thank you for recommending me to your friends and colleagues once I decided to strike out on my own, and thank you for giving me the opportunity to learn and develop alongside some of the best editors in the country. I can only imagine how heartbreaking this development must be—perhaps it feels like the loss of a child or the loss of a legacy. But please know that your fervent passion for and enormous contributions to Canadian culture endure—in the fine books that you’ve published, in the authors you’ve fostered and encouraged, in the people who’ve been able to learn from you by working for you.

What I value most from my time at D&M are the relationships I’ve forged with some of the smartest, funniest, hardest-working people I’ve ever met. To my good friends at D&M—who are too many to name here—please stay in touch. Now that I can no longer come into the office for the occasional visit, I’ll try to do my part and be better at reaching out in other ways.

Sorry; I guess this post did end up being self-indulgent after all. I didn’t think I would be as emotional about this turn of events as I am. I feel deeply for all of D&M’s employees and authors, and I’m here to offer my help wherever and whenever it’s needed.

Look out—the market’s about to be flooded by some amazingly talented people.

STC networking event, November 20

At Wednesday’s EAC-BC meeting, Mellissa Ruryk, president of the Society for Technical Communication’s Canada West Coast Chapter, invited all of us to attend a session featuring a panel of recruitment specialists discussing networking, followed by about thirty minutes of speed networking. The event will take begin at 7 pm on November 20 at the YWCA on Hornby Street. More information here.

Ebooks

Lara Smith gave a captivating and hugely informative presentation about ebooks at Wednesday’s EAC-BC meeting. Having gone to Greg Ioannou’s conference talk about e-publishing, I wondered if there’d be a lot of overlap in the content of the two talks. There wasn’t—and after the meeting BC Branch Chair Peter Moskos suggested to me that Lara probably had enough material to fill a full seminar.

Ebooks are often thought to be electronic versions of print books, Lara began, but many titles today are just born digital. Ebooks come in two main formats: PDF and EPUB. The ebook PDFs aren’t just your regular PDFs—they’re Universal PDFs, which are optimized for screen viewing. Chapters are bookmarked, the table of contents is linked, URLs are live, and the files include some metadata.

In the early days of ebooks, there were many different ebook formats; every e-reader developer wanted to create a device with a proprietary format, which led to a very fractured market. The International Digital Publishing Forum set out a standard known as EPUB—a set of rules that everyone could follow to build an ebook. All devices now have the capacity to read EPUB files. We’re not sure what the future will be for EPUB, though, because device manufacturers still like to add on proprietary bells and whistles to their EPUB files.

EPUBs can have fixed layouts or be flowable. Fixed-layout EPUBs look a bit like PDFs, but they have a lot more capability behind the scenes (e.g., accessibility features like text to speech). They’re much more complicated to create. EPUBs are good for visual books, such as coffee-table books or cookbooks, but they’re really meant to be read on a tablet device. Lara demonstrated how impractical it is to read a fixed-layout EPUB on a smartphone.

By contrast, flowable EPUBs can be read on a phone—not to mention e-readers and browsers—since the type can be enlarged as needed. Flowable EPUBs make up the bulk of the ebooks out there.

An EPUB, Lara explained, is really just a ZIP file. Change the epub extension to zip, and you can decompress the folder to see what’s inside. There may be a folder for images, and the text is broken up into chapters, each an HTML file. There’s a style sheet that controls how the tagged text looks to the human reader. She’s found the best strategy to ensure that the ebook looks good on all devices is to keep styling to a minimum. “We’re not trying to replicate the print book,” she said. “We really have to reconceptulaize it. We can’t control type in the same way.”

Lara works mostly with books that are destined for both print and digital, so she exports from InDesign. But she notes that you can build an EPUB from scratch in a text editor, and there’s conversion software that will transform Word files into EPUBs (although they don’t look very good). The simpler your original files, she said, the better it will look. (For example, never justify your text; on many devices, the text will look hideous and gappy.)

When publishers convert books to EPUBs, they have the option of using a conversion service, which is inexpensive and may be appropriate for converting large numbers of files (e.g., the publisher’s backlist), but the results can look pretty rough. Another option is in-house conversion, which allows for more control over quality, style, and timelines but requires an investment into a dedicated individual or team of people who must learn how to use the software and prepare the files for the market. Editors working with individual authors to create single ebooks may be able to dedicate more resources to fine-tune the EPUBs themselves to specific devices and take full advantage of enhancements like audio and video.

Lara also mentioned vendor conversion tools, including iBooks Author, Kindle Direct Publishing, and Kobo Writing Life, which are free tools to use but restrict you to selling within those particular streams, and DIY options (what she referred to as “device-agnostic options”), such as Smashwords, PressBooks by WordPress, and Vook, which charge for creating the ebooks, whether through an upfront fee or through royalties. She noted that all of these options have a learning curve and a real cost.

Once you’ve got your ebook made, you then have to sell it. How are people going to find it? The answer is metadata—information attached to your book including title, author, publisher, ISBN, price, description, author bio, reviews, etc.—that will populate distributors’ and retailers’ databases. Metadata is key to discoverability.

Lara then moved on to the contentious issue of digital rights management (DRM), which puts a lock on EPUBs file and prevents copying, editing, and reselling but also limits legitimate sharing of books and device switching. It pits readers’ freedoms against authors’ and publishers’ right to profit. The debate seems to be heading in two directions: digital media may be licensed to readers (where they can read but don’t actually own the book), or publishers may decide not to use DRM at all. (O’Reilly Media, in fact, has declared that it won’t be using DRM on any of its books.)

Another issue facing publishers is that EPUBs have the capability to incorporate a variety of assistive technologies, such as text to speech, alternative text, phonetic text, media overlays, dyslexic reading aids, conversion to braille, etc., and international accessibility organizations are pushing publishers to include all of these features. Of course, for the publisher, doing so means a lot more investment into editorial and production resources.

Lara was careful to note the distinction between apps and ebooks. Apps are self-contained applications, and they can be interactive and include all sorts of multimedia features. There are book apps—kids’ books work really well as apps, because they don’t have a lot of content but can support a lot of interactivity. Apps take more development than an ebook, and you need to involve a programmer.

So what are the editorial concerns surrounding e-publishing? First, the publisher must have the digital rights—including for the images that are to appear in the book. Next, the publisher should look at the content and figure out the best way to present the book (fixed or flowable) and decide whether to add enhancements.

Challenges for ebook publishers are elements like sidebars, which you want to place at section or chapter breaks so that they don’t interrupt the flow of the text. Lara noted that ebooks are read in a linear way; it becomes tedious to have to skip over what could turn into pages of sidebar content to get back to the main text, especially if you’re reading on a small screen. Footnotes are also a problem, because the foot of a page is no longer well defined. Indexes are similarly challenging. (See my summary of Jan Wright’s discussion of ebook indexes from this past spring’s ISC conference.)

On the flip side are the many advantages that ebooks offer. For example, endnotes can be linked, as can in-text references. Photo sections can go anywhere within the book, not necessarily just between printed signatures. You can make URLs in the book (and the references, especially) live, and you can add audio or video enhancements. Finally, there are no page limits, and you can really play around with the concept of what a book is. Lara warns, however, that the more fun stuff you put in, the greater the risk that something will break, and broken links or videos, for example, can frustrate readers.

Lara’s talk was phenomenal. I learned a huge amount, though I will probably eventually have to resign myself to the fact that she knows more about e-publishing than I ever will.

Book review: Grammar for Grown-ups

If you’ve picked up one or two clients from across the pond, you might be looking to brush up on your UK English. Katherine Fry and Rowena Kirton’s Grammar for Grown-ups: A Straightforward Guide to Good English (published by Square Peg) is a good place to start.

Fry, a freelance editor, and Kirton, the managing editorial director at Random House, have written a light-hearted guide to English grammar, covering everything from the parts of speech and punctuation to commonly misspelled words and trickier issues, including usage and the subjunctive mood. Helpfully, the book also includes a chapter that compares UK English with English in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. I found this chapter the most interesting, as it offers a glimpse into how the UK views other parts of the English-speaking world. Fry and Kirton not only give a detailed explanation of differences in punctuation (e.g., single quotes in the UK versus double in the U.S.) but also list regional terms and their UK equivalents—all with a healthy dose of humour:

[South African term / UK term]
voetsek (pronounced ‘foot sack’) / bugger off
vrying (pronounced ‘fraying’) / snogging
vuvuzela / very annoying blowy thing

(I found disconcerting the section on Canadianisms, in which the authors define “beaver tail” and “double-double”—are those really our chief lexical exports?)

Grammar for Grown-ups closes with a chapter defining literary terms and devices (through which I learned about antonomasia, encomium, and synecdoche)—not grammar per se but probably useful to know nonetheless.

The book is a quick read, and the tone is authoritative but neither condescending nor overly prescriptive. In fact, what I most appreciate is that they acknowledge that “Language is constantly developing, and while some rules should remain hard and fast, some may be bent and once in a while even broken – when you know what you’re doing…” (p. x) Throughout the book are exercises—many of them taken from classic works of literature—that reinforce what the authors have just taught, and the answers to those are at the back of the book. Most editors will find Grammar for Grown-ups an entertaining refresher, and even seasoned veterans will probably learn a thing or two.

That said, the book isn’t a style guide. Meant as a primer for a general audience, Grammar for Grown-ups is unlikely to find a permanent place on the professional editor’s reference shelf. (For one thing, it lacks an index.) Consider it bubble gum: fun but nonessential. And as with any grammar guide that claims to be “the only book you need,” it has its share of problems. For instance:

Most general descriptive adjectives can come both before and after the noun – ‘the long book’, ‘the bad idea’, OR ‘the book is long’, ‘the idea is bad’. In the former examples, before the noun and with no linking verb, the adjective is called attributive. In the latter, after the noun and verb, the adjective is called predicative. The first modifies the noun; the second completes the meaning of the sentence.” (p. 19)

That’s all fine and good, but nowhere do the authors define “linking verb.” Later on, as they explain adverbs, they write:

And to confuse things even more: ‘I feel badly‘ and ‘I feel bad‘ are both adverbs, but the sense is rather different. In the first, I am feeling ill, or my sense of touch has gone up the spout; in the latter, I am feeling bad about something, such as dumping my boyfriend just after he lost his job. (p. 23)

Had they taken the opportunity earlier to define “linking verb,” the distinction between “I feel badly” and “I feel bad” would have been easier to explain. (And no, “bad” isn’t an adverb here—it’s an adjective, precisely because “feel” is a linking verb.)

In other places, the book is downright wrong. Some examples:

In the section “Singular and Plural”

Making things even more irregular are those which are the same in both singular and plural – like ‘food’, ‘sheep’, ‘money’, ‘series’, ‘deer’, ‘offspring’. (p. 4)

So “Cabbage, seaweed, and mushrooms are three food that fight cancer”?

In the section about adverbs

Some adjectives end in “ly’ anyway – ‘friendly’, ‘lonely’, ‘lovely’ – so when they are used as adverbs, they don’t need another ‘ly’ added (‘friendlyly’? no thanks). (p. 23)

So “She smiled friendly”? I don’t think so. And even the Oxford English Dictionary confirms that it’s friendlily, lonelily, lovelily. Mouthfuls, yes—but not wrong.

In the section “‘a’ or ‘an’?”

On the whole, ‘an’ goes with any noun starting with a vowel – ‘an apple’, ‘an egg’, ‘an ice cream’, ‘an olive’ – though not always with ‘u’ nouns (it depends on how the ‘u’ is pronounced – it’s not ‘an unicorn’ but it is ‘an umbrella’). (p. 28)

Nope. It’s the sound immediately following the article that dictates which of “a” or “an” you use; the noun has nothing to do with it. “An overbearing mother-in-law” takes “an” because the sound that follows is a vowel, even though “mother-in-law” is the noun. And “an MP3 player” takes “an” because you say “em”—even though “MP3” technically starts with a consonant.

Despite these problems, Fry and Kirton get a lot right, particularly in their motivation for producing such a book in the first place. Even with the prevalence of textspeak, good grammar and punctuation are still important: “In a fast-paced world, when communications jostle for attention, if your letter, email or website page is full of errors, a reader won’t waste his or her time trying to work out what you’re trying to say.” (p. ix) If you’re looking for a rigorous reference on English grammar and usage, you might want to look elsewhere. But take Grammar for Grown-ups for what it is—a tour-bus loop through UK English—and you won’t be disappointed.

Want to become a power Word user?

There are several spots left in On-screen Editing: Getting the Most out of Microsoft Word, the course that Grace Yaginuma and I are teaming up to teach in SFU’s Writing and Communications Program. We’ll cover all the basics, including Track Changes, but we’ll also delve into the fun stuff like wildcard searches and macros that will help make all of your future on-screen editing projects more efficient. The course begins in five weeks! Register here.

Upcoming EAC-BC meeting on ebooks

My good friend Lara Smith, one of the most generous, helpful people I know, will be giving a talk at the upcoming EAC-BC meeting about ebook formats, digital production workflows, and what editors need to know about ebook conversion. Lara, the print and digital production coordinator at D&M, is the perfect person to give this presentation not only because she sits at the intersection between p- and ebooks but also because she’s worked in house as a proofreader and indexer and acutely understands editorial concerns in the ebook production process. (As an aside, Lara and her partner, Anita, are responsible for the best chili oil I’ve ever tasted.)

Join us at the YWCA on Hornby on Wednesday, October 17, for Lara’s talk and the chance to win a free EAC-BC professional development seminar (as well as the books I’ve reviewed on this site since last month’s meeting). Refreshments and mingling start at 7 pm, and the talk begins at 7:30 pm.

Book review: The Functional Art

“Can we throw in an infographic to break up the text a little?”

When I was cutting my editorial teeth as a student journalist, that wasn’t an uncommon question to hear in the newsroom, but it’s one that I imagine would make Alberto Cairo cringe. Cairo’s the author of The Functional Art: An Introduction to Information Graphics and Visualization (published by New Riders), and he persuasively argues that infographics designers aren’t simply at the service of writers and art directors—they’re expert journalists in their own right, using visual storytelling to allow readers to explore and discover.

Cairo is an instructor of information graphics and visualization at the School of Communication at the University of Miami, and his passion for teaching comes through in his engaging text. The Functional Art is meant to teach students of information visualization the principles of good design, many of which parallel the principles of good writing and clear communication. Writes Cairo,

The relationship between visualization and art… is similar to the linkage of journalism and literature. A journalist can borrow tools and techniques from literature, and be inspired by great fiction writing, but she will never allow her stories to become literature. (p. xxi)

The Functional Art is divided into four parts and is illustrated throughout with real examples of effective and ineffective graphics. The first part of the book explains the need for and fundamental function of information visualization. Cairo writes, “The first and main goal of any graphic and visualization is to be a tool for your eyes and brain to perceive what lies beyond their natural reach,” adding “Most of us mortals have brains that didn’t evolve to deal with large amounts of data.” (pp. 9–10) The second part of the book looks at how our eyes and brains evolved to perceive and understand what we see and how designers can use those traits to maximize the effectiveness of their graphics. The third part, “Practice,” aims to teach readers how to create effective infographics, both static and interactive. The last part of the book consists of a series of profiles: interviews with visualization experts at the top of their professions, including, among others, John Grimwade, graphics director of Condé Nast Traveler magazine; Juan Velasco of National Geographic magazine; Hannah Fairfield, formerly of The Washington Post and now at The New York Times; Hans Rosling of the Gapminder Foundation; and Stefanie Posavec, who has developed unique ways of visualizing literature. The book also comes with a DVD that includes three lessons reinforcing the book’s key concepts.

The most interesting aspect of the book for me is that Cairo uses evolutionary biology to explain the reasoning behind the design principles he advances. Our ancestors regularly faced predators and food shortages, and our brains have evolved as a result of those threats. To explain why bubble charts are not as effective as bar charts at offering accurate comparisons of data, Cairo writes, “The human brain is not good at calculating surface sizes. It is much better at comparing a single dimension such as length or height… When faced with the question of whether that bear running toward you is big enough to pose a threat, the brain doesn’t waste time or energy analyzing if the bear is tall and wide. Seeing if it’s just tall is good enough.” (p. 40) He uses a similar approach to show how to make the best use of colour, explaining that “the brain is much better at quickly detecting shade variations than shape differences” (p. 113) but that “pure colors are uncommon in nature, so limit them to highlight whatever is important in your graphics.” (p. 105)

The parallels between information visualization and text editing, particularly plain language principles, are stark. After all, “graphics, charts, and maps aren’t just tools to be seen, but to be read and scrutinized.” (p. xx) In one of the profiles at the end of the book, interview subject Moritz Stefaner says, “Learning about how human language works is very important for visualization and information graphics because they are language, too. They have a grammar, a syntax, and a vocabulary.” (p. 317) Echoing a fundamental tenet of the plain language movement, Cairo notes that “graphics should not simplify messages. They should clarify them, highlight trends, uncover patterns, and reveal realities not visible before.” (p. 79) He also says, “Never, ever dumb down your data just because you think your readers will not ‘get it.'” (p. 84) As plain language experts know, it’s all about respect for your reader: don’t underestimate their intelligence, and structure what you offer in anticipation of how they will read it. If you make them work harder than they have to, they’ll go elsewhere for their information.

As in writing, structure and hierarchy are important in information visualization. Cairo writes,

You need to build a solid backbone for your information, a reading path, an order, and a hierarchy, before you lock yourself into a style for your display. The structure is the skeleton and muscles of your graphic; the visual style is the skin. With no bones to support it, the skin of your project will collapse. (p. 155)

Editing and fact checking are also crucial to effective information graphics. John Grimwade of Condé Nast Traveler says, “It’s not enough to do good research and then present your information to your readers. You have to edit that information. We, infographics designers, must work as reporters but, above all, as editors.” (pp. 216–217) In his interview with Jan Schwochow, Cairo warns that “Many news publications rush to produce information graphics whenever something big—such as a terrorist attach or a natural catastrophe—happens. In many cases, what they end up publishing is full of errors because they don’t double-check their sources, and some even make up details.” (p. 280) Even once you have accurate data, it takes judgment to decide what to present and how to present it. As Cairo notes in his interview with Hans Rosling, “the form in which we filter the data is more important than the actual data.” (p. 310)

Cairo’s text gave me a much deeper appreciation of the research, skill, and editorial judgment—not to mention the hours of labour—that go into making good infographics. I was anxious to get to the “Practice” portion of the book, in which Cairo outlined his methodology (while warning that many information graphics designers fall into the trap of skipping directly to step 5):

Define the focus of the graphic, what story you want to tell, and the key points to be made. Have a clear idea of how the infographic will be useful to your readers, and what they will be able to accomplish with it.

Gather as much information as you can about the topic you are covering. Interview sources, look for datasets, and write or storyboard ideas in quick form.

Choose the best graphic form. What shapes should your data adopt? What kind of charts, maps, and diagrams will best fit the goals you set in the first step?

Complete your research. Flesh out your sketches and storyboards.

Think about the visual style. Choose typefaces, color palettes, etc.

If you’ve been sketching offline, move the design to the computer. Complete the graphic using the appropriate software tools. (p. 154)

Each of these steps in Cairo’s methodology could have used significantly more elaboration—perhaps even its own chapter. For example, where is the best place to “look for datasets”? How do you discern between reliable and unreliable data? How do you “choose the best graphic form,” and how do you know that the way you choose to present your data doesn’t misrepresent its message? How can you decide “what story you want to tell” before knowing what the data are going to say? Instead of answering these questions, Cairo jumped immediately into a chapter about interactive graphics, leaving me feeling ill-equipped to apply the principles he so careful laid out in his first several chapters.

In general, The Functional Art was a fascinating read for me, as an editor with a science background. Having the justification for basic infographics design principles grounded in evolutionary biology gave important context: good design is not just about what’s trendy or what “feels right”; there’s a reason that some presentations promote understanding better than others. Cairo’s angle made me wonder how a similar approach could be applied to writing. Given that “eminent scientists have famously asserted that their thinking processes are not based on the mind speaking to itself using words, but on giving visual mental shape to concepts and ideas to facilitate their combination in some sort of imaginary space.” (p. 141) (giving credence to the editorial mantra, “show, don’t tell”), how can we use the way we interpret words into mental images to write and communicate better?

This book also made me aware of how much I’ve neglected infographics as a tool in the publications I’ve worked on. I suspect I’m not the only one who seems to default to photography as a means of illustration, but Cairo deftly shows that photography may not always be the best graphical choice. The Functional Art has opened my eyes to opportunities to use visualization to further understanding beyond simple pie charts or bar graphs, and the book is loaded with links to additional information for readers to continue learning about the field.

However, as a pedagogical tool, the book could have been strengthened in several ways. One simple way would have been to add a summary of important points at the end of each chapter to serve as a quick-reference guide. Another would have been to offer readers (most of whom I would assume would be students) exercises or activities that would let them apply the principles they learned in each chapter. And as I mentioned earlier, after seven chapters of background information and build-up, I found it a letdown that only two chapters were devoted to the actual practice of creating information graphics. The second of those focused on interactive graphics before I felt I had had a chance to fully absorb, let alone master, the basics of non-interactive graphics. Although the lessons on the DVD reinforced the concepts in the book, they weren’t enough to leave me feeling confident that I had the tools I needed to start creating meaningful infographics. I would have preferred to see Cairo deconstruct each step of his methodology and expand it into an individual chapter, perhaps getting the room to do that by shortening the profiles and inserting them as a recurring highlight or feature within each chapter.

Award for Exploring Vancouver

Congratulations to authors Harold Kalman and Robin Ward and to photographer John Roaf! Exploring Vancouver: The Architectural Guide has won an award from the Canadian Association of Heritage Professionals in the Heritage Communication category. The award will be handed out at a ceremony on Thursday, October 11, between 7:30pm and 9:30pm at the Montreal Masonic Temple.

In other Exploring Vancouver news, Harold Kalman will be signing books at the Chapters on Broadway and Granville on Saturday, November 10.

Writing Rights—personal perspectives

In his Writing Rights session, David Scott Hamilton made an incredibly important point when he described asking for a royalty in his contract negotiations with Anvil. The publisher showed him the numbers and said, *We just can’t do it.”

That conversation really underscored that building a productive publisher–translator relationship is a two-way street—mutual respect is key. The subsequent discussions during the workshop about concerns over relinquishing control by assigning copyright and ways to negotiate the best contract might imply an adversarial relationship, but having worked at a publishing house, let me offer this perspective: publishers, in the vast majority of cases, aren’t out to screw authors over, just as authors who leave a small press after achieving some success to work with a bigger company aren’t trying to screw over their former publishers. Publishing is a business—one in which, especially in the literary world, margins are simply razor thin. Of course I’m by no means suggesting that artists shouldn’t try to negotiate a favourable contract—on the contrary. However, I think it’s important to highlight the fact that most publishers, particularly small literary presses, aren’t prolific money-making enterprises. Most are doing the best they can with what they have, and I think a more productive relationship would ultimately result if writers and translators approached their negotiations with that understanding in mind. It’s not so much that publishers want to hand artists the short end of the stick but that, in Canadian publishing, both ends of the stick can end up pretty short.

That said, I did very much appreciate and admire Martha Rans’s fervent advocacy on behalf of the artistic community. For artists whose work is exploited, having support like the Artists’ Legal Outreach can be invaluable.

When I attended Chang Han’s intellectual property session at Freelance Camp, I was left with a niggling question. Sure, you’re theoretically protected by a framework of copyright laws, but if someone infringes, not only do you have to discover the infringement, but you also have to be prepared to pursue legal action in the infringer’s jurisdiction. Rans’s comment about the difficulty of enforcement, particularly across borders, filled in the critical missing piece in my understanding.

Carolyn Swayze’s session consisted mainly of anecdotes from her work as an agent, and they were interesting—I didn’t know much about literary scouts before her talk—but the outline of the workshop implied she’d be discussing the Literary Translators’ Association of Canada’s model contract, which she didn’t address. I would have liked to see the anatomy of a translation contract to discover how much it jibed with my own experiences working with translators for a publisher. Luckily, it appears that the comprehensive LTAC booklet accompanying the workshop has all of that information and more—including foreign funding sources for translations.

Overall, Writing Rights was a very informative workshop, and I got to meet some terrific people. I’m amazed that it was free—another big thank-you to LTAC, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Department of Canadian Heritage for sponsoring the event. If I could have made one suggestion, it would have been to make the day’s program available on the Word on the Street website prior to the workshop. I could find very little information about it, even the morning of, and I didn’t know what kinds of speakers and sessions would be featured until I arrived; knowing the workshop structure would have allowed for better planning on my part.