Category: Editing

Elemental editorial checklists

Waaay the hell back, I posted this tribute to the dependable, indispensable checklist, and I promised to return with more posts about creating effective editorial checklists. A bunch of events and conferences and book reviews took priority, and the checklist got pushed to the back burner. So before it gets boiled dry, here’s the first of a few posts I have planned about simple editorial checklists that can save you time and, potentially, a lot of money.

In Atul Gawande’s The Checklist Manifesto, a checklist expert in the aviation industry, Daniel Boorman, tells the author about the two main types of checklist:

You must decide whether you want a DO-CONFIRM checklist or a READ-DO checklist. With a DO-CONFIRM checklist… team members perform their jobs from memory and experience, often separately. But then they stop. They pause to run the checklist and confirm that everything that was supposed to be done was done. With a READ-DO checklist, on the other hand, people carry out the tasks as they check them off. (pp. 122–23)

That distinction may work well for checklists designed for large teams of people performing complex tasks, but for editing and publishing, I find a different kind of division more practical: most editorial checklists will be either elemental or procedural, and it’s the former I’ll talk about here, because it’s the easiest to get started with.

Whereas procedural checklists give you a series of tasks to perform, elemental checklists tell you what elements to include. Publishers will find them useful for all of the constants across their publications; for example, cover copy on all of a trade publisher’s books will have the same components, the chapters within a textbook will have the same structure, and a market research firm’s reports will typically include the same sections each time.

Elemental checklists serve multiple functions:

  1. The person who first drafts the copy can use them to make sure he or she has covered all bases.
  2. The editor, designer, and proofreader—not to mention the person who checks the printer’s proofs—can use them to double, triple, and quadruple check that nothing critical has been left out or, in a more likely scenario, dropped out from one stage of production to the next.
  3. They are a powerful, authoritative training tool for new editorial and production staff members, as well as freelancers.

That third function underscores why you would bother creating elemental checklists. When I first started out in trade publishing and had to write cover copy for the first time, I was told to look at another of the publisher’s books as a guide, yet I wasn’t sure if the book I had chosen was representative. Having a checklist would have saved me some second guessing. And if I had been a freelancer, I might not have had access to the publisher’s backlist from which to choose a sample.

Even for seasoned veterans in house, these checklists are invaluable. We’d all like to believe that once we’ve worked somewhere long enough, we’ll have internalized all of the details, such as what goes on a title page. But with everything that an editor has to do, having a reminder in the form of a checklist—”a kind of cognitive net [that] catch mental flaws inherent in all of us” as Gawande says (p. 47)—is extremely helpful. A checklist frees your mind from having to remember these details and allows you to focus your task.

And those “mental flaws” Gawande mentions can be costly to publishers. Forgetting to include the company URL on the back cover copy may not be a huge problem, but inadvertently dropping an acknowledgement clause could get your funding pulled, and missing a disclaimer could have legal repercussions. Every publisher has a war story about having a book rejacketed at the eleventh hour (or worse, pulped and reprinted) because it had left off a copublisher’s imprint information or having to get a shipment of books stickered because the barcode was missing.

For recurring items that use boilerplate text—for example, the copyright page, with its standard copyright and acknowledgement clauses—using a template rather than a checklist would save you a lot of rekeying, but the principle is the same: the template, like a checklist, ensures that the essential elements aren’t inadvertently omitted owing to a lapse of memory.

Developing elemental checklists is simple:

Suggestions for publishers

1. Pull out some representative publications

If you publish multiple genres or multiple formats, it’s helpful to have one of each in front of you.

2. Identify all of the constants

Some examples, for trade books, are the half-title page, title page, and all parts of a jacket (e.g., front flap, front cover, spine, back cover, back flap). Textbook chapters will often have recurring elements, structured in the same way (for example, introduction, lab activities, career profile, chapter summary, glossary), and each of those elements may in turn have a recurring structure (e.g., activity title, list of equipment, numbered method, analysis questions), so be sure to consider constants at both a macro and a micro level.

3. Identify required components and optional components

For example, a trade book’s front cover must have the title, subtitle, and author’s name, and it may have a short endorsement quote. (If you’re thinking, “Well, surely we don’t need a list for three items,” let me assure you that, yes, there have been publishers that have forgotten to include an author’s name on the front cover.)

4. Create generic elemental lists that apply to all of your publications

Start with broad lists that everyone will use, then…

5. Devise genre-specific sublists if necessary

For example, you may wish to have a disclaimer on all of your medically themed books or ensure that you include a co-publisher’s logo on the title page of co-published titles.

6. Share the checklists with all team members, including freelancers

Better yet, make them available for browsing or searching on an online tool like an editorial wiki.

7. Periodically revisit and revise your checklists

All checklists should be regularly revised for relevance, although elemental checklists generally tend to change less frequently than procedural checklists do. Still, those of us in publishing who saw the transition from 10- to 13-digit ISBNs, for example, will recall how much even small details matter to workflow. Make sure team members are aware of any changes. (An easy approach is to use an editorial wiki as the authoritative central repository for this kind of information. Editors and designers will always know that the material on the wiki is the most up to date.)

Suggestions for freelancers

Request checklists

If your publisher clients don’t voluntarily offer checklists, ask for them. If your clients don’t have checklists at all, your enquiry may well prompt them to think about developing some.

Book review: Editors, Scholars, and the Social Text

Too often we see book production as a sequence of tasks—writing, editing, design, proofreading—forgetting that behind these tasks are professionals who have to work as a team to make a book happen. Editors, Scholars, and the Social Text (edited by Darcy Cullen, published by University of Toronto Press) urges us to shift our perspective—not only towards the dynamic, social aspects of the production process that are so critical to its functioning but also away from the notion that an editor is “an invisible figure who must leave no trace of his or her presence or as a taint to be expunged.” (p. 4)

Darcy Cullen, an acquisitions editor at UBC Press, has assembled an impressive cast of contributors to this authoritative collection, including Peter L. Shillingsburg, author of From Gutenberg to Google, and Amy Einsohn, author of The Copyeditor’s Handbook. We hear from academic experts as well as editors and designers in a rich mosaic of experiences and complementary viewpoints. In short, this unassuming volume brims with wisdom.

Editors, Scholars, and the Social Text focuses naturally on academic publishing, but much of the insight and information it offers would also be useful to trade publishers. It divides its attention between scholarly editors (scholars who develop, curate, and compile) and academic editors (in-house or freelance professionals who acquire manuscripts, copy edit, and project manage), and although I found many of the former pieces interesting, I gravitated towards essays about the latter, which were both a mirror of my own experiences and a window into a parallel universe. Editors (and publishers) may operate according to the same set of best practices, but they all have different approaches, and it’s these details that intrigue me most.

To give a sweeping review of such a heterogeneous collection would be an unfair oversimplification, so my goal here is to hit what I considered the highlights, from my perspective as an editor, rather than attempt to be comprehensive.

Cullen’s motivation for bringing together these essays carries a subtle but definite tone of activism. Of the legions of books devoted to publishing, most are focused on helping authors get their manuscripts published or marketed, yet, writes Cullen, “the ‘middle’ part of the publishing process, sandwiched between acquisitions and sales, is often closed from view, or viewed as closed off, even though it is here that the manuscript’s metamorphosis into book occurs.” (p. 3) The shrinking-violet stereotype of editors must be abandoned because it perpetuates a certain self-marginalization that denies the important social contribution of an editor to the publishing process. Cullen hopes that “these chapters engaging the question of minority cultures and ethnicity in the spheres of scholarly and academic editing and scholarly publishing should serve as an impetus to editors who still invisibilize themselves, so that they acknowledge their place and position of influence as it extends beyond the chain of production.” (p. 12)

That thread is carried through Rosemary Shipton’s brilliant chapter, “The Mysterious Relationship: Authors and Their Editors,” in which she gives readers a most cogent description of the editorial process, comparing trade and academic publishing. “So long as the editors’ contribution to publications in all genres… is not given the recognition it deserves,” writes Shipton, “editors will remain vulnerable to low salaries and, in times of economic downturn, early layoff.”

The relationship an editor fosters with an author is key to a book’s realization—and it may play a role in a publisher’s ability to retain an author: “When the collaboration works well,” Shipton writes, “inevitably authors bond with their editors—they request them for book after book.” But “if the collaboration between author and editor does not work well, the author very quickly feels threatened and loses confidence in the editor.” (p. 51) As one of the founders of the publishing program at Ryerson, her advocacy for the editing profession is grounded in her belief in high standards and a solid foundation of editorial principles, as she warns, “The most common disputes arise when copyeditors lack training and experience.” (p. 45)

Shipton explains that whereas “most trade publishers know that, to make their books excellent and interesting, to attract good reviews and other media attention, to win book awards, and to get that word-of-mouth buzz that entices readers to buy, they really should edit at both the macro and the micro level,” (p. 50) meaning that manuscripts at trade houses go through structural, stylistic, and copy editing, “scholarly publishers do not usually do intensive substantive editing—and for many good reasons. Their mandate is to publish books that make an original contribution to knowledge; most of their authors are professors or researchers; the majority of their readers are academics and students; and the number of copies they print of most titles is small.” (p. 52) Because they write for an academic audience, says Shipton, scholars “know that these readers will understand the specialized jargon and the guarded, often obtuse long sentences in which they make their arguments.” (p. 52) (I haven’t worked much with textual scholars, but based on my experiences with scientific scholars, I couldn’t help wondering if scholars’ resistance to being stylistically edited or have at least some clear communication principles applied to their writing is a symptom of an academic culture that routinely conflates abstruseness with erudition.)

Shipton also touches on issues specific to legal editing and educational publishing, adeptly showing not only the peculiarities of each genre but also aspects of our work that unite us all as editors; as far as I’m concerned, her chapter should be required reading in all introductory editing courses. Veteran editors—trade or academic, freelance or in house—would also benefit from her wisdom.

Amy Einsohn’s piece, “Juggling Expectations: The Copyeditor’s Roles and Responsibilities” provides equally valuable information for both novice and seasoned copy editors, encouraging them to pull back and look at their own vulnerabilities so that they can become more effective in their work. “Conflicting opinions about what constitutes good or acceptable expository writing can be particularly difficult to negotiate. Because any sentence can be rewritten (and arguably “improved” thereby), copyeditors must learn to resist the impulse to tinker,” (p. 79) she writes, cautioning that copyeditors “labour in the presence of benevolent or fearsome ghosts: a high school English teacher, a freshman composition instructor, one or more publishing mentors, and the authors of favourite usage books.” (p. 69)

Copy editing is an exercise in juggling quality, collegiality, cost, and control, Einsohn says. And true to the book’s overarching message, she emphasizes the importance of the relationships built—largely through clear, respectful communication—between copy editor and author and between copy editor and press. Most importantly, she offers concrete suggestions to improve these relationships and improve editor retention, including checklists, sample edits, and style memos.

Whereas Einsohn’s contribution focused on text, Camilla Blakeley revealed through a case study of an award-winning project of hers, The Trickster Shift by Allan J. Ryan, the complexities of editing an illustrated book. Tactfully mediating a relationship between the author and designer, securing permissions within a specified budget, coordinating captions and credits, and taking into account the effect these added tasks have on the project schedule are some of just some of the considerations for illustrated books, and, again, communication is paramount. On this project, Blakeley set up a meeting with the author and designer at the very early stages, which the designer, George Vaitkunas, credited with making the project particularly rewarding. Blakeley notes, “early communication makes the job not only easier but more pleasurable. This is significant.” (p. 156)

One point of hers that caught my attention was that “while an experienced scholarly editor knows that a table or a graph requires as much editing as a narrative—often more—most of us have no training in how to look at photograph.” (p. 165) She points to a positive editor–designer relationship as an opportunity for editors to educate themselves about these kinds of issues so that they can better serve the author, designer, and, ultimately, the book.

Blakeley’s contribution is packed with examples from The Trickster Shift—of such details as art logs and schedules—that are useful not only because they inform readers about the anatomy of an illustrated book project as it evolves but also because editors can easily appropriate and adapt these documents for their own use.

Blakeley does a tremendous job of giving the designer on her project a voice, but what sets this book apart is that we get to hear directly from designers themselves. Learning from designer Richard Hendel, for example, about not only how designers fit in to the book production process but also how designers view editors (both flatteringly and unflatteringly) can be an important step to better communication and a more effective workflow. Hendel stresses that “The designer cannot properly address a text until an editor has understood and clearly dealt with the physical aspects of the content: how chapters and chapter titles are arranged, how subheads are dealt with, kinds of extract, and the like.” (p. 175) Referring to English typographer John Ryder, Hendel writes, “Ryder felt that editors should be more critical about how something in the manuscript will eventually appear in the printed book—the need to edit visually before the design process even begins.” (p. 176)

In her chapter, designer Sigrid Albert looks at the evolving role of the designer and the changing relationship between editor and designer as the publishing landscape adjusts to accommodate ebooks and other technologies. “The traditional printed book as a highly crafted cultural object, whether in a humble, low-budget or a luxurious, highly produced format, is the goal of the editor and designer. At the highest level of the book production process, the editor has shaped a piece of history, and the designer has shaped a piece of art,” writes Albert, in one of my favourite quotes from the book.

Whereas the traditional book all but demands a strong, communicative relationship between editor and designer to transmit a single vision, digital books have meant that content and form are separate: “book content is increasingly being stored in databases and tagged with content-related markup—such as chapter titles, subtitles, subheads, extracts—by the editor, while the visual design is controlled by a separate style markup—such as margin widths, font, font size, font weight, colour, or line height—delivered by the designer.” (p. 184) Albert wonders if the relationship will only grow further apart as designers eventually stop designing single books and instead create digital templates that they license. Yet, Albert says, “From the designer’s point of view, the design process, despite the technological advances, still requires a synthesis of information and a variety of visual choices to form an aesthetic unity.” (p. 193)

Yuri Cowan (“Reading Material Bibliography and Digital Editions”) and Darcy Cullen (“The Object and the Process”) also explore the implications of a workflow that incorporates digital outputs, with Cowan taking a more theoretical approach and Cullen sharing the triumphs and growing pains of UBC Press’s first steps into the realm of digital production. Writes Cowan, “our editors can inform their theoretical approaches with recent scholarship in the sociology of material texts, creating a model of readerly engagement and a generation of reader/editors who will be neither overawed by the authority of print nor seduced by the hyperbolic claims made for the electronic edition.” (p. 236)

The book’s other contributors—Peter L. Shillingsburg, Alexander Petit, Peter Mahon, and John K. Young—offer scholars’ perspectives on various facets of the academic publishing process, and although these chapters are all worth reading for the sake of interest, I believe that the general editor-reader will find the essays I’ve mentioned most engaging and directly relevant to their work—and it’s to this specific but vast audience, editors of whatever genre and whatever experience level, that I wholeheartedly recommend this book. Freelance editors who have never worked in house may have the most to gain from this insiders’ view. As Amy Einsohn writes, “Some presses make an effort to train, coach, and acculturate their freelancers, but most freelancers have few opportunities to learn about the publisher’s activities, customs, and mores,” (p. 69) and being informed about a publishing house’s inner workings helps editors anticipate what may be expected of them.

UBC Press—and hence Cullen’s book—specializes in the social sciences, but I would be intrigued to see how the processes described in Editors, Scholars, and the Social Text compare with the workflow and author–editor relationships at academic presses focused on the natural sciences. Most of those authors probably will not read this book, and perhaps even most social science scholars hoping to get published would not think to read it. In many ways, it is much more information than they need to play their roles in book production. Yet, I hope that some academic authors choose to hear what Cullen’s roster of experts have to say. This book beautifully humanizes the publishing process in a way that could only foster mutual respect between professionals—ones with the common aim of producing great books.

ISC and EAC Conferences 2012: Personal perspectives

Now that I’m finally done summarizing my conference notes, I thought I’d share some of my own reflections on the experience, which ended up being much more invigorating than I had expected. Initially the conferences were just an excuse to catch up with two of my good friends—fellow Master of Publishing alumnae—one of whom lives in Ottawa and whom I hadn’t seen in three years. In the end I am so glad I went (not least because I was surprised by a Tom Fairley win!), even though coughing up over $700 in conference fees was a bit painful at first and the collision of deadlines I faced when I returned nearly destroyed me.

At the last EAC-BC branch meeting of the season, a quick poll of the attendees revealed that only two of us in the room were heading to Ottawa to take in the conference. At that point, having just joined the programs committee, I realized that part of my responsibility would be to bring the conference back to B.C. for the members who couldn’t attend. My suggestions for meeting topics and speakers were partly inspired by what I’d seen and heard at the conference, but what we’ll be seeing this upcoming season will by no means be a rehash of the conference content. I look forward to hearing different perspectives on key issues in editing and building upon what I’ve learned.

Here are some of my main takeaways from this spring’s conferences:

Advocacy

I was blown away by what Jan Wright, David Ream, and other members of the American Society for Indexing’s Digital Trends Task Force had been able to accomplish. By participating in a working group at an international level, they helped shape what will be the new standard for ebooks and advanced the indexing profession in the eyes of a consortium of major players in e-publishing. I don’t think I can overstate how huge that is.

Learning about their work made me wonder what we’re doing—as individuals and as national organizations—and whether we’re doing enough to advocate on behalf of our profession. Are editors making an effort to try to talk to Adobe about how it can make PDF proofing tools more intuitive and useful for publishing professionals? Have editors’ interests been taken into consideration in the EPUB 3.0 standard? How do we get involved on the ground floor of a nascent technology to make sure we remain relevant? I don’t know the answers to these questions, but I’m motivated to find out and, if time and resources allow, to make more of a contribution. What is particularly inspiring is that editors outnumber indexers manyfold. If a small group of dedicated indexers can make a group of software engineers listen, then editors should be able to do it, too.

Brain sharing and collaboration

Peter Milliken’s keynote reinforced an undercurrent of both conferences: the importance of talking and learning from one another. Both Cheryl Landes and Jan Wright at the ISC conference noted that technical communicators have been dealing with the issues relating to single-sourcing that book publishers are now facing with p-books and e-books but that the two communities aren’t really talking to each other. Dominique Joseph’s EAC talk also made me wonder if the plain language/clear communication movement and the editing and indexing communities are exchanging ideas as much as they could be. (Noting that the new definition of clear communication includes finding information, I asked Joseph if using indexing and information science to guide retrieval was part of the plain language movement’s considerations; she believed that “finding” in the context of the definition referred to a more structural level, as in headings, for example.) What other opportunities for cross-pollination are we missing out on?

The lack of cross-pollination for in-house editors was a big reason I hosted my session at last year’s conference in Vancouver. Publishers often get together to discuss marketing or digital strategies but rarely ever talk about editing and production. When I was in house, I discovered that we ended up jury-rigging our own systems and reinventing the wheel at each of our respective houses. I wanted to give in-house editors an opportunity to share ideas about what works and what doesn’t and maybe develop some more concrete best practices.

A year later, in-house editors still aren’t getting many chances to sit together and brain share. Peter Moskos and Connie Vanderwaardt’s session at the EAC conference about managing editors certainly helped, but managing editors alone have enough considerations to fill a full-day retreat. Although I’m now a freelancer, I’m still committed to making the in-house editor’s life easier. A lot of the work I do as a publishing consultant centres on production efficiencies—streamlining workflow while minimizing errors—and would have more relevance and impact if I could get a group of managing editors and production managers together (in person or online) to exchange ideas. I see working with the EAC—first at the branch level but hopefully later at the national level—to develop programs and services to encourage more in-house participation in the association becoming a key mission of mine in the years to come.

The ISC conference offered another form of idea exchange: representatives from the society’s sister organizations in the U.S., the U.K., and Australia and New Zealand were invited to attend, and some of them gave presentations. I found it extremely interesting to hear international perspectives on issues common to all within the profession. One could argue that because editing is so much larger a community that there’s already a glut of articles online about editing and language from contributors around the world, but I wonder if reaching out to experts from abroad to speak at an EAC conference could help strengthen ties with editorial sister organizations and further promote advocacy of the profession at an international level.

Credit

I hate to flog a dead horse, but I want to advocate once again for proper credit for editors and indexers. In Max McMaster’s ISC talk, he noted that sometimes publishers will have a book reindexed because they simply don’t know who did the original. Having that information, in the form of a credit, could help them track down the indexer, who may still have the index archived, allowing the publisher to save money and to avoid any intellectual property issues. Further, adopting Christine Jacobs’s approach of including a credit line as an item on her invoice is an innovative and easy way we can organically but systematically work to give editors and indexers the recognition they deserve.

The Language Portal of Canada

Few people outside of Ottawa (or perhaps Ontario?) seem to know about the Language Portal; many of those who do believe it’s a resource for translators only. In fact it seems as though it could be quite a handy site for editors, what with free access to an updated edition of The Canadian Style, not to mention Peck’s English Pointers. For newly certified editors, the site’s quizzes and articles provide easy-access credential maintenance opportunities.

Diversion

If you’re looking for a solid evening of nerdy language-related entertainment, get yourself a copy of James Harbeck’s Songs of Love & Grammar and pretend William Shatner’s reading it to you.

EAC Conference 2012, Day 2—Plain language in 2012: what’s new?

The plain language movement is about 30 years old but is currently undergoing some exciting changes, including a push to recognize plain language as a profession. Dominique Joseph, a board member of the Plain Language Association International (PLAIN) gave an overview of some of these developments and highlighted a key role that Canadians are playing in this international movement.

The International Plain Language Working Group includes members from such organizations as PLAIN, Clarity (which advocates for clear legal language), and the Center for Plain Language. It is advocating for a standard definition of plain language, along with formal training and certification based on certain standards. Its first recommendations were published in the Clarity journal in 2011.

Among the first new steps is a move towards a broader definition of plain language—namely, clear communication. According to the working group, “A communication is in plain language if its wording, structure and design are so clear that the intended readers can easily find, understand and use what they need.” One important aspect of this new definition is the notion of “intended readers”—writers are not catering to low-literacy readers but to the target audience, and the definition is outcomes based. Also, this definition explicitly incorporates design; usability in a holistic sense—not just at the word or sentence level—is a key consideration.

The European Union has funded the development of an international clear communication program, which consists of multidisciplinary courses designed to close the current educational gap and features a mix of plain language training, information design, and usability techniques. Although the main partners are European universities, a Canadian university—Simon Fraser University—has joined the project. It hopes to launch a pilot program in the fall of 2013. This program will be based partly on a survey of the work of plain language professionals to define course learning outcomes.

Plain language expert Karen Schriver undertook a project to review over 500 research papers, from a number of disciplines, including cognitive psychology and education, on how people read and how writing, design, and technology affect readers. The review covers everything from features at the whole-text level (e.g., summaries, headings, organization and genre cures, repetition, text density, and topical structure) to sentence-level features (e.g., syntax, voice, anaphora, negatives, embedded conditionals, etc.). She’s discovered that some commonly accepted guidelines are reinforced—for example, ragged right text helps readability and a type size of between 10 and 12 points is appropriate for most print documents but type size of between 12 and 14 points should be used on screen. However, she has found some gaps in the research—more attention should be given to graphics, for example—and has come across a few accepted ideas that have been disproved, such as Miller’s Law about having a list no longer than 7±2 items, which really applies only to short-term memory and not to writing. Having a concrete summary of the results of this research (Schriver is in the process of writing a book on this topic) will offer plain language practitioners credible and authoritative guidelines.

Another exciting recent development in the field of plain language was the signing into law of the Plain Writing Act on October 13, 2010. The law requires U.S. federal agencies to communicate using plain language. The European Commission also has a clear writing campaign that spans multiple languages and aims to improve the quality of original documents so that they’re easier to translate. It is launching a pilot project to add a quality control component—i.e., editing.

As Joe Kimble shows in the new edition of his book Writing for Dollars, Writing to Please, using plain language can save government and businesses a ton of money. The book features case studies that show the many benefits of plain language.

To find out more about where there plain language movement is heading, Joseph suggests the following:

EAC Conference 2012, Day 2—The new libel defence: responsible communication

Ian Stauffer, a specialist in civil litigation, gave an overview of defamation and its defences, including a relatively new defence—responsible communication—which the Supreme Court of Canada recognized in late 2009.

Defamation was defined in the 1950 case of Willows v. Williams as follows:

A defamatory statement is one which has a tendency to injure the reputation of the person to whom it refers. It lowers him or her in the estimation of right-thinking members of society generally and causes him or her to be regarded with feelings of hatred, contempt, ridicule, fear, dislike or disesteem.

To make a case for defamation, one must prove

  • the words were published or spoken to a third party
  • the words referred to the plaintiff
  • the words were defamatory

Stauffer said that in the world of defamation, nothing is definitive. It’s hard to predict how much, if anything, a client might receive in a defamation case, and there is no scale for awarding damages. Pursuing a defamation case is also risky because the offending words are likely to be republished, and more will be said. “It’s not easy to put the genie back in the bottle,” Stauffer said.

Usually, he explained, the client will initially request an apology and retraction. Whether apologies are issues and how they are worded can affect the damages potentially awarded later on.

Defamation can be classified as slander, which is usually spoken and more ephemeral, or libel, which is typically written or otherwise recorded. Traditional defences to libel are truth (i.e., justification), privilege (absolute or qualified), and fair comment. Now there is a fourth defence: responsible communication.

Absolute privilege refers to remarks made in a chamber such as the House of Commons or Senate; qualified privilege includes performance reviews, letters of reference, etc. Fair comment refers to a comment made in good faith, without malice, on a matter of public interest. It must be identifiable as a comment rather than a statement of fact.

Responsible communication refers to reportage on matters of public interest in which the publisher has been diligent in verifying an allegation and the reliability of the source. A jury in a case in which responsible communication is used as a defence would also weigh whether the plaintiff’s side of the story was sought out and whether the inclusion of the defamatory statement was justifiable. This new defence lifts the chilling effect on reporters and frees them to write about potentially contentious matters of public interest.

Stauffer’s handed out copies of a paper he authored, “Defamation, responsible communication and cyberspace,”  which elaborates on the above issues, as well as their application to Internet-related cases, and offers examples and specific case studies.

EAC Conference 2012, Day 2—LGBTQ: getting it right

Luna Allison, a queer journalist, editor, playwright, and performer, offered her perspectives on some of the do’s and don’ts when writing about the LGBTQ communities, in the hopes, as she says, of “building knowledge and cultural competency.” Mainstream media approaches to LGBTQ issues can come off as ignorant and offensive; the key is to develop the discipline to dial back our curiosity and focus on the actual issues.

Don’t

  • use a person’s sexuality or sexual orientation in combination with their occupation (e.g., “gay MP”), unless they’ve explicitly stated that’s how they identify
  • make an assumption about a person’s gender based on how they look or sound
  • ask about a person’s surgical status
  • use a person’s pre-transition name—this is rude and exposing. And never use the term “tranny” to refer to a transsexual or transgendered person

Do

  • ask how a person identifies
  • ask what pronoun a person prefers. If you can’t ascertain this, try structuring your sentences without using pronouns (pluralizing often helps) and use gender-neutral terms
  • research to understand correct cultural usage and cultural history of particular terms (e.g., “butch,” “femme,” “queer”)
  • understand that transsexual individuals may change how they identify post-transition
  • refer to the LGBTQ communities in the plural; even within the “gay community,” for example, there are multiple communities

Allison also clarified the distinction between transsexual (someone who feels born in the wrong body and wants to transition) and transgendered (an umbrella term often used to describe someone who may be transsexual, genderfluid, genderqueer, or gender neutral). She emphasized the need to respect someone’s gender identity, which can be hard in a culture where the male–female dichotomy is so deeply engrained (for example, the first question that usually comes up when finding out someone has had a baby is, “Is it a boy or a girl?”).

In sensationalist stories in mainstream media, a lot of dormant assumptions tend to bubble up, Allison says, referencing the Luka Magnotta case in particular. His sexuality was often mentioned in close proximity to his alleged criminal activities, and journalists and editors have to be sensitive to the impression such proximity could leave on readers. She also cautioned that transgendered individuals are often characterized as being “in disguise” or otherwise trying to deceive. It’s this feeling of being fooled that has led to a lot of violence against transgendered people (and is why there is an international transgender day of remembrance).

As writers and editors, we have to be aware of the perceptions that our work might generate in our readership and the misconceptions it might feed.

EAC Conference 2012, Day 1—Whose words are these anyway? Translating, editing, and avoiding the Gallicism trap

Barb Collishaw and Traci Williams jointly presented a session about translation, with Collishaw focusing on the similarities and differences between editing, translation, and revision and Williams offering some insight into Gallicisms, particularly in Quebec English.

Collishaw works at the Parliament of Canada, helping to produce the Hansard, which, of course, must be translated so that it is complete in both official languages. Translators translate text (as opposed to interpreters, who translate speech) from a source language transcript into the target language in a way that accurately reflects the content, meaning, and style of the original. Revisers—who work exclusively in house—then edit the translated text.

Drawing upon the EAC’s Professional Editorial Standards, Collishaw compared the roles of translators and revisers to the role of an editor, noting that translators use virtually all of the stylistic editing, copy editing, and proofreading skills listed in the PES. Translation requires an eye for detail, a good command of both source and target language, and an understanding of where and how to check facts.

Collishaw emphasized the importance of keeping the audience in mind and to make room in the production schedule for translation and revision. Editors and managers sometimes forget that translation takes time, and because it comes in near the end of the process, translators often end up being under severe deadline pressure.

Translators get to choose the words they use, within the range of meaning of the source language words, so awkward or offensive terms can be smoothed over. However, this may not be what the author intended. Collishaw gave the example of “unparliamentary language”: sometimes translators soften such words or phrases, but this may not be wise, since an MP may object on a point of order later on, and revisers then have to go and restore the “mistake” to preserve logic.

Fact checking can be tricky, since translators don’t often get to query the author and ask people what they meant or how to spell someone’s name. Translators use tools such as Termium Plus, a terminology data bank, and TransSearch, a bilingual concordancer of past translations, to help them in their work, and are expected to compile glossaries. After they finish translating, translators are expected to proof their own work, checking against the source language.

Revisers check again, making sure that nothing has been left out and that meaning hasn’t been inadvertently changed, paying particular attention to details like numbers and dates. They also edit for style, imposing consistency on text from different translators. (To complicate matters, the House and Senate have different style guides, and revisers have to keep it all straight!)

I asked Collishaw if translators or revisers get to see transcripts of the interpreters as a reference, and she laughed, saying, “No, but I wish we would!” It seems that what the interpreters say isn’t transcribed, and the translators and revisers don’t have access to it.

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Traci Williams is originally from Ontario but now works as a translator and editor in Quebec. She became fascinated by the influence of French on the English language and began to document Gallicisms—words or terms borrowed from French.

Originally, English was a rather limited language, composed primarily of one- or two-syllable words, Williams explained. The first Gallicisms appeared after the Norman Invasion in 1066, initially in law, warfare, and church language; afterwards, they began to pervade clothing- and food-related vocabulary (as seen is animals versus their meats—”pig” vs. “pork,” “cow” vs. “beef,” “deer” vs. “venison”). Between 1100 and 1500, English absorbed about 10,000 French words. Before the seventeenth century, French words appearing in English were anglicized (e.g., chimney, change, charge); afterwards, hints of the French were retained (e.g., chevron, champagne, chaperone).

In Quebec, the first major wave of English speakers were British loyalists; by 1841, English speakers of British descent were the largest population in Montreal. When rural French Quebeckers began moving to Montreal in the 1860s, they were expected to learn English, which, until 1975, was considered the language of prestige by both the French and English. During that period, a steady stream of Anglicisms seeped into French. Yet, after the PQ was voted in, in 1976, French began to influence English. At first, Gallicisms appeared in colloquial speech, but today educated professionals will use them without even realizing it. Between 1990 and 1999, the number of Gallicims tripled, and Oxford University has now officially recognized Quebec English as a distinct dialect.

Some Gallicisms are perfectly acceptable—”encore,” “fiancé,” and “en route” are examples. Cooking, dancing, and law feature many Gallicisms. And English has often retained words of both Germanic and French origin, with slightly different connotations (e.g., “ask” vs. “question,” “holy” vs. “sacred”) or has kept nouns of Germanic origin but has used the French adjectives (e.g., “finger” but “digital,” “book” but “literary”). What editors need to be aware of are the unacceptable Gallicisms that arise as a result of false cognates—words that are formally similar to words in the native language but have different meanings (e.g., “animator” rather than “instructor,” “conference” rather than “lecture,” “manifestation” rather than “demonstration”). The delicate aspect of editing Quebec English for an audience outside of Quebec is that an author—perfectly fluent in English—may be unaware that he or she is inappropriately using Gallicisms.

Williams emphasizes the importance of continuing to read, read, read. She suggests reading sources of English outside of where you live to make sure that you have a solid perspective of language quirks that might be a local peculiarity and may not translate to a wider audience. Williams has started a newsletter about Gallicisms and related topics. Contact her at via Semantech Communications to sign up.

EAC Conference 2012, Day 1—E-publishing essentials for editors

Greg Ioannou, president of EAC and publisher of Iguana Books, gave an overview of some of the things editors should know about ebooks, beginning with a bit of history: the first ebook was a computerized index of Thomas Aquinas’s works and was released in the 1940s. In the 1960s hypertext was used to format ebooks so that they could be read using different window sizes and monitors on IBM mainframes. The first ereader was Sony’s Data Discman, which displayed ebooks stored on CD.

Although there are hundreds of types of e-readers, many of them with proprietary file formats, the most common ones include EPUB, EPUB2, MOBI, and PDF. Most ebooks are basically just HTML files with metadata that help bookstores categorize them (e.g., title, author, description, ISBN, publication date, keywords, etc.) The editor [ed—or perhaps an indexer?] is in the best position to know what keywords should included in the metadata file.

At Iguana, the creation sequence is as follows:

For simple books

  • edit and style in Word
  • create PDF from Word (Iguana has discovered that they have to produce at least one print-on-demand copy for the author or, more often, as Ioannou says, the author’s mother).
  • create EPUB file using Sigil
  • create MOBI file using Calibre

For complex books

  • edit and style in Word
  • create PDF from InDesign
  • create EPUB file from InDesign
  • clean up EPUB in Sigil
  • create MOBI file using Calibre

Once you’ve created your files, Ioannou said, you should actually look at the ebook on the device(s) it’s destined for; looking at it on just the computer can be deceiving. Right now InDesign’s EPUB export doesn’t actually work very well, so the outputs have to be cleaned up quite a bit.

Ioannou then described the many devices on which ebooks could be read, including tablets, phones, computers, Kindles, and other e-readers (e.g., Nook, Kobo, Sony Reader, etc.). Only the Kindles can read MOBI files, whereas the other devices can all read EPUB files. All can display PDFs, although only tablets, smartphones, and computers can display colour and play videos.

Since EPUB/MOBI files are reflowable and may be read on very narrow devices like a smart phone, editors should keep the following in mind when editing for an ebook:

  • Make sure that there are spaces before and after dashes
  • Opt for hyphenating a compound rather than using a closed compound; however, avoid hyphenations when it could lead to odd line breaks (e.g., choose “ereader” over “e-reader”).
  • Make sure all quotes are smart quotes; this is relatively easy to do in Word but much more difficult to code in Sigil or Calibre.
  • Books without chapters don’t work very well as ebooks—the large file size can significantly slow down an e-reader. If possible, break a book down into chapters of ideally between 3,000 and 5,000 words. This structure also makes navigating an ebook much easier.
  • As for formatting, keep it simple. Tables and column look terrible on an e-reader, and images won’t display in some older e-readers. Most e-readers are black and white only, and many older e-readers can’t handle large files (e.g., files with embedded images and videos).

Ioannou noted that e-readers are primitive machines and that the technology’s rapidly changing. His caveat: “Most of what I say here will not be true a year from now, and practically none of it will be true two years from now.”

EAC Conference 2012, Day 1—Making the Language Portal of Canada work for you

The Translation Bureau launched the Language Portal of Canada in 2009 as a gateway to allow everyone free access to the translation tool Termium, a terminology and linguistic data bank in English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. Despite its translation roots, however, the Language Portal is packed with news, tools, and references that appeal to a much wider audience of editors, writers, educators, and anyone interested in language.

The Language Portal exists in both French and English, but the sites aren’t merely translations of one another. There are different types of language problems in French and English, so although there is parallelism in the tools available to users on the two sites, the content is different.

Robin Kilroy creates and curates much of what’s on the Language Portal, and she took EAC conference attendees on a tour of the site.

Headlines

These link to language-related stories gleaned from external sources. Two headlines are posted each week and then are archived for a year.

My Portal

This is broken down for readers “At school,” “At work,” and “At home,” which link to specific resources for students and educators, professionals who have to write or edit (as Kilroy says, so many people now are “functional writers” who have to write for their jobs, though they may not consider themselves professional writers), and the general reader, respectively.

Resources include “Linguistic Recommendations and Reminders,” which offers tidbits of advice about grammar and style.

From Our Contributors

The Language Portal’s partner organizations (including the Editors’ Association of Canada) contribute language-related articles for this section, which are then edited and translated in house. They are all archived by organization name.

Discover

“Discover,” on the left-hand sidebar, and “Discover Coast to Coast,” at the bottom centre, link to the same resources but are organized differently. These are a collection of links, external to the Translation Bureau, to such resources as dictionaries and information about language training and language professions.

Well Written, Well Said

On the left-hand sidebar, this section links to Termium, Writing Tools, Gateway to English, and Quizzes (on everything from spelling and punctuation to Canadian authors and proverbs). Editors may find Writing Tools particularly useful, because it provides access to such resources as The Canadian Style (much more up to date than the print edition) and Peck’s English Pointers, among many others.