Newsletter of The Society

of Editors (NSW) Inc.

ISSN 1030-2557 PO Box 254, Broadway NSW 2007 September 2000

Editorial training & education— what's available Pam Peters (Macquarie University), Shelley Kenigsberg (Macleay College), Maggie Aldhamland (NSW Writers' Centre) and Robin Appleton (one-to-one and corporate/business training) spoke at the society's July meeting about their editing and publishing courses.

Pam Peters: Macquarie University The aims of Macquarie's program The central aim of Macquarie University's program in editing and publishing—now in its twelfth year—is to provide comprehensive postgraduate training in a professional field, which is, I think, every bit as challenging as law or teaching or managing a business. In fact, professional editing has elements of all those professions. Like a lawyer, you have to know your subject. Like a teacher, you have to manage people and move things along. And like a businessman, you keep a constant eye on finance. So as editor you use and develop the skill associated with at least three of the familiar professions.

We wanted to provide support for those who have begun careers in editing and publishing, so that—in a university context—they could broaden and deepen their knowledge of the field and could, with the advantage of the diploma, work far more freely within the field. It becomes a portable qualification. You can move around with more confidence as career opportunities present themselves, and thus construct your own career path.

We wanted also to help create networks of contacts for our students

with others in the profession. This happens both through the fact that lecturers come in from the publishing industry, and that you work with students from many parts of the broader editing field. For the university, the important thing was to break down the ivory-tower effect. The program is designed not only to bring in expert practitioners from the industry and the profession, but also to connect academic expertise with the industry and the

profession—and to balance the two in a comprehensive training. The Macquarie location The program is sited in Macquarie's Linguistics department, with its strong interest in both language and textual analysis. You know of course about The Macquarie Dictionary, and the research that goes on alongside it into current Australian English. That kind of interest

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Next meeting: Tuesday, 5 September 2000

Editing poetry from both the poet's and editor's viewpoints Heather Cam, now of Penguin Books and formerly Poetry Commissioning Editor at Hale & Iremonger, will discuss editing poetry in conversation withAntigone Kefala. They will discuss how Antigone's latest work, Absence: New and Selected Poems (Hale & Iremonger), was edited. The meeting is sponsored by Brandle Pty Limited (http://www.brandle.com.au).

Level 5, Thakral House, 301 George Street, Sydney (right on top of Wynyard Station). 6.30 pm for 7 pm. Drinks and light refreshments provided. Non-members welcome. RSVP by Friday, 1 Septem ber to (02) 9294 4999 (voicemail). Members $ 12; non-members and those who dont RSVP, $ 15.

Coming meeting: Tuesday, 3 October: Towards national standards for editing practice

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in the state of the language is fed into the program in Editing and Publishing, making our courses unique in Australia, and indeed in the world. The Postgraduate Diploma: An overview The Postgraduate Diploma in Editing and Publishing is a two-year part-time course. In the first year provide a broad foundation in language, editing and writing, which in the past has been taught as a whole-year course. It's now being redesigned into two half-year units, run in parallel with two publishing units: (a) in the design and production of books (though that also applies to magazines and other publications); and (b) in

publishing and management, covering all the contractual and financial aspects of managing not only book production but also book development projects.

The second year takes things to advanced levels: much more on electronic publishing to take up all the new methods of text production and text editing. There are specialist units in literary editing, scientific editing, as well as desktop publishing (which is taught from scratch) and in marketing. It looks at various ways of marketing books, depending on the type of book and the breadth or narrowness of the market. Also underpinning the second year there's a week's work experience in some place other than the one you're used to, so that you get a perspective on publishing or editing different from that in your current place of employment— preferably as different as possible. This

not only means that it shows you different ways of publishing, different processes in editing, but also that you get a sense of how other groups of people work together and different ways of managing people. So that's the diploma that we've been running for the last dozen years. It's taught on campus and runs on a two-year schedule, starting in the odd years and finishing in the even years. The Masters program A Masters program has just been added on for diploma graduates who want to do an independent research project in some area of editing or publishing. This is a two-semester course and consists of a 10 000-word report on an individually chosen field of research, anywhere in editing or publishing. The project is developed by individual consultation. In the first semester we meet to design the project, look at the data needed, and decide on the methods to execute it. Then in the second semester, you write it up as a full project. So that's a new research dimension to the diploma. It can be started either at the beginning of the year or in the second half, but just needs to take place over two consecutive semesters. The Postgraduate Certificate As a prelude to the diploma and Masters of Editing and Publishing there's now a third tier—the Postgraduate Certificate in Editing. This involves the four new units in language, editing and writing. Of these the first consists of the essentials of editing (the role of the professional editor and a quick overview of that spectrum of editing); the second concentrates on language and writing style; the third, on structural and electronic editing; and the fourth, on editorial issues and responsibilities.

This course can be taken online. We have it available in some instructional software imported from Canada, which coordinates much of the teaching material and audiofiles for the lectures. It creates a bulletin board through which students can engage with each other as in tutorials. The bulletin board features professional topics, which are eminently debatable: standards for editors, questions of right and wrong in editing and questions of inclusive language. It allows students to exchange all kinds of views and experiences from very different contexts of editing. This new online facility has proved more interactive than we ever dreamed.

Society of Editors (NSW) Inc. PO Box 254, Broadway NSW 2007; Vbicemail: (02) 9294 4999 http://www.users.bigpond.com/socednsw/

Membership Membership of the Society of Editors (NSW) Inc. is open to anyone working as an editor for publication (print or electronic documents), and anyone who supports the society's aims.

Membership runs for a calendar yean 2000 fees are $45 for new members and $40 for renewals.

For a membership application form, phone (02) 9294 4999, or write to PO Box 254, Broadway NSW 2007.

Blue Pencil The society's newsletter, Blue Pencil, is published monthly, except for a combined January/February issue. Your comments and contributions are welcome. Mail them to Jocelyn Haigrave at 47 Great Western Highway, Wentworth Falls NSW 2782, or fax or email them to her as per the contact details on the back page. Deadline for the October issue is Monday 11 September. Advertising rates: Full page, $90; Half page, $50 (horizontal only); One-third page, $35 (vertical or horizontal); Quarter page, $25 (horizontal only); Sixth page, $20 (half of one column). Inserts: $50 per hundred for DL-sized or A4 pre-folded to DL size. Circulation: approximately 275.

Listing in the Editorial Services Directory Listing costs $40 and is available only to members of the society The fee covers listing in both print and online versions. The online version is updated every three months. New entries should be submitted in RTF format, using a template available from Cathy Gray at cgray@mpx.com.au Updates can be made to contact details only for existing entries. Deadline for the next update is 30 September 2000.

Committee meetings All members are welcome to attend the society fc committee meetings. Contact a committee member for details if you wish to attend the next meeting.

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The software used in the postgraduate certificate is designed to work for students within Australia and overseas. This has meant us thinking not only about Australian editing practices, but editing that would work for people in Canada or in Britain, the USA, Europe or Asia. Their editing practices may naturally embody British style or American style. But with web-based resources w e ' v e been able to incorporate regional and international English styles into the program. Australian editors have always had to be very aware of this anyway. Editing here you travel between hemispheres anyway, Austral ian style being somewhere between the British and the American. So beginning next year we expect there will be overseas students doing the certificate—this year they're located in five major centres around Australia.

What sectors do our student come from? Let me give you an overview of where students in the Macquarie diploma have come from over the last twelve years— from a variety of quarters. It's often educational publishing, professional publishing or government and university publications. Some have come from general trade publishing, and some from corporate situations. There have been plenty of freelancers and others who have an interest in books through being booksellers or printers, maybe coordinators of a charity or community newsletter. It makes a very interesting range of people, all contributing to that network I mentioned before.

What kinds of subjects can the dissertation involve? A couple of projects come to mind. One is about the relationship between a novel and the screenplay that may be based on it. The project focuses on the t ransformation process, and the probably different outcomes when an author does it and a ghostwriter does it. It's an interesting question: would you expect the adaptation to be more radical one way or the other? Does the author maintain greater consistency in the way the story is managed? Another project focuses on the effect of electronic publishing on instructional texts construction and how students make use of them. Obviously there are educational ramifications. It's also about how far publishers can go down the track

of electronic publishing if they have the students ' interests in mind. So the second project is in the educational publishing area, whereas the first one engages in the artistic and commercial aspects of publishing. It raises the question of whether publishers work with particular expectations in mind when they publish a screenplay.

Can you undertake the Masters research project without having actually done the postgraduate diploma course?

We're still exploring that one with Postgraduate Studies. There would be no question of doing so if, say, you'd done the diploma in Melbourne—that's an equivalent training. But if you are not calling up any particular former qualifications, that's the question mark. It may be possible, but it's unsure at this stage.

What sorts of fees are involved? The diploma's about $6000 over two years. The certificate's is about half that. So it's about $3000 divided up over the four units.

How many students have you got in the postgraduate certificate and how many would you take? In this year, which again is our even year, we have ten and ten interacting continually on the bulletin board is very good. Fifteen would be fine. I think if you went to thirty, you'd actually have to have two bulletin boards. We'd also have to find a way of dividing the students because there's quite a lot to read with ten people contributing, even though we have this stranding technique so that you read the answers that are relevant to that particular thing, rather than having to wade through irrelevant email in chronological order. We can certainly cope with more, but we have to have to add extra bulletin boards. Apart from that, there's no limit.

Is the postgrad certificate only online or is it face-to-face teaching? It can be taken face to face as part of the diploma, but that would mean you have to work in with the even and odd years of the diploma. The online units can be started in either year.

Is there a quota of students for the face-to-face teaching? This used to be true, but for the last couple of years we haven't had to restrict it. Often it depends on the qualifications of the people applying and we can be

tough on that if we have a very big field. There isn't any artificial quota any more.

How are the careers of students improved by the courses? The figures on this give us a great deal of satisfaction. Between a third and a half of the s tudents have either success fu l ly changed jobs or got promoted in the course of the diploma. It enhances their mobility and their ability to go about finding a new employer. They seem to be able to move when they want to. It seems to empower them to make those career decisions more easily. That has certainly been so for the people who have made radical career changes from being, say, book editors to being online journa l i s t s . The electronic direction is the wave—or tide—that many are catching, an alternative to the regular copyediting side of the business. As for the certificate, this is our first year, so we've yet to see where these people will end up at the end of next year. I can only really speak for the diploma students at the moment.

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Want to be listed in the Editorial Services Directory? We're about to start production of the 2001/2 edition of the Editorial Services Directory. The idea is to publish a complete new edition every two years , in print and on the society's website, and update the online version every three months as we've been doing this year. So your $40 listing fee now buys two years, instead of one.

If you're currently listed, either in print or online, you should find an 'update form' enclosed with this issue of Blue Pencil.

If you're not listed but would like to be, there's a 'new listing' form enclosed. As indicated on the form, we'd prefer new listings in electronic form via email, using a template obtained on request from Cathy Gray. If you don't have email, no problem; just fill out the form and return it to the society's PO box (see page 2).

Enquiries to Cathy Gray (contact details on page 10).

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Shelley Kenigsberg: Macleay College Doing justice to a manuscript I am aware that that a lot of the information you will be receiving here tonight may well overlap, but each of us, as teachers, is concerned to guide students through the same basic processes when dealing with manuscripts of all descriptions.

You can't do justice to a piece of writing, be it technical, educational, fiction or non-fiction, without first getting a measure of the larger picture. This means coming to grips with the piece's structure—the macro-construct of the piece. Once you've ascertained that the bones of the piece are sound and are in the right place, you're freer to begin looking for the finer detail or the micropicture. So when we talk about structural editing and copyediting, those are the basic tools that we use.

In the micropicture it's the words and the sentences that are the building blocks from which meaning is created. And if, as an editor, you've done a good edit, it's in this that the delight comes— the delight for yourselves that you've helped achieve fluency and logic, elegance in expression and a flow of ideas. The delight from working with an author or a creator in a wholly collaborative way to produce the finest construction or illustration of that author's particular ideas, that this particular piece of writing can be.

And it may even be now that the truth of the following statement emerges. I'm not sure if you've heard this saying, I trust a lot of you have. It goes like this: 'The strongest urge, the strongest human drive, is neither love nor hate. It is one person's desire to change, alter, amend, edit, fix someone else's work.'

The Macleay editing course: An overview The Macleay course runs two semesters a year—one in March and one starting late July. Those twice yearly intakes involve two courses—an evening course and a day course. Each involves four hours of teaching a week.

The course has traditionally dealt with book publishing; however we are more

and more dealing with online editing—a direction that most people are interested in—and there's a lot of enthusiasm about the possibilities of online or digital publishing.

There are five strands to the course. The largest, which runs for the whole sixteen weeks, is the editing course. The other courses are publishing management, which runs for six weeks; design, which runs for two; on-screen editing, which runs for five; and indexing, which runs for three. A basic outline of the editing course is contained in the brochures I've brought, so I won't go into an enormous amount of detail about the actual whys and hows and whats.

You work with manuscripts from the very beginning, to develop your competence and confidence, as I said, in editing at a professional level. Editing topics include the type, the role and the responsibility of editors; the review of manuscript structure, planning and structuring the book; editors and author's brief; structural editing; marking the manuscript; copyediting; the importance of the relationship with the author and how best to query them; copyediting for house style; and editorial management. And then we look at the requirements of various specialist fields: technical, fiction, non-fiction, children's, legal, scientific—whatever particular interests are raised by the people in the class. We pay quite a deal of attention to the production process, work plans and schedules, proofing and proofing and proofing..., as well as pre-press concerns and the preparation of artwork for designers and laser printers. In a nutshell that's the editing strand.

Publishing management is taught by Rhonda Black—and takes six weeks of the sixteen-week course. It aims to provide an overview of the business of publishing, with an emphasis on the role of editors in that process—how do we as editors relate to the business aspects. The topics covered include the history of the industry, how publishing companies vary, how companies make decisions about what they publish, how to grow a publishing list, how book projects are contracted and costed and how publishers finally promote and then sell their books.

While we do have a design component, we're not training people

to be designers, rather we realise the importance of having the 'eye' and the skill to be able to talk intelligently to the designer and work with and know good design. Taught by Jason Gemenis, previously an art director and now a freelancer, the design course introduces contemporary practice in book design— such as how to recognise a well-designed book—and provides hands-on tasks. We cover approaches to designing production; DTP and typesetting, and the difference between the two; text-only books; illustrated books; working with illustrations; selecting and commissioning illustration; cover artwork.

The last strand of the course is an introduction to indexing. This is taught by Michael Wyatt of the Society of Indexers. Students will be introduced to the criteria of effective indexes, be taught how to analyse text in order to construct indexes, and be taught how to commission and evaluate indexes,

Wordbreak Do know the meanings of these words? The answers are on page 9.

Parquetry a. The science of financial exchange b. A mosaic work of wood c. The unifying power of imagination

Synecdoche a. A figure of speech b. Fusion of male and female elements c. A judicial assembly

Libera a. A sexual deviant b. The south-west wind c. A position in volleyball Avenaceous a. Free from water b. Growing on the ovary c. Of the nature of oats

Strigil a. A flesh-scraper b. A groove in a fluted column c. A star in Centaurus

Alan Eason

Apologies, Alan, for spelling your surname incorrectly in the August issue.

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different design styles and indexing layout. What you have at the end Once you've completed the course, you will have a background in the Australian publishing industry and the business of books. You will have worked intensively with a variety of manuscripts. You will have considered the design of books, be familiar with the production process, have seen the inside of a printery (which is not something altogether common in publishing houses apparently). You will have heard from a variety of industry experts. You'll have heard from guest lecturers about production and printing, specialist editors (for example, fiction or children's books) and people from the Copyright Council to talk about—I don't want to say the vagaries of copyright— the intricacies of copyright. And you'll have heard from quite a few authors who talk about their relationship with their editors. We hope that you come through this entire process most definitely alive and inspired to find a place in the industry.

I'm really happy to say we have a great strike rate placing graduates in the industry—there is wide range of industries and publishing houses into which our graduates have been placed.

So whether you want to edit because it's a love of expression and language that drives you, or a desire to be in a business—and I say this advisedly— that is creative, that is generally concerned with cultural enterprise and more generally peopled with warm, interesting, literate, intelligent people, whatever your particular needs, I hope you'll be able to discern that they can be filled by the courses that are on offer. I'll see you in the book editing and publishing course.

Are you focused at beginners? Pam: Yes, we are. We do have a written requirement that the diploma people have two to three years ready experience—this is the basic kind of entry criteria. The certificate is one to two, but in either case we expect people to have already had some kind of editing or publishing experience. It can be in a non-industry context. It can be in the context of, say, working for a volunteer newspaper or something like that. But we do set that as a minimum: that people should have had a minimum of two to three years experience.

But if you've had fairly extensive experience would it be superfluous? Pam: Yes. I think the answer then depends on whether you've been in one location for most of your working career or in multiple ones. If the answer is the first, I think the course has a value in introducing a whole range of other working contexts in a painless kind of way, because you hear about them through other students, through the lecturers. So there's a value in the breadth that it can provide and perhaps in other techniques than the ones you've actually used in the place you're in. So depending on whether you've tended to be in one place or many already, the course might or might not have a value.

Maggie Aldhamland: NSW Writers' Centre The basics The course is run by the New South Wales Writers' Centre, and is one that Robin [Appleton] did for a long time, but she's now taking a break from it. When I was asked to take over, I wasn't given an enormous amount of information about who was going to come to the courses and what the aim was, so in the end I looked at what Robin had done and I thought about what had been useful in my own training. There were no courses like those at Macleay or Macquarie when I started, but I did an editing course at TAFE, and a design course so I could understand that aspect of the business, plus numerous short course in Australia and Britain. I'd also heard how there was no longer any formal training in many publishing houses and new editors were often left to pick up what they could.

The course is forty-eight hours over four weekends, so it demands a lot of commitment from the participants as most are working Monday to Friday, so I try and make it as interesting and friendly as possible and so far that has worked. What the course covers My course covers practically the same areas as those of the other courses you' ve heard about. The participants are editors who have been in the business a very short time, writers and academics, as well as people who are thinking about coming into the industry or changing paths within the industry. For this reason I plan the course as if the students know veiy little.

The groups are quite small—fifteen is the maximum. It means I can find out something about the experience each participant and, to a certain extent, tailor the sessions to each person's needs.

My aim is to give participants an overview of the complete process from concept through to distribution. I use work examples that I've collected over the years and about half the course is hands on. I do as much hands on as I can, so even when it comes to talking about how a concept is 'sold' to the publisher, I have students role-playing this situation by thinking up a concept for a book for a fictitional publisher and working out budgets, schedules, format, promotion etc. While we don't go and visit a printer, I do bring in things like plates and film and then we go through the printing process. Because there's an amateur book binding society at the Writers' Centre, we are able to see a demonstration of aspects of binding.

There isn't time for people to acquire a great deal of skill, so I do impress upon them that they need to go out and practise. I try to suggest as many resources and places where they can get information about all sorts of things from grammar to design. We spend some time at the end of the course talking about what positions individual participants' skills might be suited for, where they can get further training, and how they might get into the industry. A lot of participants are very interested in this aspect of the course. The specifics In terms of the topics I cover, I start from planning a book, looking at different formats, looking at one-colour, two-colour and full-colour production, production costs, design and so on. We look at various sources of information available to editors. I stress that colleagues, from printers to editors to designers, are one of the best sources of information. We look at reference books, journals, professional societies, style manuals and so on and useful Internet addresses. I spend quite a bit time talking about the editor as a team member and how important that is, both in teims of what you can learn from each other and as the best way to create good books. We look at the production process very briefly, then we go through the role of the editor and the different

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levels and tasks involved in editing— from commissioning to substantive editing, rewriting, copyediting and so on. I also look at what I call 'balancing world views', which includes things like how to avoid stereotyping and discriminatory language and images. I deal with all the other bits of a book, like captions, figures and illustrations. We look at reviewing the manuscript before editing, substantive editing and rewrites. We spend a whole weekend on copyediting, design briefs and artwork briefs.

Robin Appleton: One-to-one and corporate/ business training Background, courses and students My background in training is in in-house, in the university environment, in writers' centres, intrastate and interstate, and in Continuing Education and in private colleges. Nowadays I also present short or ongoing courses in seminar or workshop situations, prepared from briefs often provided by industry, to meet the specific needs of individuals or small groups from public and corporate sectors. For associations and societies that have their own publishing lists five to ninety participants might attend a day course.

Many people employed in the public and private sectors regularly write, 'edit', 'design', and desktop publish documents, reports, training manuals, and proposals, as part of their jobs, yet these tasks are often not in their fields of specialisation, and some realise that they are working in areas about which they know little. Some service departments and corporations invite me to present courses on a variety of publishing issues. My preparation of content and direction of in-house, or of special corporate, courses results from discussions about tasks and needs of staff and from the brief that I receive from the training officer or manager of the division. It happens that what these people often want is up-to-date information about legal aspects of publishing, about writers'accountability

and responsibility to the text and content, and about editorial and proofreading procedures, developing a house style, and how to apply these. Evening and daytime courses A course held in the evenings or in the daytime as a series of sessions can be forty-two hours in all, embracing aspects indicated above. The content of such a course includes notes, a reading list, instruction, note-taking, individual assignments, and practical work. Spelling tests, general knowledge quizzes, editing exercises covering grammar and punctuation, and proofreading exercises to be marked appropriately, are given. Constant reference to a dictionary each meeting is encouraged to instil the practice of dictionary use in the participants. After a few sessions I see participants referring to their dictionaries or grammar books without my prompting. Group discussions are popular.

In all courses spelling, grammar, and punctuation, rate highly in the list of needs of participants. Spelling is integral to editing and yet many participants who are poor spellers rely on a spell checker to correct their work.

Few of those who have not learnt grammar at school do much about it. If they did some preparation in grammar by using a grammar book or a dictionary a group could share a vocabulary about parts of speech and their functions. Three or four hours in a course cannot replace the grammar needs that schooling has failed to provide. Editors often use intuition and say: 'I cannot express why the sentence is wrong, but I know it is.' There are writers who want 'the whole truth and nothing but the truth' and they want a reason why an editor suggests that something should be changed because it is 'wrong'.

After a protracted training session about punctuation one day Michael Giffin said to me: 'People "own" their punctuation'. Many do hold interesting views about punctuation in spite of them remembering no rule other than the 'no comma before "and"', learnt in fourth class. Still participants tenaciously defend their use, misuse, or non use of punctuation that often appears in the oddest of places, for the oddest of reasons.

Students: Who they are and what they need People have taken my courses by correspondence, some have travelled from Cowra, Orange, Canberra, and Coffs Harbour to attend group or one-to-one courses in Sydney, and some previously in a group course have taken a one-to-one course to find out specific information related to a project. Participants' needs range from: • people seeking careers in publishing wanting training in the principles of editing • people needing editorial training and already employed in book publishing • people needing to learn to copy-edit and proofread and are presently employed as 'editors' whose main job is to write from an idea or to re-write typescripts • would-be writers and published writers wanting to self-edit their typescripts for submission to publishers or for self-publishing • people wanting an overview of the principles of editing, now employed in marketing • sole traders and small businesspeople wanting to edit and proofread their documents (for limited distribution) or training material (for publication) • people needing to learn editing marks and proofreading symbols for their jobs as they are now working in desktop publishing • people needing to know how to interpret editor's marks and how to use proofreading symbols in order to proofread 9 people wanting subject-specific courses such as rights and permissions, legal aspects of publishing; grammar and punctuation; legibility and readability of text ® people needing training in the publishing process and the principles of editing who come from magazine publishing, public service sector, corporations.

Courses can vary from the types described above to trouble-shooting ones about how to reach the intended audience for a specific project; cultural difference, perception and attitude; or how to produce a publication to meet an international market with an Australian product, while indicating that as little

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Hiring an indexer editorial intervention as possible is desirable in the recipient nation. Writers need to use 'globally acceptable terms' the meaning of which cannot be misinterpreted, an almost impossible criterion to meet.

Mentorship I have been a mentor for writers, trainee editors, proofreaders, and desktop publishers. At present I am a mentor to a writer who presents workshops and collates and 'edits' drafts for anthologies for a writing project in a multicultural community. The Australia Council funds this mentorship. There are so many areas in which people are now writing as part of their jobs and who want to 'get it right'.

Word-of-mouth, referral, website, and the Editorial Register, are probably all partly responsible for me being approached to present courses, but hands-on editing is the main source of my livelihood.

The Society of Editors (NSW) Inc. training programs dedicated to grammar and punctuation are invaluable for practitioners and novices alike and complement other training programs. Keep up the training.

Many thanks to Carolyne Bruyn for transcribing the meeting.

When some months ago it was announced that a celebrity was to write his memoirs, I told myself that I would give anything to be offered that book for indexing.

Well, my dream did come true, but how bitter it was. One recent Friday an editor rang me out of the blue: 'I need an index for X ' s memoirs of his personal experiences. Are you available?' Was I what? When would the text be ready for me to start? 'I have it on my desk, I can send it to you now. It's 320 pages long. Can I have the index by next Tuesday?'

I 'm sorry to report that I laughed out loud. How could I read 320 pages by next Tuesday, even assuming that I had no other work to do, or that I was willing to work all through the weekend? Let alone type in the dozens, if not hundreds, of central-European names with their unfamiliar diacritics, and scrutinise the text for the level of analysis such a book would undoubtedly require.

Reluctantly, I turned it down. Could I recommend anyone else? No, I most certainly could not. At a meeting of indexers that evening it turned out that everyone there had been approached to provide this index, and each of them had turned it down. During the course of the Friday the Tuesday deadl ine had mysteriously stretched to Wednesday.

In an industry where it typically takes between nine and eighteen months from initial concept to a book's appearance in

the shops, how could any editor not know a book is coming up for indexing?

'Why didn't you give me notice?' I asked. 'Because I wasn't sure exactly which day the proofs would be ready,' was the reply. Huh? Huh? Please, give me a break. I've worked in this industry for fifteen years and know perfectly well that nobody can be sure then anything will be ready—ever. Except maybe the launch date. But things still get themselves done. By not using basic book-trade commonsense, not only did this editor give herself a lot of extra work and stress, she has got herself and the company she works for a bad name in freelancing circles. Who's going to work for her in the future, knowing what they know now?

How can you avoid committing this unfortunate misdemeanour? There are rules of thumb that help ensure you and your subcontractors a trouble-free relationship, whatever their role in the book's production. First of all, call your subcontractors as soon as you have an inkling of an approximate date. As the date becomes clearer, keep your subcontractors informed. If there are any delays to the schedule, tell them at once. For a complex book of320 pages a three-week notice period would not be excessive; a week ' s notice of the availability of final proofs would be an absolute minimum. Inevitably schedules move, particularly near the end of the process, which is where indexing is, so if page proofs actually arrive on the nominated day it is quite a surprise. A freelancer survives by being flexible. One I have agreed to take on a job, I keep my word. If the schedule moves to such an extent that other commitments prevent me from doing the work myself, I find another reputable indexer to do it instead.

How much notice should you give? As much as possible. As an absolute minimum, allow a week's notice for every S500 you have to spend, but at this late date don't expect the job to be accepted by the first indexer you approach. If we're any good we're booked up for weeks or even months in advance.

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Australian societies of editors Canberra Society of Editors Website: http://www.editors.dynamite.com.au/ Society of Editors (NSW) Inc. Website: http://www.users.bigpond.com/socednsw/ Society of Editors (NT) Email: joyce.purcell@nt.gov.au Society of Editors (Qld) Website: http://www.pipeline.com.au/users/bangsund/q_home.htm Society of Editors (SA) Website: http://www.editors-sa.org.au/ Society of Editors (Tas) Website: http://www.tas-editors.org.au/ Society of Editors (Vic) Website: http://www.vicnet.net.au/~socedvic/ Society of Editors (WA) Website: http://anythink.iinet.net.au/soewa/

Blue Pencil, S e p t e m b e r 2 0 0 0 7

Hiring an indexer continued from page 7

And how much time should you allow for the indexer to complete the job? Again, as a minimum, allow a week for every $500. Of course, there may be times when you just don't have that much time: as we say in the trade, you can have it cheap, you can have it quick, you can have it good—choose any two.

Postscript: I have just seen the book displayed in the shops. The 320 pages are in big type with generous leading, and the text is straightforward with few difficult concepts or foreign names. It has a four-page index, or 1.25 percent of the total—5 per cent is recommended for ordinary general market books, more

Towards national standards for editing practice Since late 1998 a national working group, comprising representatives from societies of editors in all states and the ACT, has been developing a set of standards for Australian editorial practice. The aim is to capture the range of skills and attributes that a competent editor requires to transform a manuscript into a published product through the stages of the editing process.

Workshops are being held in all states and the ACT to discuss and refine the draft prepared by the national working group. The national group will then meet to finalise the draft based on the results of the workshops and the standards will eventually be put to a membership vote by each society.

Be part of this historic process. The society's normal monthly meeting on 3 October will be dedicated to a briefing on the standards and their development. There will also be an afternoon workshop on Saturday, 7 October, where members can discuss the draft standards in depth and actively contribute to the process of refining them. You don't have to come to both of these sessions, but you're very welcome to do so if you can. Check the enclosed flyer for details.

Enquiries to Rhana Pike or Cathy Gray (contact details on page 10).

Are you up to the challenge? There are three positions available on the society's committee. The first is newsletter assistant. Unfortunately, Marc Marusic has had to relinquish the position on account of work committments. So, for anyone out there who is finding it currently difficult to gain editing and production experience, this position is ideal. All you need is a computer and Internet access. The second position is training officer, which was recently vacated by long-standing committee member Michael Giffm. And the third is the newly created marketing officer. If you are up to the challenge, contact a committee member.

Also, at the last committee meeting it was decided that we need to convene a marketing committee to discuss how best to market the services of our members; what issues might best be tackled by marketing from a society rather than an individual, and more. If you would like to contribute to this committee, don't hesitate to contact a committee member as well.

for books for the informed reader. Moreover, it has colour plates; the delay required for colour separation provides even less reason why the index deadline should be so short. The index seems reasonably competent, though it uses some devices that few if any professional indexers would use nowadays, such as heavy use of prepositions and two levels of subheading, and for obvious reasons it shows many signs of haste. I find it difficult to believe that the index was written in only two days. I can only hope that the indexer charged a shirtload for the aggro.

Michael Wyatt Keyword Editorial Services

Best newspaper headlines of 1999 1. Include Your Children When Baking Cookies 2. Police Begin Campaign to Run Down Jaywalkers 3. Drunks Get Nine Months in Violin Case 4. Iraqi Head Seeks Arms 5. Is There a Ring of Debris Around Uranus? 6. Prostitutes Appeal to Pope 7. Panda Mating Fails; Veterinarian Takes Over 8. British Left Waffles on Falkland Islands 9. Teacher Strikes Idle Kids 10. Clinton Wins Budget; More Lies Ahead 11. Plane Too Close to Ground, Crash Probe Told 12. Miners Refuse to Work After Death 13. Juvenile Court to Try Shooting Defendant 14. Stolen Painting Found by Tree 15. Two Sisters Reunited after 18 Years in Checkout Counter 16. War Dims Hope for Peace 17. If Strike Isn't Settled Quickly, It May Last a While 18. Man Struck by Lightning Faces Battery Charge 19. New Study of Obesity Looks for Larger Test Group 20. Astronaut Takes Blame for Gas in Space 21. Kids Make Nutritious Snacks 22. Local High School Dropouts Cut in Half 23. Typhoon Rips through Cemetery; Hundreds Dead

Where's a serif when you need it? Thanks to Cathy Gray for this humorous piece.

Two fonts walk into a bar. The bartender says, "We don't serve your type in here."

This caused a riot, so somebody called the serif.

Blue Pencil, September 2 0 0 0 15 8

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR SpeHcheckers need the boot Rather belated I know, but a big tick for the anonymous correspondent who put the boot into spellcheckers so brilliantly in the June issue.

Alan Eason

Should we charge for lunch? Dear Editor, At an end-of-project celebration with some other freelance editors recently a question came up about how we charge when we work on-site. Specifically, if charging an hourly rate, does one charge for a (usually half-hour) lunch break? One said she'd never really thought about it beyond the 'only charge for time actually spent working' idea, but another brought up the fact that there's an awful lot of non-work time in offices generally, and people there get paid for all of it. What do you think? What do you do? Does the MEAA say anything useful about this?

Merry Pearson

Ebooks: The sober truth I have been an ebook reader for five years now, but Pamela Jones's vision of the future of ebooks fills me with gloom and despondency. We already have streets and train carriages full of misguided people drivelling into mobile phones and bopping away to their Walkmans; now we'll have to put up with electronic devices reading Northanger Abbey and playing the dance hits of the 1820s. Heaven preserve us!

The sober truth is that ebooks only have two advantages over print books: you can fit several thousand of them into the palm of your hand, and they cost almost nothing to reproduce. These boring but economically compelling features are what will 'sell' ebooks, not some weird and wonderful combination of voice-over, soundtrack and encyclopaedia. Lots of publishers (and editors) will probably get cross about it, because they want the chance to repackage and resell Jane Austen and her colleagues in another new and glossy package rather than have the likes of Project Gutenberg giving her away for free, but I suspect the public will see through them. Only time will tell.

Jonathan Jermey

Merry's titbit Let's hear it for the editors. I was just looking something up in my Webster's Unabridged Dictionary and saw this usage note about the word phenomenon:

'As with other plurals of Latin or Greek origin, like "media" and "criteria", there is a tendency to use the plural PHENOMENA as a singular ("This phenomena will not be seen again"), but such use appears infrequently in edited writing. The plural form PHENOMENAS, though occasionally seen, has even less currency.'

Merry Pearson

Wordbreak answers From page 4

Parquetry b. A floor-covering of wooden blocks fitted in a pattern, from French parquet, diminuitive of pare, an enclosure.

Synecdoche a. The figure of putting part for the whole, such as bread-and-butter for food, or the whole for the part, such as the press for a newspaper.

Libera c. A new specialist defensive position to be introduced at the Sydney Olympics. The player will wear a different-coloured uniform from the rest of the team.

Avenaceous c. From Avena, the oat genus of grasses.

Strigil a. A curved blade used by the ancient Greeks and Romans for scraping the skin at the bath and in the gymnasium. Several are on show in the Ancient Greece display at Sydney's Powerhouse Museum.

NEWS RELEASE Plutonium is a new publishing house seeking authors to join the How to Lose Friends Series. The first book in the Series is the bestselling How to Lose Friends and Infuriate People which has over 64,000 copies in print, with worldwide distribution. The next two books will be How to Lose Friends and Infuriate Thinkers and How to Lose Friends and Infuriate Teachers.

The publisher is looking for high-quality authors who would like to write books to fit this Series, such as How to Lose Friends and Infuriate [Lawyers], or Investors, Doctors, Parents, Bosses, Lovers, Husbands, Wives, Builders, Children, Managers, Leaders, and the like.

The books in question would need to be full of soul, grace, wisdom and some wit. The writing must be tight, professional and first class.

Plutonium will be offering the standard ASA Contract to authors who have a passion for their work.

Those interested in submitting a publishing proposal may do so to Plutonium@Logictivity.com or to PO Box 176, Cherrybrook NSW 2126. Additional information can be found at www.Logictivity.com

Blue Pencil, September 2 0 0 0 9

SOCIETY OF EDITORS (NSW) INC.

2000 COMMITTEE N O T I C E B O A R D President: Shelley Kenigsberg

Phone/fax: (02) 9130 6752 Email: skenigs@ibm.net

Immediate Past President: Cathy Gray Phone/fax: (02)91308331 Mobile: 0408 615 704 Email: cgray@mpx.com.au

Vice President: Michael Lewis Phone: (02) 9310 2224 (w) Fax: (02) 9310 5056 (w) Email: mlewis@brandle.com.au

Secretary: Merry Pearson Phone/fax: (02) 9913 7799 (w & h) Email: mmripear@ozemail.com.au

Treasurer: Janice Beavan Phone: (02) 9660 0335 Fax: (02) 9660 9375 Email: JBeavan@bigpond.com

Membership Secretary: Robert Pearson Phone/fax: (02)9913 7799(h)

Newsletter Editor: Jocelyn Hargrave Phone/fax: (02) 4757 2852 Mobile: 0419 218493 Email: joc_stu@dingoblue.net.au

Newsletter Assistant: Marc Marusic Phone/fax: (02)95171206 Email: marc_marusic@hotmail.com

Meetings/Publicity Officer: Terry Johnston Phone/fax: (02) 9337 4126 (w & h) Mobile: 0408 257 020 Email: pnayp@ozemail.com.au

Training Coordinator: position vacant Website Coordinator: Bruce White

Phone: (02) 9955 0344 Email: white@msn.com.au

General Members: Darri Adamson

Phone/fax: (02) 9557 7310 Email: darri@ozemail.com.au

Robin Appleton Phone/fax: 95601017 (w & h) Email: icegreenapple@alpha.net.au

Rhana Pike Phone: (02) 9569 7831(h)

(02)9562 5317(w) Fax: (02)95691641(h) Email: rhanap@ozemail.com.au

NSW Writers' Centre workshops Adults writing for children with Stephen Measday Learn about plot, or study theme, or create interesting characters— we've heard them all. But what are the real skills and techniques needed for writing fiction for younger readers? In this day-long workshop, author Stephen Measday will discuss various approaches for bringing your ideas to realisation and will answer some questions— are people or animals better subjects for stories for younger readers? Do I have to be a big kid in order to write for smaller kids? And what do young people actually want to read?

Saturday, 2 September, 10 am to 5 pm. Dare to write a potential bestseller with Lynne Wilding & Anne Rennie If you want to get into the Australian popular fiction market, hear what Anne and Lynne have to say. All you need is a pen and paper, passion and the desire to become a commercial storyteller.

The workshop discusses the ongoing popularity of this genre in Australia; how to give Australian publishers what they want; plotting your manuscript; writing a synopsis which sells your story idea. Sub-plots—their use and value; characterisation and emotive writing; what conflict is and how to use it; pacing your novel. Then put all you've learnt together in a fun, brainstorming Ten-Minute Saga.

Saturday, 9 September, 10 am to 5 pm. The workshops will be held at the NSW Writers' Centre, Rozelle

Hospital, Balmain. The cost for both is $60 for members; $49.50 for members' concession; $77 for non-members. Bring lunch and writing materials.

The Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize 2000 The 2000 Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize was launched by Island magazine on 9 June. The first prize is $1000, with three runner up prizes of $ 100. The competition judges are Joanne Burns and Andrew Sant, and the winners will be announced after the 30 September closing date. Full details of the competition and entry forms can be obtained from Island or downloaded from www.tased.edu.au/tasonline/island

Wordwatching Has anyone noticed that the Wordwatching column written by Gordon Bilney, which appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald's Saturday Spectrum section for three years, has disappeared? Well, it was actually abolished at the end of July 2000. The reasons for the column's abolition are yet unknown. If any of you feel that the Herald will be the poorer for the absence of Wordwatching, you may want to write a letter to the Editor, requesting its reinstatement. The address to which you send the letter is GPO Box 506, Sydney NSW 2001.

We are as popular as ever! Membership has increased by sixty so far this year in comparison with last year's total count of forty-eight. A lot of people seem to be subscribing through the website. The actual membership now stands at 255 paying members, with 288 names on the mailing list.

10 Blue Pencil, September 2000