Month: October 2010

by Jennie Ruby

I was helping a group of editors develop Word macros to correct punctuation problems when I was stymied about a punctuation mark they spoke of: the "double-dot."

"Oh, you mean a centered dot, the math symbol?" I asked.

No, the double-dot, they replied.

"You mean over a letter, like the German umlaut?" I asked.

Finally the young man I was speaking with typed a colon on the screen for me to see. "You know, like this," he said.

I was astonished. I had never heard anyone call a colon that before. And in fact, there is no such word as double-dot. The same editor also described the "dot-comma" (;) and the "double-dash" (–). Neither of those is a word, either.

Aside from the anthropological observation that groups working in isolation will eventually develop a unique dialect of their own, I pondered the inefficiency of making up your own vocabulary for common items. Along those lines, one of the punctuation vocabulary mistakes I love to hate is the use of "dash" instead of "hyphen."

The hyphen is the shortest centered-horizontal-line-punctuation mark (-). It is used to join compound words, such as double-decker. Only the longer marks are rightly called dashes: the en dash and the em dash. The en dash is used in typesetting for ranges of things, like page numbers. The em dash is the long dash used to punctuate sentences. Two hyphens in a row are used to represent the em dash in situations (such as typing on a typewriter–and when using the software in which this newsletter is created) where the technology does not allow for the em dash.

Vocabulary slippage is not limited to that one isolated group of editors. I find myself allowing drift between internet words (blahblah-dot-com) and punctuation words. I routinely hear myself say dot now instead of point, as in "thirty-three dot five" (33.5), and who hasn't verbalized an ellipsis mark as "dot-dot-dot"?

Nevertheless, in the world of editing and typography, it is worth knowing the actual names of all of the dots and tittles we use to express language in print. For my part, I will be enunciating into the mirror, "thirty-three POINT five, thirty-three POINT five…."

by Jennie Ruby

Proofreading is a quality control check of text and layout that many of us are asked to do with little or no training. Yet marking corrections clearly and unambiguously with no specialized knowledge is not as easy as one might think. For example, how do you indicate that you want the space between words to be closed up?

The text reads: tooth paste

And you want: toothpaste

Do you scratch out both words and write toothpaste in the margin? Do you draw a circle around the area and write a note in the margin saying, "Please remove the space between the words to make one word"? Do you put a delete mark on the space? The answer is hooks: you put a pair of sideways parentheses connecting the two words.

How do I know this? The standard proofreading marks, shown in many dictionaries under P for proofreading, include this and many other useful symbols. The proofreading marks are efficient and unambiguous. They are faster than writing an entire note in the margin, and they have been codified into a little symbol language of their own.

But these symbols have a huge limitation: Many designers, layout artists, and eLearning producers don't know them. That fact leaves us at square one unless we do learn the marks, educate our colleagues about them, use some online tools, or do all three.

I have begun attaching a graphic of the proofreading marks when I return corrections to a designer. Then the designer can look up the marks and interpret them as needed. And handwritten marks are not the only ones that require this treatment. Even when using Acrobat to communicate corrections, I find that I, and many other editors, like to grab the Pencil tool and just make the standard proofreading mark right on the PDF. Acrobat has built-in tools for Text Edits, but not all reviewers know how to use this tool, and not all designers consider Text Edits easy to use. So again, knowledge of the proofreading marks is crucial for clear communication.

Now what of the ladders I spoke of in my title? They are a common design flaw in text: when 3 or more end-of-line hyphens occur on successive lines, they form an eyesore called a ladder. The designer must rebreak the lines to eliminate the stack of hyphens. Knowing that this is considered poor style is something designers know, but many of us editors and writers don't know, even though we are checking a designer's work. Again, I think education is the key. The more both designers and writers/editors know about one another's work, the better quality products we can produce.

I'd love to hear from you if you have experienced a knowledge gap in either direction. Have you marked a correction, and had the mark misunderstood? Have you been on the receiving end of scrawled notes instead of concise correction marks? What have you done about these problems?

Note: Both sides of this knowledge gap are covered in my upcoming Proofreading class..