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Subject:Red pens? (was: what to do) From:"Hart, Geoff" <Geoff-H -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Mon, 27 Oct 2003 14:00:36 -0500
Dick Margulis responded to Al Geist's suggestion to "lay in a large supply
of red pens": <<No. Use blue, preferably light blue (so-called non-repro
blue, although you are not preparing galleys for the camera). You are
providing a service (copy redaction), not teaching them English. Red is for
teachers. Blue is for diaskeuasts.>>
This topic has been discussed many times on copyediting-l, with a large and
vocal minority claiming that red triggers the "red flag in front of bull"
reflex whereas green (or purple or several other funky colors) is more
soothing to the savage author. I've yet to see anything other than anecdotal
evidence to support this. In my experience, how an author responds to
editing depends entirely on your relationship with the author and your tact
in conveying edits. Ink color has next to nothing to do with it so long as
the author isn't colorblind to that particular color of ink and can no
longer distinguish it from the text color.
Nowadays, I generally recommend using Word so you can edit onscreen and save
the pens for graffiti. One very nice thing about Word is that each author
gets to define their own display settings for edits rather than being bound
by the editor's choice of ink. The best thing about this has nothing to do
with ink color: it relates to removing the author's need to parse arcane
copyediting symbols and other handwritten scrawls. For people whose first
language isn't English, the improved clarity of the comments (my writing is
indecipherable even by expert archeologists) makes figuring out what you
said and what it means much easier.
I'd recommend avoiding non-repro blue for the simple reason that you can't
photocopy it. Sometimes it's important to be able to have paper backups,
particularly if you run into one of those nasty authors who tends to "lose"
your edits in the hope that your next edit will be lighter. These bogeymen
are rare, but they do exist.
--Geoff Hart, geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
(try ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca if you get no response)
Forest Engineering Research Institute of Canada
580 boul. St-Jean
Pointe-Claire, Que., H9R 3J9 Canada
"Wisdom is one of the few things that look bigger the further away it
is."--Terry Pratchett
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