RE: Best Practice for reviewing documents?

Subject: RE: Best Practice for reviewing documents?
From: "Joe Malin" <jmalin -at- tuvox -dot- com>
To: "Laura Lemay" <llemay -at- gmail -dot- com>, "Peter Neilson" <neilson -at- alltel -dot- net>
Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2005 10:16:36 -0800

That's inexcusable.

This person forgot that the purpose of writing is to be clear. Following
writing rules is secondary to that.

I vividly remember a copyediting assignment in school. It was the first
"real" assignment, and I worked hard to research and follow *all* the
rules and write *very* clearly. My teacher gave me a "D". She said that
I had not put in *any* queries to the writer. She maintained that what
*I* had done was worse than the original article!

I didn't argue the grade, and so I remember her lesson quite well.

I respect and admire good editors. I wish I had one to work with; I'd
become a better writer.


Joe Malin
Technical Writer
(408)625-1623
jmalin -at- tuvox -dot- com
www.tuvox.com
The views expressed in this document are those of the sender, and do not
necessarily reflect those of TuVox, Inc.

-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+jmalin=tuvox -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
[mailto:techwr-l-bounces+jmalin=tuvox -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On Behalf
Of Laura Lemay
Sent: Tuesday, December 20, 2005 10:02 AM
To: Peter Neilson
Cc: TECHWR-L
Subject: Re: Best Practice for reviewing documents?

On 12/20/05, Peter Neilson <neilson -at- alltel -dot- net> wrote:
> Amen! I was both the writer and the SME for a book, and after I had
> signed off the camera-ready copy someone in editorial took it back and

> redid the whole thing, changing hundreds of instances of "boolean"
> (the name of a data type) to "Boolean" on the grounds that George
> Boole was a person, and thus the name required capitalization.

ahahaha.

Ask me about the copy editor who went through my Java book after I had
signed off on it and edited all my code samples. Obivously when I wrote
i-- I must have meant i(emdash). And the divide character /?
Turn it into a real typographical divide (line with two dots) because
that's more typographically correct.

I still get angry email from readers about it. Just try finding the
line-with-two-dots character on your keyboard.

Agree with the final final final signoff for the SME. No touching after
that.

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