STET Again! More Tricks of the Trade for Publications People News & Views Book Review

STET Again! More Tricks of the Trade for Publications People, EEI Press 1996. ISBN 0-935012-20-6 $15.95 354 pp. by Cheryl Cherry Freelance Writer Originally published in News & Views May 1998 issue. Copyright 1998 STC-Philadelphia Metro Chapter. For permission to reprint this article, contact the Managing Editor.

STET Again! More Tricks of the Trade for Publications People is thought-provoking, informative, and entertaining. The book is a collection of articles originally published in "The Editorial Eye" newsletter between 1990 and 1996. (The first collection, STET, contained older articles.) Almost all the selections can be read in under five minutes. (This is the perfect book to keep near the phone. Improve your skills while you are on hold!) Most articles contain practical advice provided by editors and writers, based on their own experiences. This advice is supplemented by "Test Yourself" exercises (answers and explanations provided) and by "The Right Word" features clarifying correct usage of often-misused words. The book is divided into six sections: The Art of Writing, The Craft of Editing, Usage and Grammar, Style and Punctuation Perennials, Design and Typography, and Publication Management and Trends. Here is a sampling of the contents. When writers have trouble getting started Diane Snyder, a freelance writer and editor, describes the fight between the creator, the critic, and the scribe inside each writer. Snyder gives suggestions for getting the three "selves" to cooperate and for eliminating barriers to progress. She reports finding it hard to resist the urge to polish each sentence when writing the first draft. To convince her internal critic to let the creator continue with the first draft, she consciously strikes a compromise with herself. She promises the critic that she will come back to work on a difficult passage, then lets the creator move forward on the draft. Substantive editing: the words-upward approach Mia Cunningham, an EEI editor and trainer, describes how she evaluates word choices, making sure each sentence makes sense before tackling broader tasks such as rearranging the information and identifying gaps. Numbers: to spell out or not? Priscilla Taylor, a senior EEI editor, provides examples from respected publications of sentences that are difficult to read because of the way numbers are presented. For example, the "Wall Street Journal" printed "They had first hoped for three million or more subscribing homes, then trimmed it to 2.8 million, then reduced even that projection to perhaps two million homes..." Taylor endorses the guidelines from the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. The Association's general rule is to "use figures to express numbers 10 and above, and words to express numbers below 10." Exceptions are noted, such as numbers that are grouped for comparison with numbers 10 and above; numbers that represent time, dates, and ages; and numbers that represent statistical or decimal quantities, percentages, ratios, percentiles, and quartiles. Editing a word table for less space and more sense Patricia Caudill, a quality control specialist for EEI who trains all of EEI's proofreaders, uses a complicated table as a "before" and "after" example. Caudill recommends planning your "editorial attack." She explains the approach she took to fixing the table and identifies all its style problems, most of which affected comprehension of the information. The problems with the "before" table included unexplained acronyms and inconsistent reference styles. She also suggests ways to improve readability. In her example the first two columns could be combined, permitting widening of another column containing large blocks of text. The music is not in the violin, and good design is not a default in the computer Alex White, a visual communication consultant and professor of graphic design, presents elements of good design. For example, "good design requires sharply defined visual relationships" and "good design requires a clear page structure." He goes on to provide some suggestions for achieving good design. For example, to create a relationship between two items in the mind of your reader, have the two match in some way (size, shape, color, position). Avoid making unrelated items look similar to one another. Working with vendors Robin Cormier, EEI's vice president for design, editorial, and production services, answers a reader's request for guidelines for working successfully with production service vendors. Cormier presents tips for handling the various stages of the project, and recommendations for establishing a relationship with a vendor. For example, she suggests asking the vendor for feedback after the job is complete.

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Posted June 5, 1998 (dls)