What It Is (posts below left; rate sheet, client list, other stuff below right)

My name is Bob Land. I am a full-time freelance editor and proofreader, and occasional indexer. This blog is my website.

You'll find my rate sheet and client list here, as well as musings on the life of a freelancer; editing, proofreading, and indexing concerns and issues; my ongoing battles with books and production; and the occasional personal revelation.

Feel free to contact me directly with additional questions: landondemand@gmail.com.

Thanks for visiting. Leave me a comment. Come back often.

Thursday, September 27, 2007

city books; Word style sheets

The indexes are done, finally. It's at least four days 'til I have to write the next one. I will enjoy the break.

I spent today reading a Chamber of Commerce book on Fayetteville, NC, the text for which I'd already copyedited. Most of the time when I read one of these books, I want to move to that city. Done right, everywhere seems like paradise. Two exceptions: Springfield, MO, which came across as the US capital of the Aryan Nation, and Fayetteville, NC, which is probably a great place if you want to listen to even more of a daily drumbeat of how, properly used, the US military can save the world, and is actually doing so as we speak. Oh, please.

Tomorrow I begin copyediting The Deed and the Doer in the Bible: David Daube's Gifford Lectures, Volume 1. Naturally, I have no idea who David Daube is, nor what the Gifford lectures are. This publisher usually gets stuff to me in great shape, though. Bad news/good news on this project: They want the copyeditor to prepare the m/s for the typesetter in a big way, which is to say, applying Word's style sheets to the entire document -- and it's about a 400-page manuscript. Also, hundreds of auto-footnotes need to be converted to hard characters -- both in the manuscript and in the notes section. The good news is that this is one of those times I am glad to be paid by the hour.

On Word's style sheets: In the hands of a good copyeditor and a typesetter who knows what s/he is doing, these style sheets can make typesetting a breeze -- saving hours and days on the task. This publisher refers to the style sheets as XML style sheets. I mentioned that one time to a typesetter who said their nomenclature was wrong: that XML style sheets are another thing entirely, which made for about 15 minutes of very confusing conversation. Because of my work with this publisher, though, I've tried to get some other typesetters on board with the Word style sheets, but there's some trick to getting them to import properly into Quark, blah, blah. So not everyone can do it or is willing to take the time to learn. But what do I know?

After getting some other work done, I might actually be facing a night when I can sleep for 6 or 7 consecutive hours. Not that my body will allow this, of course, but it's nice to imagine that it might happen someday.

Excelsior.

1 comment:

moi said...

I, too, am one of those people who visits or reads about a new city and can instantly picture myself there. But there are small Mississippi towns that didn't scare me like Springfield did . . .