what did i tell ya?

This just in from a client:

"There are problems with the art throughout (as you could plainly see). XXXX is having India redo and the book will have to be reproofed."

five women, one screen, great work

I don't know what the problem is with some graphic designers these days. It's not the ones I know personally, but the ones whose efforts I must endure when working for publishers when it comes time to proofread simple pie charts, bar charts, flow charts, etc.

I'm not going to go through my whole work history, which actually wouldn't take very long, but my second full-time job was proofreading at a small typesetting shop in Atlanta, 1983-84. Mostly they did things like brochures, newspaper/Yellow Pages ads, that kind of stuff. Also, ironically, they produced curriculum for John Knox Press, at the time located in Atlanta; now in Louisville and one of my biggest clients. (I'm not even sure I had a name there. One time I came back from my daily lunch at the Waffle House a block away, walked in the door, and the owner's wife said, "Oh, it's the proofreader." This was in a business that employed ten people.)

Five typesetters worked there -- all women. One was a bit younger than the rest; she was the niece of the woman whose name was on the business, but who no longer owned it, and if I'm not mistaken the typesetter was either the sister or the first cousin of one of the leaders of the Atlanta Rhythm Section. The other four were semi-matronly sorts who would sit there and crank out things like tables and charts with lines and columns and text boxes that aligned just like they were supposed to. Here's the thing: except for the youngest one (who presumably had the perk of being related to the business's founder), they did it without what in those days were known as "preview screens."

Think of it, dear readers. Think of posting to your blog or writing your emails, or creating spreadsheets . . . but you only have your keyboard. No screen. Nothing to look at to verify what you are doing. And no fancy-dancy software to do all the cipherin' for you. These women would figure out the specs (widths of columns, sizes of type, leading), jot 'em down on a piece of note paper, key in all their variables (not to mention the text itself -- no one was sending in Word files in those days either), and hope for the best. And 90 percent of the time, their best was pretty damn good, requiring only minor tweaking after my proofreading to get it right.

These days, with all the software and tools and hard stuff done by some high-dollar programmer out in Silicon Valley, typesetters are lucky if they can center a five-letter word in a two-inch-by-two-inch box. Or, God forbid, center text next to a piece of art. What is up with that?

I guess there are still some people out there who know what they are doing, or who care enough to get it right. The occasional time I have to look at an annual report, the charts look pretty clean. But the textbook and workbook stuff I've been seeing in this millennium looks like crap.

At the other typesetting shops I worked at in Atlanta through the '80s and '90s, the typesetters were craftspeople and perfectionists. They would spend hours fussing with this kind of material getting it just right before it would come to me, and part of the reason they would do so was frankly because I'd rip 'em a new one until it looked just right. And while they sometimes would get exasperated with me, they appreciated my efforts, and I did theirs. They really cared about quality. And we'd bitch at each other and get along great. Hell, at two in the morning you'd better get along great.

I hate to beat a dead horse (maybe that's what this blog should be called), but I wonder if some of the problem is overseas typesetters who aren't getting paid to make it right; they're getting paid (barely) to get it on the page, one way or the other, and quickly.

An unrelated note: A great client of mine develops corporate histories. He told me last week of the time they received an entire manuscript embedded in an Excel document. And this was some executive who was writing it; Excel was the only progam he knew how to operate. Now, I'm sorry. Couldn't some poor sap have opened up a Word document for him and said, "There you go"? And oh, by the way, hit Ctrl S every once in a while, just as you would in Excel. (That's "Save" for you Mac jockeys.)

I speak in front of some author groups whose authors began writing just after Gutenberg finished his gig. I tell them that a computer is nothing but a typewriter with memory. Excel? For a 50,000-word story? How do some people make it through the day?

negative impressions

I'm proofreading a rather interesting (and well-written, well-edited, highly detailed and researched) textbook about how to design surveys. In my world, this is light reading.

When people are asked to make a self-assessment on a 10-point scale, the responses will be better if the scale is from 0 to 10 rather than from -5 to +5; that is, the former type of assessment in one case drew a 34 percent response rate of people ranking themselves 0 to 5, while the same question scaled to different numbers drew only an 18 percent response rate of people ranking themselves -5 to 0, even though what is being reported is exactly the same. People just don't like viewing themselves with that "negative" attached.

Where the book is not so good, and I've noticed this a lot lately, is in the graphs and figures. I am coming to the conclusion that the typesetting of graphs and figures was infinitely better back in the '80s, a topic I will explore more in a subsequent post.

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Regular reader(s) will notice some changes here. I've moved (at blog goddess Moi's suggestion) and expanded the Brushes with Fame section. So if you've read it before, please take the opportunity to look again. The details bring out the stories a little. Not that they've got much to do with work . . .

I'm also trying to spread the word about the blog a little, and I'm already starting to see some results. If nothing else, I might get a new pen pal or two, even if just for a day. And you never know where some seeds might fall. What's the gardening phrase? The first year it sleeps, then it creeps, then it leaps?

And I've added the map. In the first day, two lost souls from India and Australia clicked in. If you're still around, let me know what you think and what brought you here.

This is a test

talking with publishers

Seems that everyone wanted to catch up today after the holiday weekend.

1. I told one of my best clients a provisional no, thanks, to an index, just because I have too many of them scheduled back to back at a certain point in the future, and of the three tasks I undertake, the one I cannot do repeatedly (like four or five in a row) is indexing. I need a break from that, moreso than proofing and editing.

2. Another very nice publisher of mine contacted me because the author whose book she was publishing was questioning the serial comma (sigh) and was totally confused by the Chicago treatment of numbers. Well, no surprise there, because the Chicago treatment of numbers is totally confusing if you don't (1) work with it every day or (2) have someone like me to explain its confusion in easy-to-understand and impossible-to-remember terms.

3. Professional services firm from a few posts back continues to be confused on copyediting/proofreading. They emailed and said they could shuttle me some chapters to proofread, and then the designer could work on the layout and design from those corrected chapters. No, I explained, first the layout and design, then the proofing. After encountering the aural brick wall, I asked if I could just be put in touch with the person who is actually composing the book. Meanwhile, more time is wasted on the front end and, oh yeah, their deadline seems to have moved closer on the back end.

4. Again, if you're following the story, the publisher I mentioned a few posts back who is helping put out the out-of-date business book asked for my opinion on the tome, which I gleefully shared, and with which he 100 percent agreed. Now there's a cause for fireworks.

Next on the desk is an actual very up-to-date business book. What a nice change.

But also today, amid incessant phone calls and emails, was indexing the chatty book on how the wealthy should give their money away now. Interesting thing has developed over the years. From repeatedly indexing books on very difficult subject matter, I find that indexing books that are more anecdotal or down-homey, for want of a better term, is a harder task. Easy book, tough index. One of my publishing cohorts said that one of my greatest talents was to write indexes for books that have very little true content and make them seem substantive. Whether that's a good thing, I don't know.

Long day, tired eyes, boring post. Well, maybe they all are.

revolutionary billing thought for my clients

OK. Follow me here. (And I apologize to my readers for the number of recent posts. William Burroughs referred to it as "unleashing the word horde." And I'm up late, as opposed to early, and don't feel yet like sleeping or working more.)

I proofread and copyedit, though rarely on the same job because of a not-unwise policy of most publishers to break out these duties to two separate people. Many reasons for doing so, some of which are obviated by my general pattern of memory loss.

I just finished proofreading the aforementioned book about the theoretical Q source for three of the New Testament Gospels. Far as I'm concerned, the copyeditor did a crappy job. Now admittedly, it was a tough book, and s/he did a good job on the tough parts, but missed far more than per should have on the nontechnical sections. (For use of "per" as gender-neutral pronoun, see an earlier post to this blog.)

Some publishers require the proofreader to mark every change on the page proofs as either an EA (editorial alteration) or a PE (printer's error). The publisher generally must pay for EAs, depending on the agreement between the publisher and the typesetter/designer. Sometimes, the cost can be as much as a dollar an EA. This is done to discourage many changes at the page proof stage, which is a good idea. (Frankly, a dollar per EA is a ridiculously high charge in my opinion, but I guess it does the trick.)

So, let's say that in this 173-page book, there were 150 EAs -- that is, stuff that the copyeditor missed that I caught. That's $150 added to the cost of the typesetting bill. Perhaps the publisher builds in some EAs to their budget, I don't know.

What if the copyeditor wasn't paid until the proofing was done, and the cost of EAs was deducted from the copyeditor's fee?

This would no doubt cause a workers' revolt in the freelance copyediting industry. And it would hurt me too, because as a copyeditor, I'm sure I make my share of mistakes of omission and commission -- hopefully, though, not as many per page as this copyeditor did. Yet it would certainly improve the work of copyeditors across the board.

Part of what got me thinking about this was my resentment at having to clean up the lack of work that some of this manuscript reflected. As I've talked about before, I feel that I'm doing copyediting at (lower) proofreading rates.

Anyway, just a thought: holding people accountable for the quality of their work. I guess that a good publisher or managing editor lets copyeditors (or any freelancers) know when their work isn't up to snuff, and less repeat business is always an option. I've always said that, given a choice, I'd rather have quick payment and repeat business than my name listed in the acknowledgments.

PS: I worked on a book for a self-publishing author recently, and I just received a copy in the mail the other day. The copyright page reads: "Copyediting: Bob land, Land on Demand," with the first letter of my last name in lowercase. Gee, thanks a lot.

getting your ducats in a row

Something for everybody, I suppose. I read an AP article earlier today saying that even the Optimists' Club was having a hard time being optimistic on July 4, 2008. The idea of Happy Birthday, America! wasn't ringing real true with a lot of people. The article quoted a 16-year-old talking about the good old days. Wow.

So what comes across my desk? A book telling the very wealthy how they should be getting rid of their money charitably. I guess this is a good thing. There's some term out there I'm sure that comes close to "cognitive dissonance" that would explain how I sit here and process this stuff.

But it's a good balance, I suppose. So many of the books I read are really rather depressing -- the ones that deal with social justice work, which try to get folks off their duffs to do something about this world -- and here comes a book that takes a stab at telling the really rich to dispose of all their money before they die so it can do some damn good and not make spoiled brats out of their descendants. Yes, that's what the book said. More power to the author.

I get to read the book again as I need to index it as well, although (budding editorial freelancers, take note) when indexing I don't read every word of a book as I would for proofreading, where I read every single character on every page. Here's a hint for you indexing wannabes out there: if the sentence ends in a question mark, it's unlikely there's gonna be something indexable there. So you know I love paragraphs that are just strings of rhetorical questions.

Well, back to the first century AD. Gonna try to finish that off tonight.

Have there been a lot of fireworks around your houses, dear readers? All of the last three nights have sounded like July 4 in this neighborhood. When my son got back from walking the dogs, I told him it sounded like Afghanistan out there.

Thirty years ago, when I was 18 years old (oops, should I have said that?), I was working as a cabana boy at a beach club in NYC. Did you ever see Karate Kid? They filmed that at the club I worked at the fall after I worked there, and I guess Ralph Macchio sorta had the same job I did. I don't know, because I never saw the movie. You'd think I probably should. Come to think of it, I probably pulled some 14- and 16-hour days at that job too. Among the differences: it was the only time in my life I ever had a tan; I don't tan real well. I just sorta burn and it washes off in the shower. I was working six days a week instead of seven like now. I also had plenty of tax-free cash in my pocket from tips at the end of the week. And, oh yeah, I also didn't have a care in the freaking world -- well, except maybe for thinking that no female on this planet would ever want to say a word to me, or more precisely, that I would never develop the personality to ever even say "hello" to a girl. (Hell, this beats therapy.)

Now I've got an eighteen-year-old of my own. Where's he? Europe. Geez. Then again, he's pretty damn near fluent in French. (At eighteen I was pretty good at finding my way around the NYC subways and pawing through the great used bookstores that used to be in downtown Manhattan.) So I guess he sorta deserves it, even if it is his fifth or fourth time over there.

I know a guy whose mother, addressing the fact that her son was about to enter graduate school and was not yet working a regular gig, said, "When I was 17, I was working for a Jew in a gift shop."

Damn, how did I get here? Is anybody still reading this mess?

let's do the time warp again

I just finished indexing a 500-something-page book, the publisher, author, etc., of which are not important . . . or maybe they are but I'm showing a little discretion. While it's my intent to be honest here about what I do and the troubles I sometimes run into, it's not my desire to embarrass anyone or make any potential clients wary of using me. That's why I am no longer posting what I work on, in case anyone's noticed -- because I want to be able to talk about this work openly without giving the impression that I think some book or publisher or author is just circling the drain. And I don't want someone to do the detective work and say, "Oh, he's been reading X, and here it is two weeks later and he's bitching about X."

But, damn.

This book for which I completed the index is a business book that seems to have been written in the late '80s, maybe updated slightly in the '90s, and a few bones were thrown at it in the current millennium. And it's being put out for publication now.

Please remember, dear readers, that much of what I work on deals with events of about 2000 years ago. I'm presently (yes, I'm taking a break at one in the morning to post to the blog) proofreading a book about the presumed Q source for the NT Gospels, so we can say that the circumstances haven't changed much lately. While the intellectual climate of course has done its flips and flops and a few new discoveries have hit the bricks -- little wonders like the Dead Sea Scrolls -- well, we're basically dealing with a given set of events.

Business? You don't think there's a reason, especially these days, to put out an up-to-date book about certain aspects of business and the economy? (I'm being very careful not to mention the particular focus.) The book barely touches the Internet, doesn't discuss gas or energy at all, and states that the U.S. might run the occasional trade deficit, and what the effects of that are. Might? Hell, they were discussing the trade deficit when I was working at the Fed in the late '80s.

So, I'm not sure where this book is going. I daresay that 90 percent of its references are from the 1970s and 1980s. Maybe some things don't change, but a whole lot do. And in the present circumstances, where it seems that unless you got 9 figures in federal reserve notes stuck in your mattress you're living on one of the seven levels of hell, reading a business book that acts as if the last 20 years -- much last the last 20 weeks -- never happened is a shocker indeed.

computer troubles, other ughs

I am fortunate in that my ISP is up the street, and not in Bangalore, as I 've mentioned earlier, but today I spent too many damn hours trying to achieve a reasonable internet connection at the house. A 2 a.m. run to Swill-Mart for a new router, which I may not have needed, 7 calls to tech support in the last 24 hours, and it's still acting bad. They will have someone out here tomorrow, though, so that's OK. But it's still the kind of case where you talk to seven different people, all of whom have a different take . . . and half the time it's like going to the mechanic. The noise your car has been making for weeks goes away when you finally get it to the garage.

But still. We've had three or four computers fry in the last six months (if you have a computer that is more than three years old, do a backup now if you aren't already, because that seems to be the shelf life of a hard drive these days). The local tech geek has less personality than about anyone I've ever met who opens up a shop door every day; I had to drop $160 for a new old version of Word 2003 today. Sometimes, things ain't perfect in this universe. My clients seem to be going through a rash of new systems, new accounts payable people, jobs are dropping off my schedule, and I've actually turned a few down lately. I've been waiting 20 years for my life to settle down, and I've finally determined the exact date it's going to happen: whatever date it is that people are throwing dirt on top of the casket. If I'm lucky.

Hell, even my local mechanic, who is mainly responsible for keeping two of our cars running, got jacked out of his job lately. The garage owner couldn't afford him and the other mechanic any more, so he ditches the two of them (both intelligent, thoughtful guys) for lower-paid help. Now do you think service will improve? Will the garage owner realize that hiring people who will work for less will not necessarily in the long run cause repeat business? Who down there is ignant anyway?

As a friend says, I could go on.

english, sort of

I received today the following email:

Dear sir or madam,
We, is member of DragonFord Corp is a professional pharmaceutical, chemical, intermediate, raw material, veterinay,agrochem,ceramics foam filters,adhesive tape.
At a customer’s oriented, cooperative, positive and effective ways, we have enough confidence to cooperate with our partners in a pleasant way.
If you are interested in this, please contact us at any time. Let's have a good start.
Waiting for your comments, thanks a lot in advance!
Yours faithfully Mr. Bob

============

What I am interested in is making their English passable to the people with whom they are trying to correspond. I informed them that I accept PayPal.

discipline; getting the nomenclature right

To the extent that I have any discipline, it's deadline- and debt-driven. Without deadlines and debts, I'd be a goldbricker of the first order. But I'm going to try to devote 15 minutes a day to a post here, and 10 minutes getting my name out on blogs and sites elsewhere. Beats keeping up with news and gossip.

An ongoing problem in my little world is that prospective clients don't know the difference between proofreading and copyediting. And when they call me and sound like they know what they're talking about, it seems odd to step back and ask them if they know the difference between, say, an arm and a leg.

Copyediting is done at the manuscript stage, when changes are still cheap and easy. Proofreading is done after the book has been typeset. Changes are more troublesome because a book designer has already spent a good deal of time and effort in making lines look right, and to go in and make changes at that point ruins their work. With copyediting, you get some aspects of proofreading thrown in -- although not of the kind that address typography. And I am a hardass when it comes to typography, having grown up in the old school of proofreading and having been trained in the late-night hours by some damned good and self-demanding typographers. I've been crawled by some young typographers for asking me to make adjustments of 1/64th of an inch. I'm not sure my eyes can do that anymore. But also, when I'm proofreading, I might let things slide that I wouldn't as a copyeditor. A publisher I worked for recently gave me a hard time for correcting things at proofreading stage that I should have let pass (basic grammar errors). If they paid more than 50 percent of the going rate for copyeditors, maybe these errors wouldn't be appearing at the page proof stage, and thus in their books. Email me if you'd like to know which of America's largest publishers cares so little about quality in their books.

A few items in the last couple of days:

An author had asked me months ago to copyedit and index her work. The manuscript itself would be short (it's a travel guide; many pictures), but the book longer. I quoted the author based on a projected word count. Come to find out that she really wants me to proofread the final pages. It's a case where the proofreading is going to come out a good bit more expensively than the copyedit (reverse of the standard), because now rather than dealing with 35 pages of double-spaced copy in Word, I'm looking at 200-plus pages of exquisitely designed pages. More money for me (more time, too, which is at a premium these days), but I don't like giving an estimate and then having to change it. Feels like bait and switch, not my intent at all.

I've been dealing with bidding on a job for a professional services firm. They asked me if proofreading included checking for spelling errors. Once I stopped laughing (or crying or picking my jaw up off the floor), I forwarded this question to a bunch of folks in the business. The main response was to charge them extra for catching spelling errors. Moi, dear heart that she is, picked up the thread of earlier posts here and said we might as well all move to East India. Love that Moi.

What bothers me, too, which I may have addressed before, is when clients bypass the copyediting stage, and then ask for some extra clean-up at proofreading. Basically, this is a cost-saving measure for the publisher, but does nothing to increase goodwill. I've begun instituting a proof/edit charge that splits the difference between copyediting and proofing rates.

Oops, out of time. Discipline, discipline.

at it again

I've sent a few folks here recently, and it probably doesn't look good that the site's not been updated. So, I'm checking in.

To say that I've been too busy to post is not an exaggeration. I really have not had the time. Potential clients, take note: Don't use this admission as an indication I don't want to hear from you. I always want to develop new relationships, because the old ones can come and go. I came damn near to firing perhaps my best client today because I just can't continue to accept the invariably impossible jobs they routinely send me. Admittedly they don't put out many easy ones, but when I look at their catalog I think, Hell, they could have sent me that, for a change. I just finished indexing another book from them that was right over my head, and I'm embroiled now in reading a dictionary that's like the vegetables your parents gave you growing up -- the more you chewed, the bigger they grew in your mouth. It seems like the more I work on this book the more I have left to do on it. And it's not a particularly difficult one. Just . . . so . . . damn . . . long.

And I've had some contact lately with potential new clients for whom I'd like to make some room, and then there are those to whom I have emotional ties, and then there are actually some where I enjoy the reading. I shouldn't have reason to complain, as I'm busier than anyone has any right to be, but, well, I'd like to see my family once in a while. Both my boys are home, and I feel like an absentee father, while they're walking around on the floor above me. However, they are the occasional source of relatively inexpensive labor for tedious tasks. And they're not bad at it. I'm not trying to give them career advice at this point by any means. For all I care, they can become indie rock gods or CIA agents or both or neither. I did tell one of them the other day though, that if he remembers nothing else that I've told him over the last 18 years remember this: Don't ever get yourself into a position where working 24 hours a day is not enough. That's about where I am now.

But, hell, I'm not in a coal mine or being shot at. I did have a potential new client ask how I got to be doing what I'm doing, and I explained that it's this or working at the Amoco station down the street. I have no other marketable skills. Thankfully, I have a market. I know at least one designer who is out of work, and a good friend is hanging on by the skin of her teeth as a newspaper reporter. I've received 2 newspaper articles in the last 2 days about papers either getting rid of copyeditors or outsourcing the task to India. An author I know (the father of a friend of my son's) who writes law texbooks when he's not lawyering says that his company has recently begun outsourcing copyediting to India. When I asked him how it was going, he said that they queried or tried to change all the jokes or puns because they didn't understand them. He finally told them just to let it slide and to trust him. The readership will understand.

I could go on, but my 24 hours are slipping away. Thanks for reading.

RANT, not publishing related

A few days ago, some jagoff opened fire in a mall in Omaha. Killed eight people, then himself. Don't you wish these idiots would just reverse the order? Would save a lot of headache.

Anyway, the inevitable headline today is: Omaha Mall Reopens With Extra Security.

My favorite phrase of recent times is "Closing the barn door after the horse has gotten out."

Now extra security is needed? We're gonna have a rash of copycat psychokillers at that particular mall? Wasn't the time for extra security beforehand? And would it have helped? (No, no, undoubtedly, unlikely)

A few years ago, some dolt had some stuff in his shoes that could maybe have made a bomb, if he knew what he was doing. Now every traveler in America should wear bedroom slippers to the airport to make security go quicker. And someone had some bad liquids on a plane, so let's make it so you can only carry three ounces of something on a plane. (There's no doubt that even 3 ounces of the proper substance could create a whole lot of hell. I remember what a friend of mine said could be done with a small amount of magnesium.) A radio talk show host pointed out that you can file down a credit card edge to be as sharp as any box cutter. You going to ban credit cards in airports? Oh, hell no. Can't do that. Hmm. Wonder why.

"Reopens with extra security." Give me a break.

APA-style author indexes: The forecast calls for pain

New task, bad move.

I’ve spent much of the last few days battling an APA-style author index. Allow me to explain.

I’ve referred elsewhere to the Chicago Manual of Style, one of the style books that guides what people like me do for a living. It’s designed generally for people working in the humanities. Other style manuals, all of which I’ve used, are from the Associated Press (the formerly called AP Style Book and Libel Manual [I love that title]), the Society of Biblical Literature (great for classical works, not just scripture), the MLA (mostly for literary criticism), and the American Psychological Association (mostly for social sciences). Individual publishers also have their own style manuals. I have one for the Chicken Soup for the Soul series which looks just like a Chicken Soup book. Shows what you can do when you have the printing press in your basement, as this particular publisher does.

This wonderful new client of mine, who essentially created the paradigm under which I now work (see earlier post), wants me to do an author index for a APA-styled book. OK, no biggie. I’ve done indexes for books that seemed to be in foreign languages (see earlier posts), I’ve done extensive scriptural and classical work indexes (pains in the butt on a major scale), I’ve done proper name indexes. What’s the problem?

The problems (note the plural) are that you’re not just identifying individual authors, but you also have to identify them by their initials. So, you might have 10 different Smiths. You might only have one McKinney, for example, but because of the individual chapter authors’ styles, he might be X. McKinney in one place and X. S. McKinney somewhere else, and those have to be kept different, because X. and X. S. might not actually be the same person (could be father and son, for example), so being precise is important.

Which brings up another problem. What if the only thing different is the authors’ styles from one chapter to the next in a multiauthor book? What if one only cited one initial, and the other cited two? Do you merge the listings? And if you do, at what point do you stop second-guessing the author and copyeditor? Best answer is, you don't second-guess them at all.

Problem 3: et freaking al. OK, so you have a listing of Smith et al. in the text. All the names aren’t listed, so you have to go to the list of references at end of chapter or book, which means twice the work. This book includes some listings in the references that read Smith, Jones, Brown, Black, Johnson, Grillo, McCarthy, Weinstein, Lee, Li, Garrity et al. That’s not an indexing problem, as much as a commonsense issue. If you’ve listed 11 names before the et al, you gotta wonder: how many people are needed to screw in a lightbulb?

The only other client that follows APA for whom I’ve done indexes had an interesting approach: only cite them in the index if their full name was mentioned in the chapter, which happens rarely in most APA books, because they use an author-date citation style (Land, 2007). So there are not many opportunities to use a full name, unless it’s, I guess, the author’s friend.

Already I’ve gone through three possibilities of how to build this author index, which have involved PDF searches building from the references list, keying in the names of the researchers as I’m going along, having my wife read the names to me . . . . 40-something hours later I am left with an 18-page, 10-point, two-column list that seemingly has more questions than answers, mostly revolving around initials. I’ve probably got about 6 hours of dicking around with that document until I get it right. Oh, and now I'm writing the subject index, too.

Then, at about 5 this morning, the solution hits me for the authors. Key in the references exactly as they appear in the chapters: name, year, everything. Alphabetize/sort at end of each chapter. Compare this list with the end-of-chapter references, adding initials and deleting years. Then also, the et als will be right where I need them. Then re-sort. I did this for about five pages of a chapter just as a test. Works beautifully. Looks wonderful. I am considering going back and scrapping the previous three days of work and rebuilding the index this way. I might not tell my wife, though, as I don’t want her thinking her efforts were wasted. But I guess in the long run they weren’t, as it took a bit of trial and error to get to the proper solution. And I need to remember that that’s the way it was when I started indexing about 10 years ago. I didn’t have all the tricks I do now, so there was a learning curve.

Irony: The book on which all this is happening deals with growth following trauma. Life imitates art.

Back to work.

India: the rant rising

Around our house, we have a name for customer service people from India who we end up talking with on the phone: Priscilla. If I tell my wife or sons that I had a long talk with Priscilla today, they know exactly who I'm referring to. In the past it's usually been representatives of CompuServe or Delta Air Lines. And it's always frustrating.

These people are taught how to interact with Americans . . . sort of. They are fed some warm and fuzzy catchphrases that if you're lucky will jibe with the time of the day you have called them. They are coached in losing their delightful accents, and sorry to say, they probably have to stuff a good bit of their IQs to deal with the folks who call. But some things still just don't get across.

Mostly with me it deals with my name: Bob. Not a hard one. Pronounced almost universally through the contiguous United States as "Bahb." When I’m speaking to Priscilla or her boyfriend, usually it comes back to me as “Bawp.” Kind of like the Ramones when they’re singing “Blitzkreig Bop.”

OK? So why "Priscilla"? Because invariably these obvious South Asians do not have names that go with their country like Aruna or Swaminandahili or well, anything else that’s fourteen syllables long with a vowel for every second consonant. After their scripted spiel, it’s always, “This is Priscilla” or “My name is Oliver Wendell Douglas” or “Hi, I’m Joseph.” And they will meet every one of my requests perfectly and I will leave the phone happy. I was actually told exactly those words one day. I hope they have since discarded that script.

So, I’m on the phone with Joseph one day, and he has my account information in front of him as I’m reciting my name, rank, and serial number. Over the thousands of miles and dozen time zones, I can tell that Joseph is having trouble processing the information. He stops me and says, “You say you’re name is Bawp. So who is Rawbert?”

Quickwitted as I was that day, I put on the friendly downhome American voice and say, “C’mon, Joseph. All your friends call you Joe, don’t they? It's the same thing."

Silence.

I really like my current Internet provider because they are 24/7, and they are almost literally right up the street here in Bristol. The best time to call them is about 4 in the morning. You have their undivided attention, they always know the answers, they don't give me any guff for being an idiot (because you're always an idiot when you're calling), and not a freaking one of them is named Priscilla.

India

Libera nos, domine.

I think I've got my Latin right there. What I'm trying to say is "good lord, deliver us."

Most of the last five days were spent proofreading a 920-page psychiatry manual. Not only was it 920 pages, but it was also in 9/11 type. For you nonproduction folks, that's got nothing to do with terrorist attacks, but means 9 point type on 11 point leading. And on a 7x10 page, and did I mention 920 pages of it? Well, folks, that's a lot of damn reading. If I had to guess, it'd probably be in the 300- to 400,000 word range. And 9/11 type is, well, small for the task.

I'd have been bitching a whole lot more, except for the roughly 60 percent markup for rush charges.

This job comes to me courtesy of a company that lays claim to being the first in the US (about 40 years ago) to deliver outsourcing services for publishing company production. That is, proofreading, copyediting, typesetting is not done by the publisher, but by an outside firm. This is common practice today, and that 40-year-old innovation allows me now to do what I do in the friendly confines of my own basement.

Problem: the company I'm working for did not handle the typesetting. That particular task was parceled off to India.

Good god.

I had heard some months ago that work done in India comes back sloppy, and that's what happened here. They do exactly what they are told to do and not a centimeter more. No extra thought goes into the process. The queries come back in some form of pidgin English. The tabular material looks like hell.

I have no doubt it's cheaper to do business there. Will it in the long run remain that way? What about the charges for printers' errors? Directions lost in translation? Frustration trying to interpret queries?

I'm too tired to work up much of a rant on this topic. I've got three indexes to get done by next Wednesday, on (1) Catholic Social Justice, (2) the psychological effects of terror and trauma, and (3) the history of Christianity in Micronesia and Melanesia in the late 19th century. Who says this stuff isn't exciting?

----

Side note, speaking of excitement: one of our neighbors was arrested Thanksgiving morning for attempted murder. There's much more to the story so it's not as lurid as it seems. Frankly I'm happy to have him close by.

stumped

First, dear reader(s), my apologies. It's been three weeks since my last post. Some of that time was spent out of town; most of that time has been spent working or avoiding it. With any luck, the lottery tickets I bought today will make the avoiding work time more profitable. By the way, I disagree with the wags who says that the lottery is for idiots. I'd rather spend a dollar and fantasize for three days about what good uses I'd have for multiple millions of dollars than spend 8 bucks on a two-hour movie and come out disappointed. Maybe that's apples and oranges, but I think I get a good return on my entertainment/fantasy dollar when I buy a lotto ticket. So be it.

Anyway, why am I stumped? Two items this week.

First is a publisher I have done some work with, and I use the term "publisher" loosely because this individual is really more of a marketing and PR person who has helped authors with books. However, from past projects, I know also that this person works with Quark (the page layout program of choice for many graphic designers) so is at least somewhat familiar with print production.

This person sent me two pages in advance of a book that I was to be receiving later this month. When I returned the first page marked up for corrections and changes, this person was totally baffled by the proofreading marks. Never had worked with them before and couldn't decipher what they meant, even after I sent along a PDF of the standard marks that can be found in any good dictionary (see page 995 of Merriam Webster's 11th).

I was stunned. We went over the changes on the phone, and I could tell that this person seemed no more enlightened about the whole process at the end of the conversation than at the beginning. I felt like I was giving a how-to-do-brain-surgery symposium over the phone with someone who'd never held a scalpel.

The second page arrived a few days later, which I again marked up, but now this person had the guide to go by. The second conversation was no better than the first. I grew increasingly frustrated and was about three decibels away from shouting into the phone. Remember, now, that this is a conversation with a client. The concept of the customer is always right did not apply to a situation like this.

I have lived with proofreading marks since I was 14 years old, training to be on the high school newspaper two and three years hence. To use the vernacular, I know them as well as I know my own . . . uh . . . well, figure it out. That someone who knows Quark, who has been in publishing for years, who has written books and published books for others was totally unfamiliar with proofreading marks -- to quote one of Meg Ryan's characters in Joe versus the Volcano, "I have no response to that."

Which brings me to stumped number 2. I am proofreading a handbook of social work. Many pages of small print, and thankfully all but one chapter is well written. I am paging through the front matter -- the usual: copyright page, acknowledgments, contents . . . I see the running head: Prolusion. WHAT? What the hell is "prolusion"? I go to my trusty Merriam Websters 11th, ironically on the page facing the page with the aforementioned proofreading marks, and I read, "prolusion: 1. a preliminary trial or exercise: PRELUDE. 2. an introduction and often tentative discourse."

I'm sorry. In the course of my freelancing in the book publishing industry, it's not an exaggeration to say that I've probably had a hand in over 1,000 books and publications. I actually even read a few books before that, before I was paid to do so. I have never come across the word "prolusion," and to see it where I might otherwise see the word "preface" or "introduction" seems just like a heavyhanded attempt at showing off.

Then again, maybe when I read this book section tomorrow, I'll throw up my hands and say, "Well, damn, that's a mighty fine prolusion. And I can't see calling it anything except a prolusion. It's probably the best freaking prolusion I'll read in this or any lifetime."

Somehow, though, I don't think it's my hands I'll be throwing up.

characters

Characters was the name of a typesetting and design shop I once worked for in Atlanta. I will always remember them fondly because it was the second night I was working there when I said I couldn't report to work for about a week because I had a gig selling souvenirs at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium during the World Series. They didn't mind. That was in the early 1990s, when the idea of a Braves team in the World Series made everyone happy. Worst-to-first, and all that. Times change. And I made far better money screaming, "Programs, get yer programs here," than I would have made telling some careless typesetter that their text alignment was off by 1/64 of an inch.

Characters also refers the types of people I ran into in proofrooms around Atlanta during the course of about 16 years plying my trade in various full-time and part-time gigs in that city. I worked every possible shift in just about every possible venue and for every type of client -- from high-rise downtown office buildings on the graveyard shift reading SEC filings (a dying art form) to laboring eight hours a day in a cramped little room next to the furnace in a converted house on Clairmont Road. Both businesses are long gone; the house itself on Clairmont, right across from Century Center, is also long gone. Some places I'd go to for a couple of hours, never to darken their doors again, and other places I haunted for a decade and more.

Memories:

Being run out of the high-rise after about 6 weeks for being too good, or so I was told by one of the typesetters. The second-shift proofreader was having an affair with the night manager, and she did not appreciate my productivity nor my ability, and conspired to have me not called in anymore. This turn of events was rather unfortunate, as I was 22 years old and making about $20 an hour in 1982.

Working at a type/design firm off and on for 11 years, full-time second shift, part-time, on-call, whatever. I had more tenure there than most of the employees and managers. The proprietor thought that anyone could be a proofreader, so he would bring in a series of untrained and inexperienced people off the streets to do the job. He'd bring me in for a few weeks to train them (as best as I could), then three months later bring me in to read behind them so he could build a file to fire them. The first time or two, I felt bad. Then I got used to it.

While at this firm, one of the jokers he brought in informed me one night that he had gone through aversion therapy (think Clockwork Orange) for sharp objects after serving in Vietnam, that he'd been a heroin addict, etc. I am sitting in a room with him looking at Exacto knives as he's telling me this.

My first job out of college was at a commercial printing plant that employed 11 or 12 full-time proofreaders to be there 24/7/365, three or four at a time. Friday would come, and they'd say, "You're working this weekend, 12-hour shifts." Or you'd be there during the day and they'd say, "Three hours overtime today." At one point I worked 42 days in a row, often with 11- and 12-hour days. I never had more spending money in my life, and I was making about $5.75 an hour. Then again, rent was $150, and my biggest expense otherwise was, well, never mind. My record there was the day after Atlanta's big 1982 ice storm. I made it into work the following day, other people were calling in and saying they couldn't make it, and I said, "That's fine." So I covered a 16-hour shift by myself. It was actually kind of fun.

In those kinds of situations (well, not when you're doing it solo)--where it's high stress and long hours and of course crappy work (reading airline timetables and scratch-off lottery tickets)--you get to know people rather well. One of my dearest and longest-term friends dates from that time. I developed at least one serious infatuation (unrequited, of course), and learned a lot about and from an interesting variety of people.

This was the early 1980s, when the AIDS crisis didn't even yet have a name (then it was Gay Men's Cancer), and there were two openly gay men in the proofroom. One was a party boy, and I have little doubt he probably didn't last the decade. The other was a brilliant individual, a translator with a working knowledge of seven languages (from Polish to Spanish), the seventh son of a seventh son. He used to tell me he was born with three strikes against him: he was a gay Jew from Mississippi. I used to give him a ride home after third shift (he didn't drive). One morning I went into his apartment to have a cup of coffee, and the first piece of artwork a visitor's eye would fall on was a very close-up shot of a penis and the accompanying testicles -- probably about an 11x16-inch photograph. I don't think they were his or his lover's, but I'm not sure. He's still in Atlanta somewhere, and I've got a book of his that one day I will manage to return to him, if I can track him down. Somehow, I think he'll remember me, and he'll appreciate getting the book back.

As I mentioned, it was 1981-82 when I was at this plant, before the days when MLK Day was an official national holiday. We were in Georgia, though, so there was more notice of his birthday as a statewide memorial day . . . in certain quarters, anyway. It was either 1981 or 1982 when it came up to a vote in the plant, which was mostly populated by redneck union guys, whether to recognize as a plant holiday King's birthday or Confederate Memorial Day. Thus it was, dear readers, that I received a day off from the proofroom to honor the Confederate war dead. As the grandson of Eastern European immigrants who didn't make it to this country until the 1890s and 1910s, I certainly appreciated the thoughtfulness of my brothers down on the pressroom floor.

One of the all-time proofreading characters, although I've never worked directly with him, and we've only collaborated on a single book of fewer than 100 words, happens to be my brother, whose memoirs/remembrances he claims he is compiling into a volume entitled The History of Proofreading, Volume 1 (alternate titles: The Days of the Green Impala and Cousin Lazar's Overcoat). My brother remains one of my heroes for many reasons, none of which might make any sense. He was a proofreader in the World Trade Center when it was first attacked in 1993, and thankfully he took a sabbatical from the emerging family business of editorial services to work at the old family business, HL Motors, in its final years, or I might have been writing a memorial here rather than an anecdote. Big Brother is still plying the aforementioned art of financial proofreading, while also laboring in other fashions for midtown NYC law firms. Perhaps I should open up this blog to his authorial talents as well, as he can give an entirely different perspective on this way we have of making it in this world . . . and he's incidentally a far better writer than I am. And unlike me, he'll read a book without being paid to do so.

Parting shot: Jesse Helms was a proofreader. I seem to remember that David Berkowitz was also.

Vermont: A Quick Note

Tere (my wife) and I spent most of the last week traveling.

Observations: New England is different from the South. Vermont is different from the world.

We spent a little time in a few different little cities: Brattleboro (home of recent antinudity laws, because too many young [and presumably healthy] folks were taking to strolling downtown naked; also home to a formerly underground FM radio station partially manned by a childhood buddy of mine), Montpelier (nation's smallest state capital), Waterbury (neat tea company), Burlington (state university main campus). While one of the nationwide book chains was in Burlington, each of the other towns (and Burlington itself) had what appeared to be no fewer than three independent booksellers. And these were in small, condensed downtowns.

You can draw your own conclusions, but one of mine is that if literacy is important to you, Vermont would be hard to beat. (For that matter, Cuba is high on the literacy scale too, and I heard some good things about Zimbabwe last night. But last I checked, Vermont was not under the thumb of a dictator. And I daresay the breadth of opinions available in your local Havana or Harare book merchant might be somewhat limited.)

On the other hand, if you needed gas on a Saturday night to get from one Vermont town to another, you might be SOL.

eyes have it; festival; variety

I might have mentioned some time back that I was preparing materials (new business cards, marketing piece, photos, etc.) for a women's expo that was being held in mid-October in a neighboring town. Of course, after securing the photo and writing the blurb about what I do, those materials were promptly lost by the convention planners, so I inadvertently spent two hours sitting behind a desk fronted by a poster advertising some woman and her book . . . which I did not know until her husband came and took the poster away. Because I approached my perch from the back, I did not know this poster was on the front. I told the guy that if I had known it was there, I would have taken it off myself -- not that it really mattered, but he seemed to take offense, as if it disturbed me that her particular photo and advertisement were there. Not really, but he wasn't the only person who I apparently ticked off that day.

The one who got me going was a barker (in terms of a carnival barker) who was the marketing rep for a Lasik surgery center. I might as well tell the whole story, because failing eyesight is an occupational hazard here.

I'm walking around the expo, which is basically a mall transported to a convention center. Stores, kiosks, services (home- and health-based), home businesses, gift vendors, etc. All those items that in the eyes of the convention organizers would appeal to a cross-section of the Tri-Cities TN/VA female populace.

I'm strolling past a Lasik surgery desk, and I see a sign saying, "Drop your name here for a chance at free Lasik surgery." Now, if you know me, you'll know that Coke-bottle glasses is an apt description. If these numbers mean anything to you, my eyesight is -10.75 in one eye, and -12.25 in the other. Without vision correction, everything is one big blur. Lasik to me was never a consideration because of (a) the cost and (b) the small risk that everything doesn't go perfectly. Doing what I do, my eyes are rather important. I got contacts last year but never wear them because I can't see 8- to 10-point type (forget 6-point type) without reading glasses on top of them, and even then it's not so reliable.

But FREE gets my attention. I stop to fill out the form, and Lasik Lady begins her spiel. I'll give the conversation more or less as it took place, without interrupting for all the stuff going through my mind:

She: I can change your life!!
Me: Really.
She: Look at those glasses! What if someone breaks into your house in the middle of the night? You wouldn't be able to identify them. Don't you want to be able to see as soon as you wake up?
Me: My glasses are right at my bedside. It's usually not a problem.
She: But to open your eyes and have complete vision! And without glasses!
Me: I've been wearing glasses for 42 years. They are totally reliable and I have no vanity issues about them. I finally got contacts last year and can't wear them because I can't work with them. Will Lasik be able to correct me totally? To where I won't need readers?
She: What do you mean?

(At this point we are drawing a crowd, and the marketing of her product begins going straight to hell.)

Me: Well, I need to be able to read type this small (showing her some printed material) reliably, like where I can tell a period from a comma every time.
She: But if someone breaks into your house in the middle of the night . . .
Me: I don't live my life falling asleep every night wondering if I can identify someone in a lineup the next morning. I'm more concerned about being able to do my job.
She: What do you do?
Me: I'm an editor and proofreader. I need to be able to read.
She: Well, for that kind of work, you'll probably need to get glasses after the Lasik, but you'll just need them while you're reading.
Me: OK. For $3500, you're telling me that I'll still be wearing glasses 14 hours a day. I'm wearing them now. I replace my glasses about every three years, and insurance covers a lot of that. I'm not going to spend $3500 during the rest of my life buying new glasses, which correct my vision entirely, but you're telling me it'll change my life to spend that money with you and not be guaranteed a satisfactory result.
She: (Very huffily) Well, Lasik is for people who want to see, not for people who want to read!
Me: (Leaving) Well, if reading is the way you put food on the table, you might have a different outlook.

Her last comment also speaks to a general approach to literacy that I won't go into here.

It's about 15 minutes until I have to be personable for a few hours, so I go somewhere to settle down.

Calmer, I find where I'm supposed to be set up, and realize that I am next to a Fabio lookalike who is signing calendars for a romance publishing group. After getting a calendar signed for my wife (it's a joke; her reading tastes do not include romance, pulp or the e-version), I strike up a conversation with one of their authors. She finds out what I do and says that she needs a new editor/proofreader because she's fired her last four -- three for lack of consistent good work, the fourth for plagiarizing her work. I assure her that the latter would not be an issue, and that I've got good experience and references on the former. She says that she writes erotica, and would that be a problem?

I'm thinking of what I spend most of my days reading, and how nice it would be to take a break. Can I work for denominational presses some days and read erotic romance novels the next? Last I checked, they would all pay me in the same currency . . . and while I've not mentioned it yet in this blog, my corporate credo has always been, "I will work for anyone who does not advocate violence against me or my family directly."

I'm waiting to hear from the author. She was actually rather fascinating with a very interesting ancestral history that would make for good reading, although perhaps not as lucrative. I'm also waiting to hear from the publisher, which is making the move into nonfiction as well.

For the second hour, a new author is squeezed in between me and the romance folks. She is a university professor who is self-publishing a book on living with and surviving cancer. She has a copy of the bound galleys, a review copy, as it's being sent out for blurbs and reviews to print on the cover. I mention that the book would really benefit from an index. (Damn, I'm smooth. Where was this talent when I was 19 years old?) She asks why; I tell her; she hands me the bound galleys and says, "Here. Would you index it?"

Of course.

So, three hours well spent. I leave with a job, two prospects, a signed calendar, and a public denunciation of Lasik surgery. When I was speaking to the romance author, I told her about my dust-up with the Lasik Lady. The author said, "And with your vision, you'd probably end up with halos." Great. If you ever meet me, you'll know me by the Coke bottles perched on my nose.