wordbit » editing http://wordbit.freehostia.com Antoine Giraud Thu, 15 Jan 2015 00:44:19 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=3.8.41 Editors, check your bullet lists http://wordbit.freehostia.com/editors-check-your-bullet-lists/ http://wordbit.freehostia.com/editors-check-your-bullet-lists/#comments Thu, 25 Sep 2008 05:21:31 +0000 http://wordbit.freehostia.com/editors-check-your-bullet-lists/ Nothing like a slip-up in bullet list formatting to completely change meaning. Check out this hilarious example from failblog.org:

fail-owned-responsibility-list-fail

Now that’s a major copy-editing FAIL.

]]> http://wordbit.freehostia.com/editors-check-your-bullet-lists/feed/ 0 My big audience http://wordbit.freehostia.com/my-big-audience/ http://wordbit.freehostia.com/my-big-audience/#comments Wed, 28 Nov 2007 08:27:42 +0000 http://wordbit.freehostia.com/my-big-audience/ 853246_27495155 I was trying to figure out how many people are reading my writing/editing and the numbers are pretty huge. First of all, I’ve been writing for the print edition of alive at a readership of about 500,000. Then every Tuesday articles I’ve edited for Metro Canada comes out countrywide at a readership of 700,000. And the tips of the day I write for Living Naturally are published on at least 7000 websites in the US and Canada, according to this Google search. Of course my name is only attached to the stuff I write in the magazine, but still, that’s a large audience to consider.

Sometimes I’m having an off day and rush through an article that 700,000 people are going to read. Then, when it comes out, I look at it and think “I can’t believe this drivel got published. I really should have spent more time on this…” Or “Ultimate Frisbee in December? What the heck was I thinking?”  It’s a humbling experience.      

]]> http://wordbit.freehostia.com/my-big-audience/feed/ 0 Cultural sensitivity in user documentation http://wordbit.freehostia.com/cultural-sensitivity-in-user-documentation/ http://wordbit.freehostia.com/cultural-sensitivity-in-user-documentation/#comments Wed, 28 Feb 2007 09:24:51 +0000 http://wordbit.freehostia.com/cultural-sensitivity-in-user-documentation/ When editing technical documents, how aware should you be of regional differences in pronunciation? Here is an interesting article on the subject by Brian Forte. Forte raises the following issue regarding the usage of an indefinite article with initialisms:

How do you pronounce an initialism like HTML?

I was taught English in public Australian schools of the 1970s. So I was taught aitch rather than haitch. Which means I pronounce ‘HTML’ with an initial vowel sound and I write ‘an HTML page.’

If I’d gone to a private Irish Catholic school, however, I would have been taught haitch and would, naturally enough, think ‘a HTML page’ is correct.

More generally, haitch is standard in Hiberno-English and is a way for disputing Protestant and Catholic Northern Irelanders to distinguish themselves from each other.

So, if I insist on ‘an HTML page’ I’m telling 4.5 million English speakers their way of writing and speaking is wrong, or non-standard at the very least. And I can’t reveal accent by writing ‘an ’TML page’ because it’s a technical document, not a novel.

Seriously though, how many Irish Catholics are going to tear up their Linux manuals in disgust after discovering a pernicious “an” embedded in the text? It’s nothing personal. Technical writers are just following a style guide. Some tech writers will go with “a html” because they look at the expanded form of the initialism. So “a Hypertext Markup Language Page” would be written as “a html”. Does that mean everybody who pronounces “h” as “‘aitch” (which is the majority of the English-speaking world) should label these writers as hate-mongering, prejudiced Irish Catholics?

It all comes down to schisms in pronunciation. Yet, in today’s globalized world, there isn’t much room to argue with the majority.

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