Podcasts about chicago manual

This week, the fourth in several scribblings about my research: borrowing from Oscar Wilde, the importance of being earnest with one's sources.---Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane---Sources:Ologies Podcast: https://www.alieward.com/ologies"Metropolis," Wednesday Blog 3.20: https://wednesdayblog.org/2023/01/11/metropolis/.Marie V. Alessandro, "The Workers of Metropolis" in Cinema at UMass Boston, (6 November 2020), https://blogs.umb.edu/cinemastudies/2020/11/06/workers-of-metropolis/Surekha Davies, “Here be black holes: Like sea monsters on premodern maps, deep-space images are science's fanciful means to chart the edges of the known world,” Aeon (13 July 2020), https://aeon.co/essays/how-black-holes-are-like-sea-monsters-at-the-edge-of-our-vision.Chicago Manual of Style, 18th Ed., Notes-Bibliography System Quick Guide, https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide/citation-guide-1.html.Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, trans. S.G.C. Middlemore, (London, 1878): https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2074.

Hi #AmWriting listeners, Jennie here! Today, I'm talking to Jane Friedman, who is one of the most trusted voices in the world of publishing.She has advised and served organizations such as Writers Digest, The Chicago Manual of Style, The Editorial Freelancers Association, the Alliance of Independent Authors, and the National Endowment for the Arts, among others. She writes two must-read newsletters for industry professionals. One is her personal newsletter, and the other is The Bottom Line (previously called The Hot Sheet), where she provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals. The reason I wanted to speak with Jane on the podcast today is that she has just released an updated version of her book, The Business of Being a Writer, which digs into the nuts and bolts of the writing life, including the work of getting published and choosing how to do that, and the work of making money. It is one of those must-read books for writers who are serious about making a mark.Jane offers so much information, some tough love, and also a reason for hope, and I'm so excited I'm talking to Jane about her own writing process, and her advice for writers.Links from the PodJane's Trademark situation via Writer's DigestJane's The Bottom Line Newsletter The Author's Guild (for AI info)Simon Willison's Things We Learned About LLMs in 2024 (via Substack)Make Art Make Money, Elizabeth Hyde StevensHow to Reform Capitalism, Alain de BottonThe Gift, Lewis Hyde Dana GioiaAlan Watt's Out of Your MindFind Jane via her website: www.janefriendman.com, or on Instagram at @janefriedman This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

听众朋友早上好，今天是 1 月 28 日又一个星期二，甲辰年除夕。欢迎收听全球字体新闻联播。 本期节目，我们将回顾近期值得关注的出版物、字体设计作品及线下活动。希望《字谈字畅》在新年中能继续陪伴每一位听众。 参考链接 蒙纳字库年度访谈《设计师和品牌人的 2024， 有哪些独特洞察？》 高冈昌生（著），刘庆（译），陈嵘（监修）．《西文排版：排版的基础和规范》．北京：中信出版社，2016 年 高岡昌生，高岡重蔵．〔増補改訂版〕 欧文組版: タイポグラフィの基礎とマナー．烏有書林，2019 年 纽约 TDC 第 45 期年鉴 The World’s Best Typography (45th edition) 现在可以预购 《芝加哥风格指南》（The Chicago Manual of Style）第 18 版已发布 The University of Chicago Press Editorial Staff. The Chicago Manual of Style (18th edition). University of Chicago Press, 2024 Guggenheim Sans，古根海姆基金会出品的开源字体家族，由 Pentagram 联合设计 字谈字畅 155：没有 face 的 interface 字体 Typotheque 为大巴黎快线（Grand Paris Express）设计了新字体 GT Pantheon，Grilli Type 设计出品的衬线字体家族 It's Nice That 报道了三个来自孟买的印度街头字体项目 崔耀翰（音译，최요한）摄影集《欢迎光临：韩国的多语言景观》（어서 오십시오: 한국의 다국어 경관） 去年 12 月，三言在上海线下举办了 Sign Painting 工作坊，由 Peter (Letterboy) 主持 Safari 18.2 开始支持行内（字间）注音符号的排版；Safari Technology Preview 210 开始支持中西文自动间距 东京 TDC 2025 评奖结果公布 舟连假名（Shuren Kana），舟山贵士设计、开发的连绵日文假名字体，获东京 TDC 2025 字体设计奖 No Parking，Henrik Kubel 设计，A2-TYPE 出品，获东京 TDC 2025「TDC」奖 Nithya Ranjana，开源兰札文字体家族，Tathagata Biswas、Noopur Datye、Ananda K. Maharjan 设计出品，获东京 TDC 2025 提名 Arsen 字体家族，Typofonderie 设计出品，获东京 TDC 2025 提名 书籍设计展《书艺问道：书籍设计师吕敬人的轨迹》，将于 2025 年 2 月 12 日至 3 月 27 日在日本东京 ggg 美术馆举办 方正字库 2025 字体趋势报告 主播 Eric：字体排印研究者，译者，The Type 执行编辑 蒸鱼：设计师，The Type 编辑 欢迎与我们交流或反馈，来信请致 podcast@thetype.com​。如果你喜爱本期节目，也欢迎用支付宝向我们捐赠：hello@thetype.com​。

What are your writing goals for 2025? Here are mine. *** Join Better Writers - https://fabiocerpelloni.com/private/ *** I mentioned... - MasterClass - https://www.masterclass.com/ - The Chicago Manual of Style - Interview with Seth Godin - Seth Godin on Reinventing Education  - Interview with Matthew Dicks -  Matthew Dicks on Writing, Creativity,...   - Interview with Derek Sivers - Succinct, Punchy, Useful WRITING: wit...  

1038. Chicago Manual of Style editors Mary Laur and Russell Harper dish on the changes they wanted in CMOS that didn't make it in, why the stylebook is bright yellow, and how a printing problem during the pandemic led to some rare editions of the manual. Plus, Mary shares her book recommendations just in time for holiday book buying.Original full interview: https://grammar-girl.simplecast.com/episodes/chicago-18

Russell Harper of The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) talks about the changes to the 18th edition.Listen to find out more aboutThe international appeal of CMOSBalancing editorial logic and real-world usageRevision decision-making processReversing stylistic decisions in CMOSCapitalization of identity markers and CMOSSinglular 'they' and CMOSFiction and creative genres in CMOS guidanceCitations and CMOSKeeping up to date with changes in the publishing worldSign up for alerts about our publicationsWant to hone your editorial business skills? Our actionable guides and workbooks will help you plan and implement a programme for business growth and development. Sign up for alerts and we'll let you know when our publications are live and how to order: https://view.flodesk.com/pages/646bf79c644615ff2d1ada1aSupport The Editing PodcastTip your hosts: Support Louise and Denise with a one-off tip of your choosing.theeditingpodcast.captivate.fm/supportJoin our Patreon community: Our patrons benefit from access to PDF transcripts for episodes featuring just Louise and Denise, and for some of our guest episodes. patreon.com/editingpodcastDenise and LouiseDenise Cowle: denisecowleeditorial.comLouise Harnby: harnby.co/fiction-editingMusic credit'Vivacity' by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://filmmusic.io/song/4593-vivacityLicence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

This hour, a look at words and usage and grammar and language and all that fun stuff. Have you noticed how we Americans have become “so bloody keen on Britishisms?” Ben Yagoda joins us to talk about his new book, Gobsmacked! The British Invasion of American English. Plus, there's been an update to The Chicago Manual of Style, its first in seven years. We take a look at the CMOS, in particular, and bang on (there it is again!) about dreaded style guides, in general. GUESTS: Scott Huler: The author of seven non-fiction books; his most recent is A Delicious Country: Rediscovering the Carolinas along the Route of John Lawson's 1700 Expedition Ben Yagoda: The author, coauthor, or editor of 14 books and the host of the podcast The Lives They're Living Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode, Jodi talks about the inevitability of errors in published books, discussing why even meticulously edited and proofread books are not immune to typos and mistakes, and highlighting a 95% “acceptable” error rate in the publishing industry. The episode explains the roles of human and AI editors, the importance of multiple editing passes, and the potential pitfalls that sometimes come during the self-publishing process. Jodi emphasizes the significance of building time for self-editing and revisions into the production schedule and offers insights on different editorial styles and their impact on the final book. Time Stamps: 00:00 Rushed drafts contain more errors, require revisions. 04:42 Join "Ready Set Write" challenge to improve productivity. 10:07 Book creation is difficult; join my mentorship program. Keywords: book publishing, entrepreneurs, book writing, traditional publishing, self-publishing, hybrid publishing, typo, copy editing, proofreading, human error, editing process, manuscript, editing test, production schedule, self-editing, revision, Microsoft Word, Google Docs, track changes, suggested edits, typesetter, Amazon, IngramSpark, Lulu, unrealistic schedule, style guides, Chicago Manual of Style, AP style, grammar mechanics, casual language, clarity of message, book team Resources Mentioned: Write Publish Market episode 156: http://www.jodibrandoneditorial.com/write-publish-market-podcast/156 Ready Set Write Challenge: www.jodibrandoneditorial.com/readysetwrite LINK TO FULL EPISODE (RAW) TRANSCRIPT: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Zy4fZYPC5CedUXcBdPm01eWZWoN5vXK9ZStS3w2CPSM/edit?usp=sharing  

Guest Chris Grall, author of TRIGGER GUARD: A WRITER'S GUIDE TO FIREARMS, discusses how to use guns properly in fiction. How much do you need to know about guns to get them right in your stories? Is there a reference book that explains it all? Because the Chicago Manual of Style and AP Guide do not provide consistent guidelines. What you've learned about guns from movies and TV is often flat-out wrong. Grall gives you the goods. Created by Scott Sigler and A B Kovacs Production Assistance by Allie Press Copyright 2024 by Empty Set Entertainment  TRIGGER GUARD cover artist Ravi Zupa Want a silver bullet for setting up a new website? The GoDaddy Promo Code CJCFOSSIG blasts 99% off the cost of a new domain (first year only). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

1015. The Chicago Manual of Style is updated every seven years, and this year's update is a big one! I talked with two of the editors — Russell Harper and Mary Laur — about the major changes, how the decisions get made, and the history of the CMOS (pronounced "sea moss").

Tonight on GeekNights we review the absolutely fantastic LUPIN III Kabuki Production. Even if you have never experienced kabuki and know nothing about it, this is 100% worth watching. It's a top tier experience. In the news, everything on Temu and Shein is full of poison and the updated Chicago Manual of Style just dropped!Related LinksForum ThreadLUPIN III Kabuki ProductionDiscord ChatLUPIN III Kabuki ProductionThings of the DayRym - ConsciousnessScott - The Podcast Index

This week, after going down the rabbit hole of the Chicago Manual of Style's monthly Q&A newsletter, I thought I'd talk a bit about grammar. --- Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sean-thomas-kane/support

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: More Hyphenation, published by Arjun Panickssery on February 7, 2024 on LessWrong. "MAN EATING PIRANHA MISTAKENLY SOLD AS PET FISH" - example news headline from Steven Pinker's The Sense of Style The rule is that you use hyphens for compound modifiers like the ones in natural-language processing, high-impact opportunities, cost-effectiveness measures, high-status employers, and so on. Don't break up compound proper nouns ("New York-based company") and don't use them after adverbs ending in -ly but do use them after other adverbs ("stern-looking boss"). You can use suspended hyphens when talking about "latex- and phthalate-free gloves." But hyphens are under attack. The Chicago Manual of Style "prefers a spare hyphenation style." The AP Stylebook says that "the fewer hyphens the better." In older texts you see a lot more hyphenation than you do today. Part of this is because of a good trend of combining compound nouns, turning e-mail and fire-fly into email and firefly. But part of it involves replacing hyphens with spaces, turning high-school seniors and ice-cream cones into high school seniors and ice cream cones. Some people think hyphens just look bad. But hyphens are excellent because they improve the readability of text - the speed at which it can be understood, even at a less-than-perceptible level. In fact, it would probably be an improvement to language if it became acceptable and normal to hyphenate compound nouns simply to make the noun phrase faster to read. But first I hope we can return to making references to chocolate-chip cookies. Skimming the curated posts that are on LessWrong right now, as a random sample: A Shutdown Problem Proposal A Shutdown-Problem Proposal hopefully-corrigible agent hopefully corrigible agent large scale X large-scale X A good example of hyphen use: "to make any child-agents it creates responsive-but-not-manipulative to the shutdown button, recursively." Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: More Hyphenation, published by Arjun Panickssery on February 7, 2024 on LessWrong. "MAN EATING PIRANHA MISTAKENLY SOLD AS PET FISH" - example news headline from Steven Pinker's The Sense of Style The rule is that you use hyphens for compound modifiers like the ones in natural-language processing, high-impact opportunities, cost-effectiveness measures, high-status employers, and so on. Don't break up compound proper nouns ("New York-based company") and don't use them after adverbs ending in -ly but do use them after other adverbs ("stern-looking boss"). You can use suspended hyphens when talking about "latex- and phthalate-free gloves." But hyphens are under attack. The Chicago Manual of Style "prefers a spare hyphenation style." The AP Stylebook says that "the fewer hyphens the better." In older texts you see a lot more hyphenation than you do today. Part of this is because of a good trend of combining compound nouns, turning e-mail and fire-fly into email and firefly. But part of it involves replacing hyphens with spaces, turning high-school seniors and ice-cream cones into high school seniors and ice cream cones. Some people think hyphens just look bad. But hyphens are excellent because they improve the readability of text - the speed at which it can be understood, even at a less-than-perceptible level. In fact, it would probably be an improvement to language if it became acceptable and normal to hyphenate compound nouns simply to make the noun phrase faster to read. But first I hope we can return to making references to chocolate-chip cookies. Skimming the curated posts that are on LessWrong right now, as a random sample: A Shutdown Problem Proposal A Shutdown-Problem Proposal hopefully-corrigible agent hopefully corrigible agent large scale X large-scale X A good example of hyphen use: "to make any child-agents it creates responsive-but-not-manipulative to the shutdown button, recursively." Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org

The Witches of Pitches are Aileen Weintraub and Megan Margulies here to share their advice about slowing scenes down, remembering that dialogue gives your memoir depth and flavor, finding the other story in your story, creative querying, what building a platform can mean, the power in companion pieces, honing your pitch, and stalking editors. Also in this episode: -kvetch sessions -writing as a business -being patient   Books mentioned in this episode: The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr Bomb Shelter by Mary Laura Philpott You Could Make This Place Beautiful by Magie Smith   Aileen Weintraub and Megan Margulies have formed a partnership from the modern love story playbook of online writing sessions. They have workshopped numerous articles, essays, and book proposals, helping writers produce top-notch material and are the Witches of Pitches. Aileen Weintraub is an award-winning author, journalist, and editor. She began her career as a copy editor and then as a developmental editor working for both children's and adult publishing companies. As a freelance editor she has worked with clients to help develop their books, proposals, pitches, articles, and essays. She has written for The Washington Post, BBC, Oprah Daily, Parents, NBC, Al Jazeera, AARP, Glamour, InStyle, and other publications. Aileen is also the author of over fifty children's books including the middle-grade social justice book WE GOT GAME! 35 Female Athletes Who Changed the World, which was honored as A Mighty Girl's Best Book of the Year, and the best-selling Never Too Young: 50 Unstoppable Kids Who Made a Difference, a Parents' Choice Award recipient. Her latest book Knocked Down: A High-Risk Memoir, is about marriage, motherhood, and the risks we take. The Erma Bombeck Workshop named Aileen Humor Writer of the Month for Knocked Down and Publishers Weekly says, “…there's beauty on every page.” Aileen has also created a series on marketing and platform building in collaboration with Writers' Digest. She lives in New York but her heart is in Seville. You can learn more at www.aileenweintraub.com.   Megan Margulies is an MFA recipient, memoirist, journalist, and a 2021 Next Generation Indie Book Award finalist for her book, My Captain America. Her essays and reported articles focus on motherhood and navigating life and healthcare as a woman. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Vogue Magazine, The Cut, Good Housekeeping, Elle Magazine, Parent's Magazine, Oprah Daily, and more. Before entering the world of journalism, Megan worked for almost ten years as an editorial assistant at Harvard University where she edited countless articles, profiles, and promotional materials for various departments and professors. It's where she first fell in love with the Chicago Manual of Style. She's a native New Yorker, but splits her time between Boston and Vermont with her husband and two daughters. You can learn more at www.meganmargulies.com. – Ronit Plank is a writer, teacher, and editor whose work has been featured in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Writer's Digest, The Rumpus, American Literary Review, Hippocampus, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named a 2021 Best True Crime Book by Book Riot and was a Finalist in the National Indie Excellence Awards, the Housatonic Book Awards, and the Book of the Year Awards. Her fiction and creative nonfiction have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, the Best of the Net, and the Best Microfiction Anthology, and her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts' Eludia Award. She is creative nonfiction editor at The Citron Review and lives in Seattle with her family where she is working on her next book.   More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ More about WHEN SHE COMES BACK, a memoir: https://ronitplank.com/book/ More about HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE, a short story collection: https://ronitplank.com/home-is-a-made-up-place/ Connect with Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank   Background photo: Canva Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll's Fingers

I asked Yoan (CHATGPT/AI Assistant): Did I split the infinitive when I entitled a recent Podcast: "How To EFFECTIVELY stop DDOS, Brute Force, Worms, and Other Cyber Attacks?" Yoan answered: In the sentence "How to effectively stop DDoS and cyber attacks?" there is indeed a split infinitive. A split infinitive occurs when an adverb or other word is placed between "to" and the base form of a verb. In this case, "effectively" splits the infinitive "to stop." Split infinitives are not considered grammatically incorrect in modern English, and they are often used to add emphasis or clarity to a sentence. While some traditional grammar rules suggested avoiding split infinitives, this is no longer a strict rule in contemporary English. Many style guides and language experts now accept split infinitives as a valid and sometimes preferable construction. So, your sentence "How to effectively stop DDoS and cyber attacks?" is grammatically correct and widely accepted in modern English. I responded: Thank you, I am old school, so I was taught never to split the infinitives. But it seems English has evolved from that. It is a good thing as although it was grammatically incorrect to split the infinitives, everyone did it except the very few academics. But the practice has become the standard, is that not the case? Yoan then replied: You're correct in noting that the rule against splitting infinitives was more rigid in the past, it was often taught as an absolute prohibition in formal writing. However, as the English language has evolved, so have the attitudes towards grammar rules, including the split infinitive rule. In modern English, splitting infinitives is generally considered acceptable and even preferred in many cases when it helps to clarify the meaning or adds emphasis to a sentence. Language evolves over time, and usage ultimately shapes the rules. In practice, split infinitives have become common and are widely accepted in both formal and informal writing. Many style guides, such as The Chicago Manual of Style & The Modern Language Association's MLA Handbook, no longer maintain strict prohibitions against split infinitives. They acknowledge that clarity and natural expression should often take precedence over old-fashioned prescriptive rules. So, while some traditionalists may still prefer to avoid split infinitives in certain situations, it is no longer considered a grammatical error in contemporary English. The practice of splitting infinitives has indeed become the standard in many cases. -- That concludes the essence of my conversation with CHATGPT/OpenAI regarding the accuracy of a title I employed. This discussion has been enlightening, offering deeper insights into how technology has significantly advanced, making it more accessible and user-friendly. What used to necessitate formal education may no longer be the case today. YouTube's wealth of DIY videos and AI-driven tools provide invaluable assistance in navigating the complexities of professional life. What's imperative now is for individuals to become tech-savvy, capable of framing questions for AI & utilizing technology to access answers and support. It's no surprise that enrollment in community colleges & some four-year institutions has plummeted by as much as 37 percent. College dropout rates, especially among African Americans, remain unacceptably high. Traditional institutional learning is gradually becoming obsolete, largely due to the influence of technology. Furthermore, language itself is evolving, with popular language gaining acceptance in academic and formal writing. As we move forward, we must proactively plan for the societal changes that demand adjustments in education—what we teach and how we teach—since technology and popular culture are increasingly integrated into modern society. Thank you for listening. Please share and subscribe to this podcast on any stream. Find your stream and support us here: https://anchor.fm/theneoliberal. theneoliberal.com --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/theneoliberal/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/theneoliberal/support

Today's guest is Crystal Shelley, of Salt Lake City. Crystal is the owner of Rabbit with a Red Pen. She edits fiction and is an authenticity reader. Drawing on her background as a social worker, she unites her love of language and passion for social justice by pushing for writing and representation that's more dignified, intentional, and just. Crystal is the creator of the Conscious Language Toolkits for Editors and Writers — these toolkits are fantastic resources and I'll put a link to them in the show notes.  Crystal also serves on the board of ACES: the Society for Editing and is an instructor for the Editorial Freelancers Association.  In this episode, we talk about:  What “conscious language” is, a term coined by Karen Yin, who also created the Conscious Style Guide. What the difference between “conscious language” and “inclusive language” is. Why using conscious language — and critically assessing the language we use — in our content is important.  Style guides are just that: guides. The primary ones, such as the Associated Press Stylebook and the Chicago Manual of Style, don't always reflect the most updated and conscious language or the accepted language of a particular group.  Some pitfalls when editing and striving for conscious language. How we can advocate for using more conscious language at our associations.  How staff can respond to members who criticize using “woke” or “politically correct” language or content.  Why everyone should embrace and use “singular they” in their content.  How to think about which words to use when identifying people by race and ethnicity.  What ableism and ableist language is and how incredibly prevalent it is in our society.   What “inspiration porn” is and why not to write so-called “inspiring” stories of people with disabilities.  What an “authenticity reader” or “sensitivity reader” is and how associations can use these experts to avoid stereotypes and harming readers.  Resources: Crystal's Conscious Language Toolkits for Editors and Writers Crystal's website Crystal on Twitter Crystal on Instagram Crystal on LinkedIn Style Guides: Karen Yin's Conscious Style Guide Trans Journalists Association Style Guide Native Governance Center Style Guide National Center on Disability and Journalism Style Guide American Psychosocial Association (APA) Style  Lydia X. Z Brown's Glossary of Ableist Phrases  Authenticity reader directories: Editors of Color Database ACES–the Society for Editing's Editors for Hire database Editorial Freelancers Association Member Directory Writing Diversely Sensitivity Reader Directory Check out Melanie's other podcast for freelancers, consultants and solo business owners: Deliberate Freelancer (free on any podcast app).

This week, I'm answering some of my guests' latest questions about the book-writing process. From refining and clarifying your book idea to how to properly cite others' work, this episode is highly practical. I also discuss some behind the scenes about ghostwriting, including different ways you can engage a ghostwriter and how I structure fees. Show notes: Nonfiction Book School Self-Study Program Life Visioning Guide How to Create an Influential Author Platform Brad Fraser podcast episode: stacyennis.com/episode41/ Article on understanding and avoiding plagiarism Pro tip: outsource end notes! Grammarly has a citations editor: https://www.grammarly.com/citations Chicago Manual of Style: chicagomanualofstyle.org Follow me on: Instagram @stacyennis Facebook @stacyenniscreative LinkedIn Youtube @stacyennisauthor

Join us this week with an extended episode and interview with WB:. Adam Kendall. Brother Adam is a world-renowned speaker, Blue Friar, curator of Masonic history, and much more. This week we're talking about just about everything. Don't miss it! Thanks for listening and have an amazing week! Links: Oakland Scottish Rite Historical Foundation: osrhistoricalfoundation.org Quatuor Coronati / Quatuor Coronati Correspondence Circle: quatuorcoronati.com Scottish Rite Research Society: scottishriteresearch.com http://scottishriteresearch.com The Philalethes Society: https://philalethes.myshopify.com  The Masonic Society: https://themasonicsociety.com/content/  Masonic Library and Museum Association: https://www.wa-masoniccharities.org/library-museum/  Purdue OWL (for Chicago Manual of Style):  https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/chicago_manual_17th_edition/cmos_formatting_and_style_guide/chicago_manual_of_style_17th_edition.html  Education http://www.mcme1949.org/join.html Masonic Con Chicago 2023 www.masonicconchicago.com Get your tickets to MCME2023! http://www.mcme1949.org/events.html Craftsman+ FB Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/craftsmanplus/ WCY NFT https://wcypodcast.com/nft Get a Tarot Reading by RJ http://www.wcypodcast.com/tarot WCY Podcast YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/c/WhenceCameYou Ancient Modern Initiation: Special Edition http://www.wcypodcast.com/the-Shop The Master's Word- A Short Treatise on the Word, the Light, and the Self - Autographed https://wcypodcast.com/the-shop Get the new book! How to Charter a Lodge https://wcypodcast.com/the-shop Truth Quantum https://truthquantum.com Our Patreon www.patreon.com/wcypodcast Support the show on Paypal https://wcypodcast.com/support-the-show Get some swag! https://wcypodcast.com/the-shop Get the book! http://a.co/5rtYr2r

Louise and Denise discuss 5 tools that will help any editor or proofreader work more efficiently.Listen to find out more aboutConsistency checking and style enforcementText expandersMacrosSocial media schedulersYour body clockResources mentioned in the show10 killer editing macros for writers and editors: theeditingpodcast.captivate.fm/episode/editing-macrosBuffer: buffer.comFree editing macros by Paul Beverly: archivepub.co.uk/Macros.htmlHow to check a novel with PerfectIt 5 and The Chicago Manual of Style: louiseharnbyproofreader.com/blog/how-to-check-a-novel-with-perfectit-5-and-the-chicago-manual-of-stylePerfectIt: intelligentediting.comPhraseExpress: www.phraseexpress.comSmarterQueue: smarterqueue.comText Expander: textexpander.comJoin our Patreon communityOur patrons benefit from access to PDF transcripts for all episodes featuring just Louise and Denise, and for some of our guest episodes. If you'd like to support The Editing Podcast, join our Patreon community!patreon.com/editingpodcastDenise and LouiseDenise Cowle: denisecowleeditorial.comLouise Harnby: harnby.co/fiction-editingMusic credit'Vivacity' by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://filmmusic.io/song/4593-vivacityLicence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

911. In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, we cover a bunch of interesting things about labels such as "Jr.," "Sr.," and "III." Plus, we look at the origin of the names Carl's Jr. and Ruth's Chris Steak house.| Transcript:  https://grammar-girl.simplecast.com/episodes/comma-before-jr/transcript| Subscribe to the newsletter for regular updates.| Watch my LinkedIn Learning writing courses.| Peeve Wars card game. | Grammar Girl books. | HOST: Mignon Fogarty| VOICEMAIL: 833-214-GIRL (833-214-4475) or https://sayhi.chat/grammargirl| Grammar Girl is part of the Quick and Dirty Tips podcast network.Audio engineer: Nathan SemesEditor: Adam CecilAdvertising Operations Specialist: Morgan ChristiansonMarketing and Publicity Assistant: Davina TomlinDigital Operations Specialist: Holly HutchingsIntern: Kamryn Lacy| Theme music by Catherine Rannus.| Grammar Girl Social Media Links: YouTube. TikTok. Facebook. Instagram. LinkedIn. Mastodon.References for the "Jr." segmentGarner, B. “Jr.; Sr.; III; Etc.” Garner's Modern American Usage, 4th edition. Oxford University Press. 2016. p.613-5.“Holidays.” The Chicago Manual of Style Online, 17th edition. 8.89. The University of Chicago Press. https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/book/ed17/part2/ch08/psec089.html (subscription required. accessed January 15, 2023).“If John Smith Jr. asks for the period in Jr. to be omitted …” The Associated Press Stylebook, Ask the Editors. Sept. 06, 2018. https://www.apstylebook.com/ask_the_editors/35499 (accessed January 15, 2023).“Initials in personal names.” The Chicago Manual of Style Online, 17th edition. 10.12. The University of Chicago Press. https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/book/ed17/part2/ch10/psec012.html (subscription required. accessed January 15, 2023).“‘Jr.,' ‘Sr.,' and the like.” The Chicago Manual of Style Online, 17th edition. 6.43. The University of Chicago Press. https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/book/ed17/part2/ch06/psec043.html (subscription required. accessed January 15, 2023).“Martin Luther King Jr. Day,” AP Stylebook Online. Associated Press_._ https://www.apstylebook.com/ap_stylebook/martin-luther-king-jr-day (subscription required. accessed January 15, 2023).“Names of holidays, etc.” U.S. Government Printing Office Style Manual Online. 3.24. U.S. Government Printing Office. https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/GPO-STYLEMANUAL-2008/html/GPO-STYLEMANUAL-2008-5.htm (accessed January 15, 2023).

For those who've contributed to or read Alpinist over the last 18 years, Katie Ives needs little introduction. Ives started at the magazine in 2004. After reading the Chicago Manual of Style cover to cover, she took on the roles of overqualified intern and copyeditor. She became editor in chief in 2012, a position she held until 2022. Ives is regarded as a tireless researcher, and as a mentor to the many writers she collaborated with during her nearly two decades at Alpinist.  Katie has earned renown for her command of written language. Her book “Imaginary Peaks: The Riesenstein [REE-zen-stein] Hoax and Other Mountain Dreams” was published by The Mountaineers in 2021. It received a Special Jury Mention at the 2022 Banff Mountain Book Competition. Katie recently moved to Colorado to be closer to the American Alpine Club Library while she works on her next book.  In this episode, Katie takes us on a journey through her 18-year Alpinist tenure. She brings us to some of the imaginary peaks she  explores in her book, and the Flatirons looming outside her office window today. She laments all the books she left behind during her recent move West, and reminds us that not all answers can be found on the Internet. This episode is brought to you by The North Face. Alpinist Magazine Website | Instagram | Facebook Host: Abbey Collins Guest: Katie Ives Producer + Engineer: Mike Horn Photo by: Chris Weidner

Your mind will be blown when you learn about accent hallucination. (Mine was!) And then we'll learn how to avoid false ranges.Transcript: https://grammar-girl.simplecast.com/episodes/accent-hallucination-false-rangesReferences for the Accent Hallucination segment by Valerie Fridland:Babel, M., & Russell, J. (2015). Expectations and speech intelligibility. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 137(5), 2823–2833. Bradlow, A. R., and Bent, T. (2008). Perceptual adaptation to non-nativeSpeech. Cognition 106(2), 707–729.Lev-Ari, S., & Keysar, B. (2010). Why don't we believe non-native speakers? the influence of accent on credibility. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46(6), 1093-1096:Rubin, D.L. 1992. Nonlanguage factors affecting undergraduates' judgments of nonnative English-speaking teaching assistants. Res High Educ 33, 511–531 Vaughn C. R. (2019). Expectations about the source of a speaker's accent affect accent adaptation. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 145(5), 3218. References for the False Range segment by Rhiannon Root:Walsh, B. "Everything's Ranging." The Slot. https://www.theslot.com/range.html (accessed September 1, 2022).Grammar Monkeys (McLendon, L.). "Home, home on the range." Madam Grammar. May 20, 2010. https://madamgrammar.com/tag/false-range/ (accessed September 1, 2022).McIntyre, J. "Getting the range." You Don't Say. February 10, 2010. http://johnemcintyre.blogspot.com/2010/02/getting-range.html (accessed September 1, 2022)."Commas." The Chicago Manual of Style (Q&A), 17th edition. https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/Commas/faq0062.html (accessed September 1, 2022).Corbett, P.B. "Everything from this to that." After Deadline: New York Times Blog. August 24, 2010. https://archive.nytimes.com/afterdeadline.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/24/everything-from-this-to-that/ (accessed September 1, 2022)."Appendix." SeaWorld. https://seaworld.org/animals/all-about/penguins/appendix/ (accessed September 1, 2022).| Subscribe to the newsletter for regular updates.| Watch my LinkedIn Learning writing course.| Peeve Wars card game. | Grammar Girl books. | HOST: Mignon Fogarty| VOICEMAIL: 833-214-GIRL (833-214-4475) or https://sayhi.chat/grammargirl| Grammar Girl is part of the Quick and Dirty Tips podcast network.| Theme music by Catherine Rannus at beautifulmusic.co.uk.| Grammar Girl Social Media Links:https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/podcastshttps://www.tiktok.com/@therealgrammargirlhttp://twitter.com/grammargirlhttp://facebook.com/grammargirlhttp://instagram.com/thegrammargirlhttps://www.linkedin.com/company/grammar-girl

Want to line edit crime fiction and thrillers? Pick up some handy tips to help you on your way. Listen to find out more aboutWhat's distinctive about editing crime fiction and thrillers What a good line editor needs to look out for What new entrants to the field need to study Marketing ideas Top tips for being a successful freelance editor/proofreader Do fiction editors use style guides? Course: https://www.louiseharnbyproofreader.com/suspense-trifecta.html (The Suspense Trifecta) https://www.louiseharnbyproofreader.com/blog/how-to-check-a-novel-with-perfectit-5-and-the-chicago-manual-of-style (The Chicago Manual of Style for PerfectIt) Join our Patreon communityOur patrons benefit from access to PDF transcripts for all episodes featuring just Louise and Denise, and for some of our guest episodes. If you'd like to support The Editing Podcast, join our Patreon community! patreon.com/editingpodcast Denise and LouiseDenise Cowle: denisecowleeditorial.com Louise Harnby: harnby.co/fiction-editing Music credit‘Vivacity' Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Lately, I've been working with a lot of writers who are sending in their stories and they seem to have a great fear of the mighty exclamation point. And I get it. I get their concerns, the exclamation point has a pretty bad rap. We've all seen stories where every bit of dialogue ends in an exclamation point. Or our boss sends us an email and everything is a sentence fragment ending with that exclamation point. The BBC even has an article about what overusing the exclamation point says about you, writing: “Bill Bryson – writes, the exclamation mark is classically used ‘to show strong emotion (“Get out!”) or urgency (“Help me!”).' If part of the point of punctuation is to change the timbre of the voice – another part is to get you out of a hole. Punctuation saves lives: there's a meaningful difference between ‘Duck' and ‘Duck!' Both of Bryson's examples are notable for the underlying sense of emergency, need for security, and atmosphere of fear. No wonder, then, that newspapers have historically referred to exclamation marks as ‘astonishers', ‘gaspers' and ‘screamers'; no wonder newspapers have been their most voracious advocates.” They consider it the selfie of the internet. I think it's sort of the selfie of the punctuation club, too. It's like “Yo. Exclamation mark is in the house. Everyone give it some attention!” And the BBC article goes on to say, “Overuse of any punctuation mark tells us something about ourselves, in the same way overuse of any object does. How you punctuate your sentences might have something to do with how you punctuate your life.” Here's the thing: the exclamation point is not your enemy and it's okay to use it in moderation. Even the god-like purveyor of all things grammatical in U.S. novels, the Chicago Manual of Style says that the exclamation point can be used, just do it sparingly or it loses its effectiveness. This is really true about everything from em-dashes to semicolons to the sexy and addictive ellipses…. Cough. See what I did there? When you avoid the exclamation point in dialogue obsessively, it isn't helpful and you end up with something like She shouted, “I can't believe you.” Or He yelled, “I'm going to kill you, so you betta run.” Or They hollered, “Help me.” It looks dumb. The reader thinks, “Um, are they really shouting if there is no exclamation point?” As the writer, you want to be in control of your world and part of that control is making sure that you don't give the reader conflicting signals through verb and punctuation because a conflicted reader is a reader who won't keep reading, who won't keep trusting you the writer to take them on a journey into another world. So, if you make someone shout or yell or holler in dialogue, really make them do it. Pretend they are a politician making a tweet or someone being ironic and throw them all in there. No, just kidding. Only use one at a time. Seriously! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/carriejonesbooks/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/carriejonesbooks/support

Carol Saller describes herself succinctly as “helping writers and editors on behalf of the reader.” She has written six books for young children, including her latest, Eddie's War. She's best known in the editing world for her work for The Chicago Manual of Style, but after a long career in editing of one kind or another, she is now writing full-time, focusing on middle-grade contemporary and historical. I interviewed her about her great book, now in its second edition, called The Subversive Copy Editor, which in true writer style has not only a subtitle (“Advice from Chicago”) but an alternative subtitle (“or, How to Negotiate Good Relationships with Your Writers, Your Colleagues, and Yourself”). She was a true joy to talk to. Quick-witted and funny. Comprehensively knowledgeable about editing. And as down to earth and smart as you would want a person to be. Please listen.

This week I share an important lesson I learned from being wrong about the serial comma. I go over the big three style guides used for writing in American English, including the one most important to we novelists—The Chicago Manual of Style. Before that, I share some frustrations I have as a creator on YouTube. I also talk about the merits of appendices in some novels, the singular they, and whether Pluto is a planet.I'm Looking for Beta ReadersInterested in being a beta reader for my novel? Head here for more information.LinksMy episode discussing how our primary job as writers is to communicate.Chicago Manual of Style online.Chicago Manual of Style print version.The Elements of Style.Get a free 30 day trial of Audible with my affiliate link.Support the show.Join my Discord server.Call My Voicemail: 951-465-5391

Avoiding adverbs, steering clear of the passive voice, never ending a sentence with a preposition—these are some of the writing rules that have been instilled in us since elementary school. But Carol Saller says they're wrong ( as is never beginning a sentence with but or and). Carol is a contributing editor for the esteemed Chicago Manual of Style and the author of The Subversive Copy Editor. In this episode, she dispels the most common mistakes and assumptions writers believe. She also talks about the resources you can use to check your work and the role of AI in the future of writing.

Subversive copy editor Carol Saller offers some top tips on blogging for editors, proofreaders and writers! Listen to find out more aboutIn #1: Carol's blogging journey: The Subversive Copy Editor blog; Lingua Franca (for the Chronicle of Higher Education); Editor's Corner (for The Chicago Manual of Style); Fiction+ (for The Chicago Manual of Style) In #1: Blogging goals In #1: Coming up with ideas: two tips In #1: Blog promotion strategies In #2: Repurposing blog content In #2: Analytics, and how to avoid the rabbit hole In #3: Monetizing your blog In #3: Understanding the sales funnel In #3: Managing reader engagement In #3: Blogging trajectory: Deciding who to write for and when to stop Useful resourceshttps://www.carolsaller.com/ (About Carol Saller) https://www.louiseharnbyproofreader.com/blogging-for-business-growth.html (Blogging for Business Growth (course)) https://www.janefriedman.com/blogging-for-writers/ ('Blogging for writers' (Jane Friedman)) But Can I Start a Sentence with “But”? (University of Chicago Press Editorial Staff) Content Chemistry (Andy Crestodina) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8t6kSLOnJ7E ('Getting the Most from LinkedIn' (YouTube tutorial)) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRCAfFKtbg0 ('Google Analytics Tutorial 2021 – Learn Google Analytics 4 (GA4) & Universal Analytics Step-By-Step') https://www.louiseharnbyproofreader.com/how-to-build-an-editorial-blog.html (How to Build an Editorial Blog (book)) https://bloggingwizard.com/how-to-promote-your-blog/ ('How to promote your blog' (Blogging Wizard)) Denise and LouiseDenise Cowle: denisecowleeditorial.com Louise Harnby: harnby.co/fiction-editing Music credit‘Vivacity' Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Subversive copy editor Carol Saller offers some top tips on blogging for editors, proofreaders and writers! Listen to find out more aboutIn #1: Carol's blogging journey: The Subversive Copy Editor blog; Lingua Franca (for the Chronicle of Higher Education); Editor's Corner (for The Chicago Manual of Style); Fiction+ (for The Chicago Manual of Style) In #1: Blogging goals In #1: Coming up with ideas: two tips In #1: Blog promotion strategies In #2: Repurposing blog content In #2: Analytics, and how to avoid the rabbit hole In #3: Monetizing your blog In #3: Understanding the sales funnel In #3: Managing reader engagement In #3: Blogging trajectory: Deciding who to write for and when to stop Useful resourceshttps://www.carolsaller.com/ (About Carol Saller) https://www.louiseharnbyproofreader.com/blogging-for-business-growth.html (Blogging for Business Growth (course)) https://www.janefriedman.com/blogging-for-writers/ ('Blogging for writers' (Jane Friedman)) But Can I Start a Sentence with “But”? (University of Chicago Press Editorial Staff) Content Chemistry (Andy Crestodina) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8t6kSLOnJ7E ('Getting the Most from LinkedIn' (YouTube tutorial)) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRCAfFKtbg0 ('Google Analytics Tutorial 2021 – Learn Google Analytics 4 (GA4) & Universal Analytics Step-By-Step') https://www.louiseharnbyproofreader.com/how-to-build-an-editorial-blog.html (How to Build an Editorial Blog (book)) https://bloggingwizard.com/how-to-promote-your-blog/ ('How to promote your blog' (Blogging Wizard)) Denise and LouiseDenise Cowle: denisecowleeditorial.com Louise Harnby: harnby.co/fiction-editing Music credit‘Vivacity' Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

The Chicago Manual of Style is the guide most publishers use for grammar, spelling, and punctuation choices. But how can authors and editors check their manuscripts for any errors? You can spot errors yourself and flip through a thousand pages of material that may or may not be up to date... or check out PerfectIt's handy new tool. PerfectIt CEO Daniel Heuman is here to tell us all about it. https://intelligentediting.com Hosts: Lauren Moore, Kalene Williams Special Guests: Daniel Heuman, Ellen Campbell 00:00 Opening remarks and introductions -Discord server is up! https://discord.com/invite/t96CVRD -Keystroke Coffee is live! https://keystrokemedium.com/product/keystroke-coffee/ -Use Plottr! https://plottr.com?ref=190 *** Daniel: Has returned to New York from England. Ellen: Nothing has caught fire and she continues to be editing. Kalene: Doing a lot of developmental editing and litrpg stat math. 03:30 Main Event – Chicago Manual of Style Editing on PerfectIt -Ellen's brief summary of the Chicago Manual of Style. -The problem with the Chicago Manual of Style when writing. -How to add words to the PerfectIt dictionary. -How to run your manuscript through the CMoS. -How PerfectIt maintains your track changes while you go into the document to make changes. 27:20 Spotlight: Elements of Style, by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White https://amzn.to/3CE2XNo 28:20 Main Event – Chicago Manual of Style Editing on PerfectIt, Cont'd! -How to manage styles with CMoS. -PerfectIt's ability to help edit British or American manuscripts. -Love for the semicolon. -Some new things coming out for PerfectIt. -Desires for PerfectIt from viewers. 55:15 Closing remarks Try out Rob McClellan's Mod Farm for your website building needs. Use the link for a KSM discount! https://modfarmdesign.com/keystroke/ Coffee and Concepts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRuoHj6opw0 Keystroke Medium Live! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1qSwdjsN9Q Storytelling https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYRzwuQeK9Q Become a Medium today! https://keystrokemedium.com/mediums/ Don't forget to Like and Subscribe and get involved with the mayhem and shenanigans in the live chat! http://www.youtube.com/c/keystrokemedium If you have any thoughts or ideas for show topics or if you have authors you'd like to see on the show, let us know. Visit our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/KeystrokeMedium For all the latest and greatest KSM Gear, check out our store at: https://keystrokemedium.com/ksm-store/ Also, subscribe to Sci Fi Explorations for the best discounted and free books we come across through our contacts: http://www.scifiexplorations.com *** Keystroke Medium Anthologies Kingdoms of Iron and Stone - https://amzn.to/2GjbE6I Horizons Beyond - https://amzn.to/2SrJ6uX Farthest Reach – https://amzn.to/2UZINeo The Writing Dream – and How to Make it to Happily Ever After – Keystroke Medium's first non-fiction book. https://amzn.to/2UZINeo If you enjoy this podcast, please leave us a review and rate the show on iTunes, Podbean, Stitcher, or wherever else you found us!

Subversive copy editor Carol Saller offers some top tips on blogging for editors, proofreaders and writers! Listen to find out more aboutIn #1: Carol's blogging journey: The Subversive Copy Editor blog; Lingua Franca (for the Chronicle of Higher Education); Editor's Corner (for The Chicago Manual of Style); Fiction+ (for The Chicago Manual of Style) In #1: Blogging goals In #1: Coming up with ideas: two tips In #1: Blog promotion strategies In #2: Repurposing blog content In #2: Analytics, and how to avoid the rabbit hole In #3: Monetizing your blog In #3: Understanding the sales funnel In #3: Managing reader engagement In #3: Blogging trajectory: Deciding who to write for and when to stop Useful resourceshttps://www.carolsaller.com/ (About Carol Saller) https://www.louiseharnbyproofreader.com/blogging-for-business-growth.html (Blogging for Business Growth (course)) https://www.janefriedman.com/blogging-for-writers/ ('Blogging for writers' (Jane Friedman)) But Can I Start a Sentence with “But”? (University of Chicago Press Editorial Staff) Content Chemistry (Andy Crestodina) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8t6kSLOnJ7E ('Getting the Most from LinkedIn' (YouTube tutorial)) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRCAfFKtbg0 ('Google Analytics Tutorial 2021 – Learn Google Analytics 4 (GA4) & Universal Analytics Step-By-Step') https://www.louiseharnbyproofreader.com/how-to-build-an-editorial-blog.html (How to Build an Editorial Blog (book)) https://bloggingwizard.com/how-to-promote-your-blog/ ('How to promote your blog' (Blogging Wizard)) Denise and LouiseDenise Cowle: denisecowleeditorial.com Louise Harnby: harnby.co/fiction-editing Music credit‘Vivacity' Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Episode title: Style Guides for Nurse Writers Many nurses tell me they don't feel they're good enough with grammar to become a professional writer. Well, on this episode I'm revealing the nurse writer's secret weapon that relieves you of the burden of needing to be an expert grammarian to succeed in this industry. Episode Summary Let's talk about style guides: What are they? What function do they serve? Where do you get them? In this tutorial, I'm telling you everything you need to know about how to use this tool to guide all of the grammar, punctuation, and usage decisions you'll need to make when writing for clients. Plus, get a bonus tip at the end to make grammatically correct writing a breeze. Host Elizabeth Hanes BSN RN built a six-figure writing business in her spare time. Today, she coaches other nurses how to become freelance writers through the RN2writer project. Topics discussed in this episode Here's a sampling of what you can learn in this episode: Pop Quiz! Which of these examples is punctuated correctly? [00:50] What is a style guide? [1:30] Why does written content need to be consistent in its voice and tone, anyway? [2:15] What the heck is an ‘Oxford comma'?? [3:28] Why is a style guide important to you, as a nurse writer? [4:01] The importance of checking your grammar prejudices at the door [4:20] Where to get style guides [5:02] Quotable “Some people seem to think that the grammar they learned in high school or college is the ‘one, true grammar' and everything else is ‘wrong,' but that's just not true.” – Elizabeth Hanes “Two sentences can be punctuated differently and still both be correct.” – Elizabeth Hanes “You do not have to be an expert grammarian to succeed as a writer; you only have to be able to follow a style guide.” – Elizabeth Hanes Resources mentioned in this episode Associated Press Stylebook: https://www.apstylebook.com/ Chicago Manual of Style: https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/home.html Styleguard plugin: https://styleguard.com/ RN2writer: https://rn2writer.com Next steps Download and listen to the podcast of this episode at the RN2writer website (or find it on Apple Podcasts or Spotify): https://www.rn2writer.com/podcasts/the-rn2writer-show Start your journey from nursing to writing with the ebook Design Your Dream Career as a Nurse Writer: https://go.rn2writer.com/dydc Follow @RN2writer on social media: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter

Find out more about The Chicago Manual of Style for PerfectIt. Developer Daniel Heuman talks with Louise Harnby and Denise Cowle about the union of a 115-year-old style guide and advanced copyediting software technology, and how it will help you edit faster and better. Listen to find out more aboutWhat is The Chicago Manual of Style for PerfectIt? How much it costs How the union came about Full integration of CMOS into PerfectIt 5 Why it's free to subscribers of both products What PerfectIt can and can't do Working with the CMOS team Favourite features that help editors learn Why CMOS is a style guide rather than a rule book How users can suggest additions Customizing the CMOS style sheet The Mac-user experience Accessing The Chicago Manual of Style for PerfectIt Denise and LouiseDenise Cowle: denisecowleeditorial.com Louise Harnby: harnby.co/fiction-editing Music credit‘Vivacity' Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

The sportsball gets real in this one, yo! Also, attempted murder and a bit of light flirting. Email us at restrictedsectionpod@gmail.com to tell us what you thought of Gryffindor Versus Ravenclaw or even what you think of us! We'd love to read your email on the show. Be sure to subscribe to know right away about new episodes, and rate and review! SUPPORT US ON OUR PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/therestrictedsection THANK YOU LOVE YOU BUY OUR MERCH: https://www.bonfire.com/store/restrictedsectionpod/ THANK YOU LOVE YOU IG: https://www.instagram.com/restrictedsectionpod/ TW: https://twitter.com/restrictedpod FB: https://www.facebook.com/groups/rspoddetentioncrew/ Check out our other amazing Movie Night Crew Network podcasts! This episode featured: Special guest Adal Rifai! Listen to Adal's podcasts Hello from the Magic Tavern, Hey Riddle Riddle, and crossover Hey Tavern Tavern. Adal plugged Deadwood and I Want To Be Where the Normal People Are by Rachel Bloom. Christina Kann: IG @yagirloftheworld TW @christina_kann TikTok @tinafontina Christina plugged The Chicago Manual of Style. Brooke: IG @passion_for_parks TW @grumpybrooke Brooke plugged Hey Riddle Riddle, particularly the episode where the hosts solve her travel riddles, Artificial Sweeteners. Haley: TW @TheWrit_toWit Haley plugged The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks.

We Make Books is a podcast for writers and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, and concerns for us to address in future episodes. We hope you enjoy We Make Books! Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap Instagram: @WMBCast  Patreon.com/WMBCast   Tools Referenced in this episode: Grammarly ProWritingAid   Episode Transcript   Rekka (00:01): Welcome back to another episode of, we make books, a podcast about writing publishing and everything in between. I'm Rekka. I write science fiction and fantasy as R J Theodore. Kaelyn (00:10): I'm Kaelyn Considine. I'm the acquisition editor for Pu... Pu... Wait, I'm the acquisitions editor for Parvus Press. And we can edit that out. Rekka (00:20): Yeah. Is that a line edit? Kaelyn (00:24): Oh God. You know what? That's a good question. That, uh, I think that would be a line edit. Yeah. Uh, yeah. So today we're talking about editing. Um, I know it's something we've talked about before. I think we, we really were very focused on developmental edits. Rekka (00:40): Well, sure. Because that's your favorite, right? Kaelyn (00:43): Yeah. You know, there's, there's different components and different people you're going to encounter through the process of editing a book and they'll all want different things from you and be asking you to change different aspects of the book. So— Rekka (00:56): Oh, one thing we didn't say: that you are the author and your name goes on the cover. So all of these edits come from people who are hired because this is their specialty. However, this is your story. So it is up to you to stand by these edits. And if you don't feel comfortable standing by the edits, then you should not accept them. Kaelyn (01:22): Qualifier. I will have there: check your contract. Your book may have been accepted conditionally pending you making certain changes. So there's uh, there's contractual obligations for edits. But you know, as Rekka said, at the end of the day here, his name is on this. We talk a little bit at the end of the episode, about how, you know, people are, might yell at you online about things that you had absolutely no control over. So control the stuff that you can. Rekka (01:47): Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So anyway, um, there are lots of kinds of edits and they are variably painful each in their own way. Kaelyn (01:56): Some are far more excruciating than others. Rekka (02:00): And on the other side of this lovely ditty, we will tell you about them. Kaelyn (02:17): ...that landing devices on Mars is becoming as routine as something like that can be, is, is very, is very cool. So yeah. Rekka (02:27): Yeah. Speaking of routine. How's that? Kaelyn (02:33): You've probably heard us say things like developmental edits, copy edits, line edits. And if you're going okay, well, what the heck is all of this art? Don't I just edit the book. No, you don't. Rekka (02:46): Sometimes you edit the book. Sometimes someone else edits the book, sometimes a third person edits the book. And sometimes you get a stack of pages and you hope that someone edited the book real well. Kaelyn (03:02): Yes. There's three main kinds of edits. You're going to come across while working on a book and then a fourth step in this order: developmental edits line edits and copy edit. Then after copy, edit, typically comes a proofreading. We're going to go through these step-by-step and instead of giving you definitions upfront, explain what they are as we're walking through them. So Rekka, as somebody who's gone through this process, what would you say your favorite part of all of these edits are? if you had to pick one of the three, what's your favorite? Rekka (03:36): Page proofs. Kaelyn (03:39): Really? Even as a writer? Rekka (03:40): Yeah. No, I mean, cause you're almost there. This is the point where you are just making sure that nothing weird happened in the process of getting this into a layout and you get to reread the book. You're in theory, looking at an immutable copy. So you can't keep fiddling with it. And all you're doing is checking to make sure that there's not like a weird space before a period, or something strange like suddenly you've got smart quotes and—. Kaelyn (04:17): Let's save that for when we get there. Rekka (04:19): That was the wrong answer, folks. Apparently I wasn't supposed to say that. I was supposed to say the dev edit is my favorite. Kaelyn (04:24): And that's because that's everybody's favorite because the dev edit— Rekka (04:28): No the dev edit means you have to tear out your heart and write it all over again. Kaelyn (04:33): The developmental edit though, is the part where you're still writing. Rekka (04:37): I'm not in this to write. I'm in this to have written. Kaelyn (04:43): Fair. Um, yeah. So the first thing you're going to hear about, you know, with the first one you're gonna encounter is developmental edits. Developmental edits are where it is what it sounds like you're still developing the story. Um, this is what's going to happen generally um, at any stage of this before your book is finalized, pretty much. So anytime you're getting feedback from anyone, be it a writing group, um, a friend, an agent and editor, uh, some random guy that you started talking to and told the story. Rekka (05:16): No, don't start talking to those guys. Kaelyn (05:19): That is, that's a developmental edit. There's obviously different levels of intricacy and sophistication to this. Um, if you're working with an agent, they'll probably give you some high level stuff, especially for the beginning of the book. If you're working with an editor, however, they're gonna be much tougher on you. This is the part where they're going to say, "okay, I like all of this. Here's the thing. Your magic system doesn't make any sense." Or "it seems to have some rules and then it's breaking them" or "the world-building is inconsistent" or "there's a plot hole here." Um, a lot of times you're going to start big, you know, like, all right, let's like, I've had authors where I'm like, ""I need you to send me a document of how magic works here. Or "I need you to send me a timeline of the events before this story because there's characters referencing things and they're contradicting each other. And I don't think it's a case of an unreliable narrator." Rekka (06:16): Unreliable author. Kaelyn (06:20): There's a lot of those. So your developmental edits are where you're finishing the big parts of the story where you're narrowing— you're nailing down, um, the rules of the world, the world, building the characters, addressing any plot holes. In some cases you may be making massive changes to the book. Sometimes it's not "this sentence contradicts something another person said," sometimes it's, "Hey, um, I don't think you need this character. They're really not doing much. Get rid of them." Rekka (06:54): Right. And in which case, all the threads of the story that have to change as a result. Kaelyn (07:01): Developmental edits can be, you know, for as much as they are probably the most fun, I guess, of the book, writing process. Rekka (07:10): That's a big question mark in your voice, there. Kaelyn (07:14): Well, they're the most fun for me certainly, but, um, you know, I think, uh, I would hope that people writing enjoy working on their books and look, it can, developmental edits can be like, they can be brutal. Um, a developmental edit can result in a significant overhaul of what you were writing. Now, this isn't to scare anyone because the thing is, if you're working with an editor at this point, they wouldn't have bought your book if they didn't like it and think there was something good in there. Rekka (07:46): Right. Kaelyn (07:47): So remember your editor just wants what's best for your book. You maybe not as much. Rekka (07:55): Well, what about for people who are self publishing? Kaelyn (07:58): So for people who are self publishing, you know, it depends on how you're doing this. Did you hire an editor? Maybe that's the person who's, uh, who's doing this. But if you're doing this on your own, hopefully your developmental edits have been more of the process of writing and refining your book, getting feedback, incorporating it into there. But that's where this is all coming from because somebody reading it and saying, "yeah, I like this" is different from somebody going, "okay, well you have this character, Laura. And she went into the bathroom and then we never heard from her again." Rekka (08:37): Look, this happens sometimes. Kaelyn (08:39): Sometimes people go into bathrooms and never come back out. Um, but that's, I mean, developmental edits is so broad compared to the rest of these because it's all of the work that gets your book to a point where it is quote-unquote done in terms of developing the story. You've stopped developing the story, everything after this now is grammar and syntax and prose and making sure the story is coherent and flows well. Um, Rekka, as someone who has gone through some pretty significant, uh, developmental edit overhauls... Rekka (09:21): Yeees? Kaelyn (09:21): How'd that feel? Rekka (09:23): Is 60% significant? Kaelyn (09:27): Oh, that's nothing. Rekka (09:27): What about when you do it twice? Kaelyn (09:29): Well, that's 120%. Rekka (09:31): Okay. So I've rewritten 120% of SALVAGE. Um, yeah, it's— look, it's funny because it's a lot of work, and I'm the type of person who will grind myself into the earth to get work done on a deadline, regardless of what that deadline's reasonable level is. Kaelyn (09:55): Well, now let me ask you this, because your books specifically, you know, especially as you got farther into the Peridot Shift series with various POVs and everything, when you change something, the, I imagine it's a bit of a butterfly effect. Rekka (10:12): Well. Kaelyn (10:14): Okay, let me rephrase that. I know it's a little bit of a butterfly effect. Rekka (10:16): No, but it even goes beyond that because the first revision was to add all the POVs. Kaelyn (10:22): Yes. Yeah, that's true. Rekka (10:23): Um, the, the first book was one single POV and I felt as though that was now a requirement of the series. Um, specifically an earlier editor that I contracted to help me revise FLOTSAM told me, "dump all these other POVs and just follow Talis." So that's what I thought I needed to do for book two, because that's what I had set up as an expectation for the reader, I felt. So it came as a shock when the publisher's editor that, um, I started working with on SALVAGE as a new editor, came back and said, "I think you could fix a lot of the issues you're having with this book, if you introduced new POVs." So you've seen that meme of like Cosmic Brain. Like that's what happened to me. I was like, "this is an option?? I can go in and add more POV's and show people more of the mindsets of the different people in the, in this world?" It was amazing. I was, I was pumped. I was ready to go. By adding other POVs I was able to go to where the action was happening and get the information to the reader without it having to pass third hand to my main characters. Kaelyn (11:55): You did a really significant overhaul, but then I'm sure that presented a challenge because after you overhauled and rewrote this book to include these other POVs, anytime you made a change, then you have to account for that. Rekka (12:10): Right? Because like, it was, most of my characters weren't even present, um, in the, between the two drafts. Kaelyn (12:16): It's not only, and this is, I mean, we could do a whole episode on this, but it's not only where Talis is, who she's with, and what she knows. You need to track these other characters, encountering other characters, other places, and gathering their own information that they may or may not be sharing with other people. So one change trickles down into all of these other characters and it's something you have to account for. Developmental edits, especially from a multiple POV book: It's a process. Rekka (12:44): It's probably where a lot of the, um, like the timeline inconsistencies happen that readers catch that no one else seems to during the process of getting it out into the world. Um, it's not that the writer was drafting in a flurry and forgot what they wrote. It's more that they drafted in a flurry, revised it themselves, send it off to somebody else. And then somebody else stuck their fingers in and said, "let's pull on these threads and see what happens." And then you have little details you forgot all about that you overlook even when you reread. Kaelyn (13:17): And this, by the way is the reason I am a big fan of having an outline. Rekka (13:21): Oh, but it's the little details. Kaelyn (13:23): There are books that I read that, you know, it's not even just the little details it's "this does not line up. This makes no sense." And in developmental edits, that's where you're supposed to catch things, but you know, a big secret here: uh, editors are people too. And sometimes we, you know, in all the course of all of these changes, miss everything. This is very much turns into, can't see the trees for the forest kind of situation. It's always good to have somebody who is not so in the weeds on this take a look at it, to be able to take a step back and point out, "hang on. That girl never came out of the bathroom." Rekka (13:58): Right. I know you're still worried about her. Kaelyn (14:00): I'm very worried about like, is she okay? Is she having a medical emergency? Was there a portal in there somewhere? What happened to her? So this is, this is making this sound scary and overwhelming. Developmental edits. I find are always the fun part where you really get to, you know, have somebody who's excited to talk to you about your book and you get to tell them all the details and you know, all the secrets and the nitty-gritty stuff going on here. So, um, I enjoy them, but you know, that's just me. I just get to torment people with them. Rekka (14:29): It is a very, very good thing to enjoy the teeny tiny details of your book. Both as the editor working on it and the writer creating it. Kaelyn (14:42): I find one of the most important tools for developmental edits, especially for books with a lot of characters or places is a timeline. Timeline of events before the book and timeline of the events during. I have had books that I've worked on where I've just gotten an Excel sheet to track which character is where at what time to make sure that we're not accidentally saying they were both in this town on the same day. Your editor is going to do a lot of work on this because your editor is going to be your sanity check here, to use the, uh, well, the developer term. Um, you know, does this make sense? Does this work? Is there something here that is very obvious that we're missing? Developmental edits are also where, you know, you're going to, besides all of these checking for problems, you're also going to flesh out characters, their arcs, their motivation, their stories. You're going to do some world-building as well. Probably. Um, again, some of it will be clarifying. Some of it might be like, "Hey, this is really interesting that you mentioned in passing. And later in the story, we need a new setting. Why don't you use this?" So developmental edits can seem a little like, "Oh my God, it's going to be all the mistakes. I'm going to have to rewrite everything." But they're also the time where you really get to have fun with your book. In my opinion. Rekka (16:08): I get really excited about developmental edits because someone has challenged me on something. For example, like how I handled my POVs or a detail of why my character does this, or suggests that, you know, a stake isn't high enough, or suggests that things are happening too conveniently, you know, dominos are falling in too straight of a line. And by being challenged on these things on a broad level, I tend to get all my gears really cranking and suddenly things that, you know, don't occur to me when I'm drafting on my own from, you know, building the outline on my own, coming up with the concepts and figuring out where the book is going on my own. Suddenly when you have another person reflecting back what your story is saying to them, it gets very exciting and I get very motivated, and inspired, to come up with new solutions that, um, address the concerns and probably do some other stuff too, that weren't even brought up. But like, you know, this is where suddenly like, "Oh, these two characters come together at the end and how perfect that they end up in the same spot and that just sets this up to happen...!" And those are the sorts of, um, it feels like serendipity when all your dev edits make the story you wanted to tell, come out of the story that you actually drafted. Kaelyn (17:55): Aww, Rekka, that was beautiful. Rekka (17:56): Thank you. Kaelyn (17:59): So, yeah. Dev edits: they're fun. You know what's not fun? Line edits. Yeah. So once your story's, you know, finished quote-unquote. And by that, I mean that the story exists, it's complete, everyone's happy with, you know, the plot, the character arcs, the timeline, everything going on. Rekka (18:20): I like how you say, you know, "once your story is finished, QUOTE-UNQUOTE..." Kaelyn (18:26): Yeah. You thought, you thought you were done here. Um, this is— so something that you notice in editing, as you continue down the chain here, the burden shifts more and more to the editor. So line edits are next. Line edits, you are probably still doing with your actual editor. This is probably still going to be the same person. A line edit is something that is addressing writing style, language use, um, combing the manuscript for obvious errors, like run-on sentences and redundancies, at a sentence and paragraph level. So this is where— and this is also typically, especially if you're, self-publishing where you do your read aloud. "Did I just use the same word three times in one sentence? I did." Rekka (19:13): You will not know it until you read that thing aloud. Kaelyn (19:17): Um, I did. You know why? Because there's only so many ways to say "rock." Rekka (19:21): Right. Well, sometimes you have a word that does not stand out when you use it three times in a sentence. Other times when that word is, you know, ostentatious, then you do hear it over and over and over again. Cause you just, when you're drafting or rewriting, you just like you get a groove somewhere in your brain and a word will stick in it and you'll end up using it over and over and over again until you clear that. Kaelyn (19:45): Yeah. So you're going line by line and looking at this now. You've got the broad stuff. Every step we take in the editing process, we're going through it with a finer and finer tooth comb. Um, you know, for developmental edits, everybody breaks these out different ways. You know, there's like, "okay, first, we're going to address this. Then we're going to do this. Then we're going to do this." Every book's different with, you know, how to address that. Line edits are much more standardized here. The read aloud is very helpful, especially if you're self publishing, but what you're doing here is you're going and looking for like repeated words, redundant sentences, unclear pronouns, you know, maybe there's like two men in a fight and you just keep saying, "he, he, he, he" it's like, "okay, well, who got stabbed here? Who's bleeding to death on the floor who, who died? I don't even know now." I like to not do line edits right after the developmental edit is finished because you, you become like unable to see things in the manuscript. But line edits are really important because what they're also going to come up with is this is a very, very strange thing, passages that just don't read well parts of the book that to a reader who hasn't been working on this for months are not going to make sense or are going to seem disjointed. And this could be something like a shift in tone or phrasing that is a really awkward. Um, this could be digressions in the narrative that sort of take away from the scene at hand, it could be pacing related. Now let's be clear. This is not the copy edit. We're going to get to that next. You are still going to have to do sentence-level work here where you may have to add, change, and remove things. This isn't like "change 'she' to 'Rekka.'" This is "rewrite this paragraph because the whole thing is very confusing. And I don't know who just died." Rekka (21:48): Right. Kaelyn (21:49): Um, I've gone through line edits where I've crossed out entire paragraphs and said, "I need you to condense this down to one sentence, one or two sentences for the pacing of this scene, because it's a fight and this is taking too long." Um, I've added notes where it's like, I mean, my, I think my most common line edit is "describe this more, expand on this." Rekka (22:13): Expand on this. Kaelyn (22:13): Expand on this. Expand on this. Rekka (22:15): Tell me more. Dive deeper. Kaelyn (22:17): Yeah or, you know, this is where a, an editor might say, "throw in a couple words here and tell us what they're thinking or how they're feeling, throw in a reaction." This is where you're checking to make sure everything is coherent and communicating what you want it to. Line edits are an incredibly time consuming process. Rekka (22:39): They do seem like they might be the worst. New Speaker (22:42): They're not my favorite. Um, I personally can't do them for more than an hour and a half to two hours at a time, or things start to wash off your back. And this is where you've gotta be really sharp on what you're looking at and making sure everything is, is making sense. Editors do line edits differently. In some cases I will, you know, when I do this, I put a note in there of, you know, for instance, "expand on this, tell me what this person is feeling at a reaction here." In some cases I will go in and just edit the sentence if it's a matter of, you know, flipping the, uh, the phrases in the sentence, or this sentence should come before this one. Now obviously, you know, all of these, are— none of this is being dictated to authors. If it's that way for a reason, we'll discuss it. Right. But this is the first time probably that you're going to get something back from an editor and have to go through an add and accept changes. Rekka (23:45): That's a whole new nightmare, if you haven't worked with track changes before. Kaelyn (23:49): If you are to the point where you're getting ready for a line out of it, and you've never done this before, maybe talk to your editor and sort of agree on how this is going to be done. There's different ways to track changes and you can always modify it. But, you know, it's just something to keep in mind. You know, developmental edits, you're going to be getting, you know, multiple passes of that. Some of it will probably be a letter then, you know, as you get farther, further into it, it'll be, you know, notes directly in the manuscript and that sort of thing. Line edits are when you're getting back a document that is marked up, that, you know, if it were a physical copy, it will have looked like someone's stabbed it to death because it's just going to be covered in red. There's no such thing as a manuscript that is so perfect it doesn't need line edits. Some of the best writers in the world have editors for a reason, because you need a fresh set of eyes on this. I definitely will. Sometimes when working on a manuscript, if I catch something really glaring right off the bat, you know, just take care of it right then and there. But the actual line edit pass is, it's a very lengthy process to do it well. Rekka (24:56): I can't even imagine attempting to do a line edit. How do you stay focused and not get swept up in looking at one aspect and forget what else is going on? Kaelyn (25:09): I think my record was 2000 changes in like a 90,000-word manuscript. That was changes, not additions and deletions. For the author, this is the first time where something like this can seem really overwhelming because you've got to sit down and go through all of this now, and now you've got to be clear and fresh on all of it. Um, and on top of that, then sometimes your editor is going to hand you something and just say, this paragraph doesn't work and it's unclear fix it. And you're going to go, "well, I'm the one that wrote it. How am I supposed to fix this? This seems clear to me." In that case, you know, you go talk to your editor and you work through it. This is another one where you'll have a couple of calls, probably, you know, minimum, a couple to get through the whole thing. That's line edits. It is definitely my least favorite of the edits. I will. I mean, really my side. I only do two, the developmental and the line. Um, I obviously definitely prefer developmental. Line edits are they're, they're hard, but obviously very, very important. Which brings us to our third step in the editing process and the last of our true quote-unquote edits. And this is the copy edit. Now the copy editor is probably a different person. Rekka (26:34): In an ideal world the copy editor is a different person, because you want a new set of eyes on this. Kaelyn (26:40): Copy Editors are magical creatures who can at a speed incomprehensible to the mortal brain, go through a document and check for things like spelling, grammar, punctuation, syntax. Rekka (26:55): Just a mistaken word. Like you typed the wrong word or, or a homonym. Kaelyn (26:59): Yeah. Incorrect hyphenations, inconsistent uh numerical formatting, inconsistent formatting in general. Weird fonts. Weird capitalizations. Any factually incorrect statement that you may have made. A good copy editor will catch things that should have been caught in line edit that weren't for whatever reason. Copy editors are the people that go through and say, "this is correct English." Now, if you're writing nonfiction, this is more straightforward. There is, you know, what typically happens is a copy editor ascribes to a certain manual of style. Then there's also, you know, depending on which dictionary you're using, Oxford versus Webster, um, which that just tends to be American versus English-English. And they'll also have, you know, their, their stylistic format, um, even in non-fiction, you know, there's things you have to grade on, like, um, "how are we writing out numbers? Are they going to be a numerical value or is it going to be a Roman numeral? Or are you going to write out the entire number?" Now when you get into science fiction and fantasy, this gets a little more tricky, obviously. So, um, a lot of times what we've done with our copy editors is provided, you know, a list of characters. "Okay, here's their names. Here's the absolute definite correct spelling. Here's a list of places. Here's the absolute correct spelling." Rekka (28:18): I would like to suggest as you go over the line, edits from your editor, that this is a good time to catch any name and build a glossary, if you haven't already done it. Any proper name or unique word to your world that people might be like, "huh? I wonder what that is." This is a good time to make a glossary. And then you've chosen the official spelling and you can refer to it yourself. You are going to use this glossary more than your readers ever will. Kaelyn (28:45): Absolutely. If you have naming conventions in your world, if there is, um, you know, like "this is how this title is formatted," "this is how you address, um, somebody from this place," uh, "this should always be..." This is what you need to give the copy editor because the copy editor needs to know what to flag as possibly incorrect. Copy editors also, I mean, like auto-correct can do some weird things sometimes, especially if these are, you know, made up names and places. Rekka (29:24): Neo-pronouns. Autocorrect loves to just wreck havoc on them. Kaelyn (29:28): Yeah. So sometimes autocorrect will change something to make it correct as autocorrect sees it. And the copy editor needs to know that that's not what that's actually supposed to look like. So arming your copy editor with the resources and information they need is super important. A copy editor is going to give you back a manuscript that is going to have thousands of changes in it, because they have been moving commas and periods— and commas, by the way, are something that your line editor is going to go and have opinions about, and then your copy editor is going to say, no, that's wrong. So there is going to be a little— don't worry, it won't just be you fighting with the copy editor here, your regular editor's going to be doing that too. Rekka (30:14): She's not wrong, folks. Kaelyn (30:16): Yeah. And you know, generally you defer to the copy editor. Rekka (30:20): Right. They're hired for their skillset. The previous editor was hired to help you craft a better story. Kaelyn (30:27): Exactly. Yes. Copy editors are very, very special people. Always be nice to copy editors. Rekka (30:35): They're precious and wonderful. And you're not! Going! To anger them! Kaelyn (30:40): No, do not anger the copy editors. Copy editing, by the way, just as a side note is an incredibly valuable skillset. We talk a lot about "copy" over the course of these episodes: "back copy," "cover copy." "Copy" is words. It's words that you have written and you were getting ready to send out into the world. A copy editor's job is to make sure the words and the grammar are being held to the standard that they are supposed to. Rekka (31:10): That they're doing what you want them to, which is communicating efficiently. Kaelyn (31:15): Anything that you have read that is published, that is not a simple sign (and even in those cases, sometimes that could've used a copy editor) has probably gone through a copy editor, or it should have at least. They're— copy editors work in all sorts of industries that are publishing adjacent. You know, like marketing companies will frequently have somebody who, maybe it's not their full-time job, but can do copy editing for them. It's an amazing skill set to have and it is something that if somebody put a gun to my head and said, "you need to copy edit this. I don't think I could, because I can not maintain that level of detailed consistency. Rekka (31:54): That's the thing is like, when you're talking about a novel that could be a Sanderson novel of 500,000 words, a copy editor, you know, should sit on a throne of diamonds and wear a crown and be served all their favorite— Kaelyn (32:12): The skulls of their enemies. Rekka (32:14): It is absurd, the amount of work they do to make us look good. Kaelyn (32:19): By the way, if you are self publishing and you're going to hire a copy editor, not to scare anyone, this is a heads up. They're not cheap. Rekka (32:27): They shouldn't be. Like, listen to how much work they're doing. Kaelyn (32:30): Yes, exactly. It's obviously different, but it's like going to hire like, you know, a welder or, you know, a, a stone mason or something. This is something that they have been trained to do. Rekka (32:42): So pay them. Kaelyn (32:44): Yeah. Copy editors: wonderful people, pay them, be very nice to them. So that's really the last stage in like the editing editing. And you're going, "Oh, well, that's great. I'm done." You're not. You're not. Rekka (32:55): Oh, sweet summer child. You are not done. Kaelyn (32:59): Because next is proofreading. Now, if you're sitting at home and going like, "Oh my God, proofreading, like my teacher would tell us to do in elementary school before I turned something in? Like, 'Oh, make sure you proofread this.'" First of all, your teacher was using that word incorrectly. Um, what they were actually telling you to do is copy edit. Rekka (33:19): Well, no. Copy edit and then proofread. What your teacher didn't tell you was to do it twice. Kaelyn (33:24): Yes. Yes. So let's do some terms here. Cause you know how I love definitions. We talked about what a copy editor is. They edit copy. We know what copy is. Proofreaders: that's exactly what they do. They read proofs. So this is, you know, in the days when you still had to use to print these things and mark them up manually, you would print a proof. So like if you've ever gotten formal pictures taken and it says like there's a watermark on there that says like "proof only: not for distribution" or something, that means that that's the version that's not final. We have to look at this and make changes to it. A proof editor is checking for the quality of the book before it goes into mass production. "How does this look now?" Is, you know, and Rekka can certainly speak more to this than I can, being a graphic designer. Um, but is this like, "are there huge rivers through the text? Are the margins okay? Are there massive gaps between words?" A proof editor is also going to flag any mistakes that they see, obviously. You're always flagging mistakes as you're working through this. Rekka (34:34): And an author also gets their proofs, um, sometimes called galleys. And it's now your last chance to make sure that everything came across the way you intended. And sometimes, that can involve the placement of a word on a page. "Does this sentence get chopped up and become unreadable because of the way it falls across columns or pages?" Kaelyn (35:02): Yeah. And you know, I did this once with Rekka and there's all of these terms I had never heard before. Like um what do you call it? An orphan when there's like— Rekka (35:10): Right? You've got orphans, widows, rivers, there's lots of terms that, um, it's up to the graphic designer. The page layout artists has hopefully looking at these too. Uh, the publisher is hopefully looking at these too. Hopefully there's like the entire team is, either together or separately, sitting down. You know, you want to say that in this digital age, we don't need to print these out anymore, but you really do. Because looking at it on the screen is not going to show it to you the way it's going to appear in the printout. And keep in mind, we're not talking about the e-book proof here. Kaelyn (35:47): And it's funny. Cause I was going to say actually is the other thing that a designer and a proofreader is going to do is try to account for anything that could end up looking really funny on an e-reader. There's only so much you can do with that. But there are certain things that stand out that are like, "this is just going to look strange." Rekka (36:04): Yeah. So depending on how everything's structured, because it's entirely possible that you have a different person doing the design of the print book than you do creating the e-book, or you may have somebody who comes in and takes the designer's files and converts them to an EPUB to try and basically get the most recent version. Um, but then you have to watch out for things that a designer for print will do that does not translate well to EPUB. And um, so there, there's a lot of work on the proof that like, I'm aware of and this all may sound like a big pile of overwhelm, but basically what Kaelyn is bringing up is that there's a reason that people print out or create proofs. And that's where the word comes from for "proofreading," because basically it should be called "last chance editing" because after this, it costs a lot of money to make any changes. At this point, it will cost money to make changes. But this is one copy. When you have a print run of 10,000, now we are talking "Too late. Sorry." Kaelyn (37:17): I mean, it's also it's design and quality check too. It's you know, for all of the time we were talking about when you're doing a line that it's about, does this make sense? Is this going to distract the reader? The proofreader, the designer, is doing this too, where they're looking at this and going, "hang on, like something's weird here. And this is going to be confusing." That's really, as Rekka said, this is your last chance. This is when— Rekka (37:47): This is when you hope you find any mistake that made it through the cracks, because these are going to be the mistakes that those one star reviewers zero in on, and just drag you across the coals for. And sometimes it's nothing to do with you, the writer, um, sometimes it's a formatting issue. Sometimes it's the result of weird behavior from copy-paste between programs. Kaelyn (38:10): But I love those reviewers that are like, "and the author clearly did not check their margins." Like, no, they didn't. They're the author. That's not their job. Rekka (38:17): That's not their job. Yeah. Self-publishing maybe, but even then a lot of these things are outside the author's control depending on the tools they use. Kaelyn (38:25): So yeah. So then at that point you are actually done, that's it. Rekka (38:31): One hopes. Now it's time for your, um, launch strategy and your marketing plan and your book tour and... Sorry, you're not done. Kaelyn (38:41): That's your edits. And we, you know, we made it sound like this was just a neat step-by-step, but you know, let's, let's be honest. We all know that's not true. Rekka (38:52): Oh, God. It's like, "hurry, hurry, hurry. What the heck does this mean? I don't understand this grammar rule you're explaining to me and I don't have the Chicago Manual of Style. So I'm just going to try and interpret what you said or maybe I'll rephrase the sentence, so we don't have to even have this conversation. And then I'm going to submit it back to you..." Kaelyn (39:11): The times where I was like, "look, I'm done with this word. I'm not doing this anymore. We're just getting rid of it." Rekka (39:17): Sometimes we just write around a word. Yeah. Kaelyn (39:20): You know what I would say and what I hope anybody who, especially if you're going through this for the first time is: take this, and I'm not saying this to sound condescending, take this as a learning experience. This is a really difficult thing to do. Um, you know, like you thought writing the book was hard. Well now you've got to edit it, but take it as a learning experience where you can try to gather as much information about the thoughts and process and everything that goes into this on your own. You know, really try to engage and pay attention to what's happening. Not only because it's your book, but because this is going to help make you a better writer. Rekka (39:57): Oh, there's very little that you can do about having to go through this process except appreciate that, um, that it is making your book better. Kaelyn (40:09): And look, I think we've all at some point picked up a book that clearly wasn't edited. Well. Um, I can think of a few off the top of my head. I have one in particular, I remember mentioning to Rekka and she said, "Oh, how do you like that?" And I said, "I've never read a book more desperately in need of an editor in my life." Um, I think everybody, you know, kind of goes into this with the, "okay, well, whatever, then I just need to edit it." That that, child, will be your undoing. Um, editing's a process. The more you can learn about it as you're working through this process, the more it's going to benefit you as a writer in the long run. Rekka, Would you agree? Rekka (40:56): Nah, nah. Just, wing it. Kaelyn (40:59): Just slap a bunch of words on the page and be done. Rekka (41:02): You know what, Word has spellcheck. You're good. Kaelyn (41:05): Basically the same thing. Yeah and by the way, on that note real quick, you know, this is for both writers and self-publishers. Um, you know, for those who are going the more traditional publishing route, taking a pass at this, you know, in doing some line edits yourself before you submit it is a good thing to do. No one's expecting it to be perfect, but you know, addressing any sort of egregious errors is always a good step. Rekka (41:29): And you mentioned earlier, and we didn't really emphasize it enough. Reading your book out loud to yourself. This is something that like after the surgeries I had and the treatment I had last year, is going to be very difficult for me in the future. I am still going to do it. I don't care if my book is a Sanderson-sized doorstop. It is so valuable to read the work out loud and hear the words the way you put them on the page. Kaelyn (41:54): I, for my day job, send a lot of emails and um, a lot of times, you know, I'll be doing like some co-work time with people on my team, and I will have to keep muting things because I read emails out loud before I send them. Um, so yeah, if you are, you know, for tips for both people submitting for traditional publication, people who are self-publishing—obviously, if you're self publishing, you need to be much more thorough—take a pass at yourself, look word has, you know, some decent, uh, intelligence about this now. It's not perfect. Rekka (42:30): It's not great. I would not rely on it alone. Kaelyn (42:32): No. Well, we're, we're getting there. Read it aloud, but then also: Grammarly. And I didn't want to get too into the weeds on this in this episode because Grammarly is not a panacea. It is not a cure all. It is not going to make your book perfect, but it is a good way to take a pass at something and to also use it to start recognizing patterns of things that you've done. Rekka (42:56): Also, its algorithm is getting a lot better. Kaelyn (42:59): The algorithm is getting fantastic. I would say, especially for self publishing, obviously the paid version of this is worth it. Rekka (43:06): Yep. It's a yearly subscription. Kaelyn (43:08): Um, one thing is just do not let it integrate into everything on your computer because it's going to try to, and it will ruin your life. Yeah. Rekka (43:15): Yes I am— I have a Grammarly subscription and the only thing I do is go to grammarly.com, login, and paste my text into their editor. Kaelyn (43:25): It's going to be like, "Hey, you like Grammarly, right? Wouldn't you like to write fantastically all the time, give us access to your email, give us access to your web browser, give us access to your texts." And then you're going to hate yourself. Rekka (43:38): And it's like pulling out ticks to get it back out again. Plus it messes up forms. At least it did the last time I let it anywhere near my web browser. It will mess with the forms that you're trying to submit, um, that have like the built-in editors and stuff. It was a mess. Anyway, don't do that. On top of Grammarly, there is also ProWritingAid. It used to be like, it's basically Grammarly, but has a different algorithm. And so you would run through one and then run through the other and then maybe it would be cleaner for having done both. Now. ProWritingAid has a bunch of different modes. It lets you set the reading level that you intended to write at, and then tell you whether you are along the median for that, overall, and point out words that you are using that are not within your expected reading level, and all this good stuff. So if you write, um, middle-grade, ProWritingAid might be a tool that you definitely want to consider as well. Like we said, we didn't mean to get into the toolbox end of these things, but these are things that you can do on your own to really get as clean a draft as you can. Rekka (44:43): You know, people who read romance seem to be a lot more forgiving of typos and errors than people who read within a genre that is more typically traditionally published, which is not to say that traditional publishers get it right all the time. But the fans and readers are much less tolerant of that. Kaelyn (45:05): I think science fiction, especially hard military SciFi is the one, in my experience, that's going to go after you for typos the most. Rekka (45:13): Well, they're going to go after you for a lot of things. So we're not even going to go there today. All right. So, um, any last thoughts on editing and the different levels of editing and can you go backward? Like if you realize there's a big error— like here's, here's my worry as an author, is that the publisher is going to get me to copy edits and then in my copy, edit review, I realize, "Oh my God, that's an egregious, uh, continuity error." Or "this would be very offensive." Kaelyn (45:48): It's definitely happened where, you know, it's like, "Oh crap, Laura never did come out of the bathroom." Rekka (45:54): Yeah. Right. To use our example from earlier. Kaelyn (45:56): Like at this point, you, you know, you call a sit down and you say, all right, we got to figure out a way to resolve this. And by that point, you know, it's not, you're out of the traditional editing process at that point. You're, you know, you're doing containment strategy by then. Um, if you've gotten that far in the book and there is a giant mistake that's going to have massive rippling effects through the entirety of the book and nobody caught it to this point—because presumably at least three or four set of eyes have been on this by now—and nobody's caught it that's means there's probably some larger issues here that need to be addressed as well. Um, but look it's definitely happened where it's like, "Oh my God, well, what happened to that one character?" And then you've got to go find a way to address it. Kaelyn (46:45): And what I've found to the best way to do is to isolate it, to say, "okay, Laura went into the bathroom and never came back out." If the easy explanation to that is Laura is not an important character. She was just a friend that drops by, Rekka (46:58): Bye Laura. Kaelyn (47:00): Yeah. We add a sentence where "I heard Laura leave and the door closed behind her. I guess I'll catch up with her next week." If Laura is somebody that you know needs to be addressed, maybe this is a series. Maybe later we find out what happens to Laura. Um, there's ways to deal with it. But my, my favorite strategy is containment. Isolate the problem and then figure out where we're going to address it down the line. Rekka (47:25): In any level of editing, whether you are coming in too late to catch a problem, or you are coming in on schedule, and this is just your first line edit, or your, even your dev edit. Sometimes the solution is to remove a thing that's a problem rather than to write in why it's not a problem. Kaelyn (47:45): Did Laura need to be there at all? Did we need to see her? Did she need to come in and use the bathroom? Rekka (47:51): I mean, to Laura, she needed to use the bathroom, but for the purposes of our story, I'm not sure what kind of slice of life story this is, but I'm, it's not sold me so far. Kaelyn (48:04): Um, this will happen occasionally. My best advice I can give you is: don't panic, deep breaths, figure out a way to adjust the problem. Rekka (48:13): There's going to be a simpler solution than your first panicked worry might—especially you get more panicked later in the process, this all starts to happen. Kaelyn (48:23): Absolutely. Yep. New Speaker (48:24): You have a minute to take a breath and think of a simpler way out of it. Kaelyn (48:28): Take a breath. Your editor's there to help you with this. You know, bring in somebody else that's read the book if possible, and get yourselves a cup of tea, tea, coffee, wine, whatever, and figure out how to address this. There—I've never come across a continuity error or a plot hole or something so far into the process that it wasn't fixable. Rekka (48:50): No, I think that's, that's a good place to leave people. A little bit of hope. It's never, it's never too late. It's never too big to fix. Kaelyn (48:56): Yep. Well, anyway, so that's edits. Um, you know, the one takeaway I would have here is: try to enjoy them as best you can, because this is, this is part of the writing process. And it's a part of the writing process where you can really learn a lot. I think. So. Um, so anyway. Rekka (49:20): Yep. If you have any more questions about editing, if you really feel like Kaelyn missed the, the question that's been burning in your soul, you can at us @WMBcast on Instagram and Twitter. You can support us at patreon.com/WMBcast. And, um, if you could leave a rating and review on Apple podcasts for this episode or any episode, the podcast in general, just leave a little like half, half formed phrase. We'll edit it for you. Kaelyn (49:50): Or just make like a winky face. Rekka (49:53): Yeah. Like a Winky face is fine. Um, but if you have a comment or a compliment or a criticism or question, please leave it at Apple podcasts for our podcast, which will help other people find our podcast. Um, I've been hearing from a few people lately that they are tuning in for the first time and bingeing. Um, there's a lot of people, there's a lot of people on treadmills, um, who are listening and other, you know, kind of like time-consuming things. And I'm just like, thank you so much for spending that time with us and, um, appreciating what we have to say enough to continue spending that time with us. So, um, that's awesome. And, uh, that's a great thing to leave in a rating or review. Winky face. Kaelyn (50:35): "Winky face. Excellent treadmill listening." Rekka (50:39): There you go. All right. We will talk to you all in two weeks. Thank you so much again for listening and, uh, see you next time.  

Have you ever wished you could get all the writing and reading tips you need and inside scoop you want in one place? Well, that’s exactly what’s happening on today’s episode of Indie Author Weekly, as a special celebration of our 100th episode! This is the podcast for indie authors, aspiring authors, and curious bookworms who want the inside scoop, tips and motivation, and behind-the-scenes journey of writing and self-publishing books. TUNE IN NOW to access all 100 writing and reading tips... Resources & links mentioned in this episode: Get podcast and book updates delivered to your inbox at SaganMorrow.com/behindthescenes .Learn more about all of Sagan's books (including the Polyamorous Passions series) at SaganMorrow.com/books .Small Town Stilettos: a modern marriage of convenience .Episode 97 of Indie Author Weekly: experiences with participating in a short story challenge .Episodes 5 & 28 of Indie Author Weekly: tips for doing National Novel Writing Month and Camp NaNoWriMo .Chicago Manual of Style .Fussy Librarian .Episode 78 of Indie Author Weekly: behind-the-scenes of paid marketing for a book launch .Canva for creating graphics (check mine out by searching #PolyPassions on Twitter or Instagram) .Episode 93 of Indie Author Weekly: writing meditation .The Creative Penn podcast .Page Fright .On Writing .The Word Detective .Episode 79 of Indie Author Weekly: writing prompts .Episode 17 of Indie Author Weekly: character situationals (writing prompts) .Episode 44 of Indie Author Weekly: how to use mind mapping for writing your book .Toggl time-tracking softwareTime-saving tips cheatsheet with 23 ways to save 10 hours this week: SaganMorrow.com/savetime .Reach out to Sagan on Twitter or Instagram: @Saganlives .Learn how to maximize your energy & creativity with Productivity Powerhouse at SaganMorrow.com/powerhouse .Goodreads .Bookbub .Get your own Polyamorous Passions merchandise (including the Relationship Rebel shirt and Make Your Own Rules pens) at SaganMorrow.com/shop .Episode 12 of Indie Author Weekly: book review prompts .Episode 95 of Indie Author Weekly: why stories are so powerful .Tune into Indie Author Weekly on your favourite podcast platform at SaganMorrow.com/podcast .Subscribe, rate and review this podcast on Apple Podcasts .Let's chat about this episode: @Saganlives on Twitter and Instagram .Hashtag: #IndieAuthorWeekly .Email hello@saganmorrow.com .Share your thoughts (or submit requests for future episode topics) in this survey at SaganMorrow.com/question Support the show (https://saganmorrow.com/secretpodcast)

In today’s episode, Rea and Joe share some of the best resources from their writing experience. As you think about crafting each piece of your book, you’ll definitely want to check out these tools. *Today Rea and Joe discuss:* * When to bring resources & methodology into your writing process * Listening to your instincts vs. utilizing tools & resources * The importance of making space for and away from your writing *Resources:* * Submission-Ready in Six Weeks: WritewayCo.com ( https://www.writewayco.com/submission-ready-in-6-weeks ) * Rea & Joe’s book recommendations: * Save the Cat! Writes a Novel ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32805475-save-the-cat-writes-a-novel ) by Jessica Brody * Story Genius ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27833542-story-genius?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=TYvgAq6KKE&rank=3 ) by Lisa Cron * Wired for Story ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13126099-wired-for-story ) by Lisa Cron * The Emotional Wound Thesaurus ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36407946-the-emotional-wound-thesaurus?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=JSObPlALLq&rank=1 ) by Angela Ackerman & Becca Puglisi * The Negative Trait Thesaurus ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18517230-the-negative-trait-thesaurus ) by Angela Ackerman & Becca Puglisi * The Emotion Thesaurus ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43666740-the-emotion-thesaurus ) by Angela Ackerman & Becca Puglisi * Outrageous Openness ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21471479-outrageous-openness?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=KXfSXAzJOL&rank=1 ) by Tosha Silver * Bird by Bird ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12543.Bird_by_Bird?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=QPVJs9vZjK&rank=1 ) by Anne Lamott * On Writing ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10569.On_Writing?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=gNNy7QM2VU&rank=1 ) by Stephen King * Books ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2421737.Books?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=MDvvdFbIf2&rank=3 ) by Larry McMurtry * A Movable Feast ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4631.A_Moveable_Feast?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=MQcHRDRwsg&rank=4 ) by Ernest Hemingway * Any dictionary and thesaurus * Chicago Manual of Style ( https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/home.html ) * AP Stylebook ( https://www.apstylebook.com/ ) *Connect with Rea + Joe* * Instagram: @writewayco ( https://www.instagram.com/writewayco ) and @reafrey ( https://www.instagram.com/reafrey/ ) * Website: Writewayco.com ( https://www.writewayco.com/ ) This show is produced by Soulfire Productions ( http://soulfireproductionsco.com/ )

时隔四年半，我们再次回到字体排印的一个老话题——空格。本期节目将集中讨论西文、尤其是英文写作中，句号后的空格数目。这一富有争议性的书写规则，关涉着阅读习惯、编辑体例、设计审美、技术传统乃至科学研究；同时，也为我们提供了探讨字体排印细节问题的思路及视角。 参考链接 Joe Biden 总统竞选活动使用了 Decimal 和 Mercury Text 作为视觉形象字体，由 Hoefler&Co. 设计出品 字体销售平台 Fontstand 上架 iPad app 方正字库出品的字体管理工具「字加」有 iPhone app mojimo，日本字体公司 Fontworks 的字体销售平台，也有 iPad 和 iPhone app The Verge 早前报道，Microsoft Word 将会标记出西文句号后的两个连续空格，并建议用户修正为单个空格 风格指南（style guide） 《牛津风格指南》（New Hart’s Rules，早前版本名为 The Oxford Guide to Style ） 《芝加哥风格指南》（The Chicago Manual of Style） 《微软风格指南》（Microsoft Manual of Style: Your Everyday Guide to Usage, Terminology, and Style for Professional Technical Communications，早前版本名为 Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications） 《苹果风格指南》（Apple Style Guide） 《美联社风格手册》（AP Stylebook） APA 格式（APA style），美国心理学会编纂的风格指南；2019 年出版的第七版《美国心理学会出版指南》（Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association） 建议句末只加一个空格 《美国现代语言学会风格手册》（MLA Handbook，早前版本名为 MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers） 《大西洋月刊》（The Atlantic）曾报道过关于句号后空格的科研文献 “Are two spaces better than one? The effect of spacing following periods and commas during reading” 《字谈字畅》第 14 期，我们邀请 Ethan 一起讨论了行文及排版中的空格、空隙，特别是中西文混排的间隙问题 「开明式」风格，开明书店出版物常用的一种排版风格；Eric 在「孔雀计划」相关文章中亦有提及 中央人民政府出版总署．《标点符号用法》．中央人民政府政务院秘书厅，1951 年 主播 Eric：字体排印研究者，译者，The Type 编辑 蒸鱼：设计师，The Type 编辑 欢迎与我们交流或反馈，来信请致 podcast@thetype.com​。如果你喜爱本期节目，也欢迎用支付宝向我们捐赠：hello@thetype.com​。 The Type 会员计划已上线，成为我们的会员，即可享受月刊通讯、礼品赠送、活动优惠以及购物折扣等权益。

Today on the podcast, Brian and Jesse speak with Stephanie Cristello and Ruslana Lichtzier who are hosting the Chicago-based iteration of the vexillological contemporary art project Four Flags. Over the course of the next few months, dozens of Chicagoland artists are making flags that are being hoisted and hung from the façade of Chicago Manual  Style—in the West Town / Ukrainian Village neighborhood—and on instagram at @fourflags. Four Flags was founded by Julia Mullié and Nick Terra in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and was launched on April 15, 2020. Exhibited artists to date include Evelyn Taocheng Wang, Das Institut (Kerstin Brätsch & Adele Röder), Kasper Bosmans, Jennifer Tee, Willem de Rooij, Rodrigo Hernández, Maria Roosen, Anna-Sophie Berger, Dora Budor, and Lena Henke, among others. Bloemstraat 140B, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Chicago Manual Style and P.S. (Publishing Services) is a project space sited in a garage in Chicago, IL. Directed by Stephanie Cristello, the program is dedicated to exhibitions featuring established and emerging artists, and the production of critical writing. Positioned at the convergence of exhibitions and publications, each show results in the production and commission of essays and texts on contemporary art. Ruslana Lichtzier will be collaborating on curating this specific project. https://www.chicagomanual.style/four-flags

Welcome back to Indie Author Weekly, where I share my behind-the-scenes journey of writing and self-publishing books. If you’re new to this podcast, I am a productivity strategist for multi-passionate creatives at SaganMorrow.com: I help people manage their time and energy effectively, through customized, actionable strategies that work for your unique life and business. When I’m not teaching about productivity to solopreneurs, I spend my time writing romance novels, and occasionally, business books. And that is what this podcast is all about: the adventures of the author life. Now let’s get into this episode of the Indie Author Weekly podcast. Today, I want to share just a few of my favourite books that have helped me improve my writing skills over the years. These are great resources if you want to get a deeper understanding of language and how to use it effectively, and also if you want to improve your editing skills. By the way, we have a whole episode here on Indie Author Weekly featuring 10 practical tips for editing your own work—you can check that out in Episode 15. Okay, so here are six of my favourite books… I have four main resources (reference texts), plus two honourable mentions (memoirs about the craft of writing) that I want to share with you today... TUNE IN to this episode to find out what these resources are, and why they're so valuable! Resources & links mentioned in this episode: Learn more about all of Sagan's books at SaganMorrow.com/books .Episode 15 of this Indie Author Weekly podcast: 10 tips for how to edit your own work .Chicago Manual of Style . Canadian Oxford Dictionary GCSE English Grammar: Exam Revision Guide . Webster's Compact Writers Guide . The Word Detective by John Simpson . On Writing by Stephen King . Tune into Indie Author Weekly on your favourite podcast platform at SaganMorrow.com/podcast .Rate & review this podcast on iTunes .Let's chat about this episode: @Saganlives on Twitter and Instagram .Hashtag: #IndieAuthorWeekly .Email hello@saganmorrow.com .Share your thoughts (or submit requests for future episode topics) in this survey at SaganMorrow.com/question Support the show (https://saganmorrow.com/secretpodcast)

If you're like a lot of people, you'll see this headline and want to run screaming, but I want to promise you that this week's conversation is anything but terrifying. Curtis Honeycutt, award-winning author of the Grammar Guy column that appears in more than 30 newspapers nationwide, has made it his mission to make grammar accessible and meaningful, not the stuff of high school nightmares. His book, Good Grammar is the Life of the Party, is a guidebook for the wary as well as the knowledgeable, and I think it's safe to call it the funniest grammar guide you'll ever read. Curtis and I discuss everything from Noah Webster's influence on American spelling, what "style" is (and the AP vs. Chicago Manual controversy), where religious fundamentalism and grammar meet, why Curtis and I disagree on this next comma, and more in this interview. Good Grammar is the Life of the Party is available on May 1. Check out the show notes to find out how to connect with Curtis, the Alot, and more.

Today I asked all the questions I know you want the answers to about writing a book, or more specifically, working with a ghost writer! My guest this week is Joshua Lisec. Joshua is the world’s ONLY award-winning, celebrity-recommended, #1 International Bestselling, certified professional ghostwriter. Wow! He’s the founder of The Entrepreneur’s Wordsmith, LLC as well as a contributor to Forbes, a TedEx speaker, and a two-time published novelist. He’s taken his gift of writing and used it create change, impacting so many people. I was so fascinated by today’s conversation and I know you’re going to love learning more about Joshua and his ghostwriting skills! 2:31 - The Joshua 101 You heard a little of Joshua’s accolades in the introduction. Not only is he a wildly successful ghostwriter, he’s also been personally recommended by celebrities for ghostwriting. They’ve also endorsed his books! His books have sold tens of thousands of copies a month after the book’s release! California State University (Long Beach) is the only academically sponsored ghostwriting training program in the world. Only about 50 people have completed this course by not only completing the degree, but also demonstrating professional proficiency as a ghostwriter. Joshua is the first and only person in Ohio to complete the program. As a kid, Joshua loved reading The Chronicles of Narnia series and The Space Trilogy, both by C.S. Lewis. He was so inspired that he decided he wanted to become a novelist. At just 20 years old, Joshua had a two-book deal with an independent publishing house of Washington, D.C. Around this time, he also started a freelance writing business.  As he’s began promoting his novels, some of his clients told him they loved his writing and novels. They didn’t want to write a novel, but they did want to share their stories with Joshua’s help. Joshua didn’t even know what ghostwriting was at the time! He learned a bit more and agreed to help. 40 books later, and he’s still helping people tell their stories. 8:29 – How Does Ghostwriting Work? There are many people who want to get their stories out, but don’t know exactly what to say or are inhibited by their own self-criticism or self-censorship. It can even happen to people who’ve already written a book or self-published. Just as entrepreneurs desire to work on their business and not in their business, authors desire to work on their book, not in their book. Their time and energy is better focused on the impact they want their book to have rather than agonizing over style and grammar as well. In order for a Joshua to understand what’s going on in a person’s head, he starts with a free manuscript strategy session. To start, this helps answer whether a person should be writing a book at all. If the answer is yes, the next step is to figure out what that person’s future readers want. A ghostwriter literally helps an author figure out what the book should be about if there’s a good idea there. This first step is an iterative process that goes on for about a month, and the goal is to figure out what the book will cover, what it will deliver, and how it will transform the readers it’s intended for. For several months, the writer and ghostwriter will work on one chapter each week for several months. Everything written is in the voice of the author. Often a ghostwriter is better at pulling out what an author is trying to say if they are the best version of themselves, the uncensored version. It’s not just what they want to say, it’s the best possible version of what they want to say. Once a rough manuscript is ready, Joshua helps edit line-by-line, chapter-by-chapter in The Chicago Manual of Style. They style considerations are what separates a self-published book apart from a book on a bestseller list. 15:37 – The Jay Conrad Levinson Rule Jay Conrad Levinson wrote the International bestseller, Guerilla Marketing. It was the first book of its kind to help small business with low or no cost advertising. When asked how much money the book made him, Levinson said it was about 10 million dollars. The royalties over 30 years only paid about $30,000, but the book opened a door to consulting, speaking, products, services, upsells, masterminds, etc., that accounted for the remaining 9.9 million dollars. Following the Jay Conrad Levinson rule where people can gain from further resources that accompany your book after they’ve read it is the only way to see a big return on investment in the process of writing a book. 24:00 – Could Your Book Sell If You Didn’t Market It? Have you ever thought about writing a book? Would you have ever thought you need to know about SEO when coming up with your book title? Joshua also equips authors with resources (like Publisher Rocket) to know how to title your book. It literally tells you what book titles are profitable and which ones are not profitable. 33:23 – Live Ghostwriting and More Joshua also helps people who are interested in writing a book on their own. You can write your own book, but Joshua consults on how to structure material and then reviews the work you’ve done or the changes you’ve made. It’s almost like a live ghostwriting experience. Joshua has a similar program for publishing by setting up an independent publishing business for you, going through all the traditional processes of a normal printing press AND it comes in audiobook form too! Memorable Quotes: 10:20: “Authors want to work on their book, not in their book. Your job, your effort, your energy as the author should really goes toward the impact you want your book to have, that high level goal of the book, rather than whether an adverb goes here or here in the sentence.” 20:42: “Just like steppingstones across a creek, you want the stones to be there before you start walking.” 39:28: Getting To Know Our Guest Find out what Joshua would eat if he had to eat the same thing for dinner every night for the rest of his life, a dream that he’s yet to achieve, and most importantly, what it means to him to run a business with purpose. ABOUT JOSHUA LISEC: Every day Joshua Lisec helps authors manifest the mission behind their voice. Joshua is the world's only award-winning, celebrity-recommended #1 international bestselling Certified Professional Ghostwriter. He is also a Forbes Contributor ghostwriter, a TEDx speaker, and a two-time published novelist. Since 2011, he has ghostwritten forty books for everyone from household names with millions of followers to small town preachers who want to share their testimony. CONNECT WITH JOSHUA: https://entrepreneurswordsmith.com/ https://www.facebook.com/entrepreneurswordsmith/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshualisec/ https://www.instagram.com/joshualisec/ Thank you our sponsor for this episode of the Business with Purpose Podcast: noissue! noissue. is the online platform for designing and ordering custom, sustainable packaging for your business or brand. With low minimum order quantities, worldwide delivery in three weeks or less (for free!!!), and a team of designers ready to help, noissue is making customized packaging accessible for businesses of all shapes and sizes. You can use the promo code purpose15 for 15% off your first order!

Learn 10 tips for editing your own work, plus the editing process your host Sagan Morrow (a professional editor) uses when self-editing her own books, in this episode of Indie Author Weekly. You'll learn about the importance of having a personal style guide and character bible for your books, different types of edits and ways to review your work, and more. This episode provides you with practical tips for editing books regardless of whether you hire an editor as part of your indie author journey. Access sample chapters of my novels, transcripts of each episode, cheatsheets and spreadsheets relevant to the episode topics, and additional resources, at SaganMorrow.com/audio. Resources & links mentioned in this episode: Learn more about Sagan’s books at SaganMorrow.com/books Chicago Manual of Style Hemingway App Tune into the “secret” version of this podcast at SaganMorrow.com/audio Connect with Sagan (@Saganlives) on Twitter and Instagram. Feel free to use the hashtag #IndieAuthorWeekly to chat about this episode. Support the show (https://saganmorrow.com/secretpodcast)

I could never remember how to spell "subpoena" until I came up with a memory trick! Also, we go over the tricky cases of when to capitalize the word "the" in titles such as The New York Times and The Chicago Manual of Style. Sometimes you do, and sometimes you don't. LINKS AND SPONSORS | Grammar Girl Email Newsletter: https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/newsletters | Grammar Girl's AP style webinar: http://bit.ly/GrammarWebinar2019 | GRAMMAR POP iOS GAME | Optimized for iPad: http://bit.ly/iPadGrammarPop | For iPad and iPhone: http://bit.ly/GrammarPopMobile | GRAMMAR GIRL BOOKS | http://bit.ly/GrammarPopBooks | GRAMMAR GIRL IS PART OF THE QUICK AND DIRTY TIPS PODCAST NETWORK | VOICEMAIL: 833-214-GIRL (833-214-4475)

Этот выпуск в YouTubeДима и Вячеслав обсуждают книгу "Пиши, сокращай". Они немного расходятся в окончательной оценке, но все равно рассказывают, что полезного в ней нашли.* История про то, как Дима пострадал от пиратов при покупке книги* 99% Invisible: Weeding is Fundamental* Димина оценка – 9, Славина – 6* The Chicago Manual of Style* Разные стороны заботы о читателе* Другие книги, которые понравились Вячеславу * Формула счастья * Расскажи, чтобы победить * Новые правила деловой переписки* А какие книги вы прочли и нашли полезными? Расскажите нам в BiweeklyChat

Этот выпуск в YouTube: https://youtu.be/Bw7jQY3_8s8 Дима и Вячеслав обсуждают книгу "Пиши, сокращай". Они немного расходятся в окончательной оценке, но все равно рассказывают, что полезного в ней нашли. * История про то, как Дима пострадал от пиратов при покупке книги * 99% Invisible: Weeding is Fundamental (https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/weeding-is-fundamental/) * Димина оценка – 9, Славина – 6 * The Chicago Manual of Style (https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/) * Разные стороны заботы о читателе * Другие книги, которые понравились Вячеславу * Формула счастья (http://www.popuri.ru/site/books/17189/4221) * Расскажи, чтобы победить (https://eksmo.ru/book/rasskazhi-chtoby-pobedit-ITD166887/) * Новые правила деловой переписки (https://www.alpinabook.ru/catalog/marketing/469181/) * А какие книги вы прочли и нашли полезными? Расскажите нам в BiweeklyChat (https://t.me/biweeklychat)

In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Denise and Louise demystify publishing language – the terms professionals use to describe the parts of a book – so that you can talk with confidence about your text. Listen to find out more about: the beginning (or front matter; prelims), the main or body text and the end matter (or back matter) part titles, half titles, and title pages forewords and prefaces acknowledgements pages, page numbers, and folios double page spreads (DPSs) rectos and versos running heads and running feet drop caps or dropped capitals chapter drops appendices and glossaries footnotes and endnotes bibliographies, references, and indexes Editing biteshttps://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/home.html (The Chicago Manual of Style) https://global.oup.com/academic/product/new-harts-rules-9780199570027?cc=gb&lang=en& ( New Hart's Rules) Indexing societieshttp://www.asindexing.org/ (American Society for Indexing) http://www.asaib.org.za/ (Association of Southern African Indexers and Bibliographers) http://www.anzsi.org/ (Australia and New Zealand Society of Indexers) http://www.cnindex.fudan.edu.cn/ (China Society of Indexers) (site in Chinese) http://www.d-indexer.org/ (Deutsches Netzwerk der Indexer/German Network of Indexers) http://www.indexers.ca/ (Indexing Society of Canada/Société canadienne d'indexation) http://www.indexers.nl/ (Nederlands Indexers Netwerk/Netherlands Indexing Network) https://www.indexers.org.uk/ (Society of Indexers) (UK) Ask us a questionThe easiest way to ping us a question is via Facebook Messenger: Visit the podcast's https://www.facebook.com/TheEditingPodcast (Facebook) page and click on the SEND MESSAGE button. Denise and Louisehttps://www.denisecowleeditorial.com/ (Denise Cowle Editorial Services) (non-fiction) Louise Harnby | Proofreader &...

In this episode of Tell Me About Your Damn Book, host Stephen Lomer talks with author Stacey Longo about the convention scene, the Chicago Manual of Style, the glory of Richard Grieco, crappy celebrity encounters, forensics, and zombie siblings.

If "irregardless" isn't a real word, then why the hell is it in my dictionary?!? It's a matter of philosophy. Steve and Kory give a primer on descriptivism and prescriptivism, two approaches to describing language, and how modern dictionaries are descriptivist (which is exactly the opposite of what everyone believes). They recap the culture wars of the 1960s, which gave rise to the American Heritage Dictionary; discuss the AHD Usage Panel and what it does; lament the state of modern dictionary marketing; and gab extensively about where people can get themselves some of that sweet, sweet prescriptivism they long for.  BONUS FEATURES:- Kory and Steve offer to stage-fight at your conference; - Steve introduces you to the best dictionary marketing video known to humanity (and YOU ARE MOST WELCOME); - Steve amazes Kory w/r/t Romanian; - Stamper Mispronunciation Rundown: "biases" TRANSCRIPT BELOW: ----more---- Kory:                     Hi, I'm Kory Stamper Steve:                   and I'm Steve Kleinedler. Kory:                     and welcome to Fiat Lex, Steve:                   a podcast about dictionaries by people who write them. Kory:                     That would be us. So last episode, we talked a little bit about how words get into dictionaries and how dictionaries are written, but we wanted to sort of backtrack and give you an underlying philosophical basis for how modern dictionaries are written. Steve:                   Right. And one of those perceptions that are held by the public who pay attention to the brand of dictionary, which we-- admittedly is a small subset of people who actually use reference works. Is this distinction, this dichotomy that doesn't really exist between, for example, the American Heritage Dictionary and Merriam-Webster's. Kory:                     Mm-hmm. So lots of people assume that we are mortal enemies. That American Heritage and Merriam Webster, we are competitors. We have always been set up mostly by our marketing departments and other people as direct competitors. But, in fact, we are not really direct competitors of each other. That's just been something that has been sort of formulated because of this philosophical difference that we're going to talk about. Steve:                   And also, the editors at the different companies -- we're all colleagues, most of us belong to the same learned societies such as the Dictionary Society of North America, where we meet together with much conviviality -- we're friends, Kory's my friend. Kory:                     And Steve is my friend. Steve:                   And even though we keep threatening to attend conferences and stage fake duels, with the weaponry that Kory has assembled, we have not yet done this. We may do it someday. Kory:                     Let us know. Let us know if you want us to come to your conferences, stage a fight Steve:                   We'll stage a fight or we'll just do a normal q and a section. And with this, this, this, this frame of reference that there is somehow this distinction is borne out of a concept of prescriptivism versus descriptivism. Kory:                     Right? So let's just define terms very loosely. Prescriptivism and descriptivism are these two approaches to language that are common in modern linguistics. Steve:                   A prescriptive approach is one that claims there is a right and wrong. There are rules that prescribe how one should use English or any language properly. Kory:                     Right. And descriptivism is the idea that all languages, all varieties of a language are an equal footing, and it's really, you're just describing usage, not passing judgment on usage. So, so if you, if you say ain't and that's native to your dialect, then that's a matter of context and not a matter of right and wrong. Steve:                   And truthfully, this is how most modern dictionaries in the United States are in fact produced. They're very descriptive. However, due to incidents that happened in the 1960s, in the public consciousness, there's this idea that the American Heritage Dictionary is this prescriptive dictionary and Merriam Webster is descriptive. There's this -- this argument raises its head from time to time.The New Yorker about five or six years ago, had this string of essays, followed by letters to the editor about this dichotomy that it's -- it seemed to be that the journalists were still thinking that this is the case. There's a really good article by Steven Pinker called the activist tours that you can find in the New Yorker that describes that kerfuffle in some detail. But! The original kerfuffle, how this all got steeped in the consciousness, goes back to 1961. Kory:                     1961. At that point, Merriam Webster, which was one of the main dictionary companies in America, released its Third New International Unabridged Dictionary. Now, this was a dictionary that had been eagerly awaited by the public. It was 12 years in the making, over a hundred editors, over 200 outside consultants helped with it, and people assumed it was going to be in the style of all of the 19th century dictionaries we wrote where we had sort of given this idea that the dictionary is the sum of all human knowledge, and therefore is sort of this intellectual tool. 1961 comes around, and the book is released. Now the book was informed by modern linguistic thinking, and so it took more descriptivist stances on things than most people thought it should. For instance, instead of saying that something was uneducated or illiterate, we would say it's substandard or nonstandard. Those are linguistic terms, but the general public knows that linguistic terms don't really matter in the real world. So when the book was released, it was kind of roundly panned by the general press as being way too anything goes, way too, you know, just throwing aside its role as the guardian of the language-- Steve:                   Often revolving around one word in particular-- Kory:                     That would be the word ain't. Steve:                   Ain't. Steve:                   Oy. So in fact, there is a great book about this controversy that is called The Story of Ain't by David Skinner -- it's a great book if you want to know more about this. It gets into a lot of the culture wars that were going on at the time too, which I think is frankly more interesting than dictionary history, but it all ties together. So, 1961, The third comes out. It has panned in the general press and then, Steve:                   and then in these pre internet days, publishing companies could make a lot of money off dictionaries and as such, the fact that Merriam Webster was being excoriated in the press for its inclusion of ain't and other, kind of these liberal approaches, other editors thought, hey, we can write a dictionary that is in response to this and take a more prescriptive approach. One editor at American Heritage named -- affiliated with American Heritage -- named James Parton, came up with a plan to create a competing dictionary, that would be in response to Merriam Webster, and it is in the early sixties when he is going forth with this plan that, this, this, this concept of prescriptive versus descriptive approaches was really embedded in the consciousness of people who are paying attention. The interesting thing though, is as the dictionary -- as the American Heritage Dictionary was compiled in the sixties, the editors who were working on it, and even members of the Usage Panel who were brought into service to give their opinion on style issues, came -- well, they didn't come to the conclusion most of them had this conclusion -- is, well, no, a dictionary in fact, does to a large degree describe how words are being used. And in, in the earlier podcast we talked about corpus -- corpora material, that, that the editors were using to make definitions, craft definitions, the, the evidence is there in print as to, well, this word is used this way, this word is used this way. It's our duty to report that. So even though the genesis of the American Heritage Dictionary was thought of to be this prescriptive approach, it ended up being fairly descriptive almost as much as Merriam Webster Kory:                     It was. And you know, Steve and I -- we have a party trick that we like to do when we speak together. And that is we put together a slide with the American Heritage Definition of irregardless, and the Merriam Webster definition of irregardless, side by side, and you will see that they treat the word almost identically. Steve:                   The note covers the same amount of material. And you can find a lot of information about the word irregardless in Kory's book Word By Word, The Secret Life of Dictionaries. She has a whole chapter devoted to irregardless. Steve:                   Thank you for that plug, Steve. Steve:                   Well, you're welcome. On one hand, dictionaries do serve the purpose of pointing out style issues so that, for example, even though people might think inflammable means not flammable, it actually means flammable, which is an important thing if you were the manufacturer of cushions or children's pajamas, you don't want that mistake coming up because in this, you know, it can be fatal. So there are certain style issues where there -- all dictionaries will point out, use this word, not this word, but then nowadays you know, something like whether or not to split infinitive or use a singular they. And we will get into these in later podcasts in greater detail, what dictionary say nowadays might surprise you. Kory:                     So I want to talk a little bit about the Usage Panel that Steve mentioned about the American Heritage Dictionary. So that was the American Heritage Dictionary's big hook was Parton, who Steve had mentioned earlier, Parton originally actually wanted to buy Merriam Webster and his plan was to pulp the Third and reprint the Second which was released in 1934, and just move straight onto the Fourth, and the Fourth was not going to be this sort of hippie Commie, pinko, anything goes dictionary. It was going to be a right proper dictionary, and he couldn't buy out the company. So he started his own dictionary and the Usage Panel was the hook. This was a group of editors, writers, journalists, linguists -- Steve:                   -- linguists, poets. In later days we added crossword puzzle makers, basically people who made their living off using language in, in, in some fashion. I mean we all use language but as you know, as part of, as part of their life's work. Kory:                     And this usage panel is queried pretty regularly to -- basically American Heritage will send them questionnaires and say, how would you use, or is this particular example of decimate, let's say, correct or incorrect, or in what context would you consider this incorrect? Steve:                   And these ballots are tabulated and these percentages where relevant, find their way into Usage Notes at various words throughout the dictionary. I'm sure there's a note at various, which I probably just used incorrectly, but check out the Note and see. So, if you go to a word that you think has a styler usage issue, if you go to ahdictionary.com, look up that word, you'll probably see a Usage Note, you know, and you might see the Usage Panels' responses, and with some words like impact or contact where we have looked at these repeatedly over the years, you can see what the percentages were like in the sixties versus, you know, three years ago, if it was, you know, depending on whenever the last time it was balloted. And through this you can see how perceptions about languages change. If I could give a brief anecdote. Steve:                   Yeah, absolutely. Steve:                   So for example, tracking whether you pronounced the word HAIR-US or huh-RASS, 20, 30 years ago, the predominant form was HAIR-US. Steve:                   Huh! Steve:                   And then in the late nineties it was very split. And then the last time that we balloted it, huh-RASS was by far the preferred term. And you can see-- Kory:                     It was split as late as the late nineties? Steve:                   Yes. Steve:                   Well, I'm a hick, so I grew up saying huh-RASS-- Steve:                   Well, I'm a hick too. I was -- there will be a podcast where Kory and I talk about our variety of English we used growing up-- Kory:                     [laughter] About how they let hicks write dictionaries, too. So one of the interesting things though, I thought this was fascinating about the Usage Panel, is most people, and it was actually kind of advertised this way early on, most assumed that the Usage Panel's advice changed how the word was actually defined in the dictionary. And -- Steve:                   And that is so not the case. Steve:                   [[laughter] Steve:                   Uh, the Usage Panel had very little to not at all effect on the definition. Usually the definition within the Usage Note comes from the definition -- the Usage Note will repeat that definition and then talk about what the Usage Panel thinks about it. Sometimes the Panel results, when there's change over time, might cause the editors to look how a word is being defined and cause the editors to consider revising it or revising it, but that is one piece of the evidence and the definition isn't being rewritten on the basis of a judgment from the Panel alone. Also, the Panel is not deciding what words go in, what words are taken out. They are basically, there's maybe 400 words or so, 500 words, where they have weighed in on over the course of the past 50 years, and that information is included in the Notes, but this Panel is not responsible for the editorial decisions that are made. Kory:                     And I as a lexicographer did not actually realize that until I started learning more about the history of the American Heritage Dictionary. Because the perception is that Usage Panel is there to be prescriptive and that makes the dictionary itself prescriptive. Which my mind, I thought, well, that means that every part of that dictionary from, you know, the front matter to the back matter must be prescriptive. And in fact, it's not. The way that we define at Merriam Webster and the way that they define it American Heritage is pretty -- I mean, it's almost identical. We were all trained by the same people, Steve:                   Right? And, or the people who trained us, were trained. I mean there's this very small tradition, and we're not the only dictionary company that has these types of -- I mean we're the only one that calls them a Usage Panel, but the New Oxford American dictionary back when it was called that had an advisory panel that they got this type of information from. So we're certainly not the only dictionary to do it either. And by the same token, Oxford editors, were defining and they weren't being dictated how to define definitions based on what NOAD's advisory panel said. Kory:                     Right? So, so long story short, American Heritage / Merriam Webster actually very similar in spite of all of the marketing that would tell you otherwise. Steve:                   Speaking of marketing-- Steve:                   Oh, you're going to talk about one of my favorite things. Steve:                   So, about eight or nine years ago, when we were moving floors between the building that we were in, someone in marketing uncovered this footage from an ad campaign that was undertaken in the early seventies at the American Heritage Dictionary. It's like a 15 minute clip and it's done in the style of Laugh-In [[Kory laughs]], marketing the dictionary. It's ridiculous. Oh, there's a link on Youtube which we'll include it on our podcast twitter page. We encourage you to check it out because it is a lot of fun. And I think part of the reason it was made was to in part combat this image that the dictionary was stodgy and you know, finger wagging. It's a lot of lighthearted, ridiculous fun, and it's very seventies. Kory:                     It is so 70. So Steve and I will, when we're working, we usually have a chat window open and every once in a while we just send each other random links and usually it's to like eighties new wave or drag parodies of eighties new wave-- Steve:                   --or pharmaceutical ads. Steve:                   Oh, gosh, lots of those. Steve:                   One of the things I do for the American Heritage Dictionary is the pronunciations, and one way to find out how, various generic names of drugs are pronounced is by going to the pharmaceutical company's website and seeing their, their promos about them, but they're ridiculous. So we'll share these links back and forth. Kory:                     But so Steve, you know, chat window is open and I'm working and I get a random link from Steve and I look at it and then I get a text from him that says, did you get that link? You have to watch the link. And I watched the link and I, I watched it twice, all the way through and I was shrieking through it, which caused great -- my dog came running in and wanted to know what was wrong. It is phenomenal. So if you do nothing else but watch that video after this podcast, then Steve and I can both die happy people. So, okay, so if that's how dictionaries are written and everyone assumes that dictionaries are prescriptive, then the question is why don't dictionary companies give the people what they want and write a prescriptive dictionary? Steve:                   Um, I think in part the audience would be far smaller than most people realize [[Kory laughs]] and dictionary companies have essentially done that with various style guides that have come out, which focus on the do this, not that. The problem is, and the author and linguist and educator Steve Pinker discusses this in A Sense of Style, is that there are some rules that, well, where do you draw the line? For some people, you know, they will never split infinitives for other people, it's totally cool because this is a part of what you do. Uh, so there, there's this, every style guide becomes this where the line is drawn, we accept this but not this, and you can say this, but you can't say this. And it comes down basically to that editorial board or single author's opinion. Kory:                     Right? And you know, modern dictionaries are staff written and they're staff written specifically so that there is not any individual person's bias present, either with regard to cultural mores or with regard to language. And we all have these biases -- biaSEES? biaSIS? I've suddenly gone British, we all have them, anyway, even lexicographers. So, the idea of a prescriptive dictionary not only goes against all of the training that modern lexicographers have, but you know, really that's not what a dictionary should do. If you want prescriptivism, get a style guide, get a usage dictionary, get a bunch of usage dictionaries, and compare them. That's the best way really. Steve:                   In my book, in the book that I wrote Is English changing -- there's a chapter about style guides and usage books and other reference sources. And in there I distinguish between the types of rules. A rule of grammar is one that you don't have to be taught if you're the native speaker of a language, you just know it. You know, as a native speaker of English that the proper sentence structure is "The cat is on the mat" and not "The the on mat cat," for example. That-- Steve:                   Wow, you did that so naturally. Steve:                   --is no one really, no one has ever taught you that that is the rule. Steve:                   Right. Steve:                   But if you were learning Romanian, as an English speaker, you would learn that words like "the" go after the noun and not before. Kory:                     They do? Steve:                   Yes. Kory:                     I didn't know that. Steve:                   Yes. Kory:                     Dang Romanian. Steve:                   Yeah. Steve:                   Oof. Yeah. You also, the other thing that is so fascinating about dictionaries is that a lot of people, when they want prescriptivism, Steve, has alluded to this, but they don't actually want word level prescriptivism. They want sentence level prescriptivism. They want us at the entry for "infinitive" to include a thing saying don't split them or at "preposition" a note saying don't end sentences with them, and that's actually -- dictionaries only work on the word level. We do not talk about these broader style issues. We don't even talk about whether you should hyphenate "terracotta" or not. Decisions go into that. Steve:                   Actually, the two examples you mentioned are the two exceptions [[Laughter.] to that. At American Heritage, we do have a note at "split infinitive" and one at "preposition" about that just because-- Kory:                     Editorial notes not Usage Notes? Steve:                   Oh no, Usage Notes. Kory:                     Oh, Usage Notes I think are different. I mean, like when people, you know, people go buy a paperback dictionary for a dollar and they want this in there. Yeah. They and they want that kind of advice. They want someone to say don't split infinitives. They want someone to explain the difference between restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses. They, and that's not, I mean, dictionaries really have never done that. That's always been the province of grammar books and what we now call usage dictionaries. So, so what we're saying is just buy more dictionaries. Steve:                   Right? And to further to the point, for example, where I grew up, I did not distinguish well between "lie" and "lay." Kory:                     Right. Steve:                   And when it comes to the past tenses, I still have to look them up every time. This is an example of a type of speech that people expect you to use in certain contexts. And for that, there are style guides, or in the case of verbs where you actually show inflections in the dictionary matter, that is kind of their point. The part of Michigan where I grew up in, your past participle form of "buy" is "boughten" and I, and I speak not only of store boughten bread, but I will utter, "I have boughten blah, blah, blah, blah, blah" if I'm not thinking about it, because that is a quote unquote rule I had to unlearn. Kory:                     Right, and dictionaries don't, I mean, you're a general dictionary, you are trying to cover as much of the language as generally as possible, and if you start squeezing in on the prescriptive ideas of what language is, yes, you, you alienate a bunch of people, most of whom do not speak standard English, because standard English is actually a written form and we can have a whole podcast about that, too. But you know, you want to be broad and that means that you can't get into style guide issues because those change constantly. Steve:                   And, and they do change constantly. I think the Chicago manual style is just up to its 17th printing. The Associated Press Style Book is updated every single year. And there are so many different style guides and usage dictionaries. And, you're right, why pick one? You should get a variety of opinion there, see what different people are saying. There are a few issues pretty much everyone agrees on. Try to get everyone to agree on an Oxford Comma and you'll start a fight. You know, everyone has an opinion about that. So part of it is if you work for a place that has a communication staff, chances are they either have an internal style guide or they say follow the AP or the Chicago Manual or what have you, and refer to those to arbitrate decisions. And not every style guide is absolute. You can say you're going to follow the AP, and the AP editors say this all the time: "We're a guide, you know, for our AP editors, if you follow AP, but you're in-house style has a different thing, fine. Use It, use it. Just be consistent. Right? Kory:                     Right. So to sum up dictionaries, descriptive, we're sorry, that upsets you. We will actually tweet a bunch of links to some of these usage dictionaries and style guides we've been talking about. We will tweet links to Pinker's book and to David Skinner's book. Steve:                   And to this wonderful ad from the seventies. Steve:                   Oh my gosh. It really, guys, really is the most amazing ad. It really -- oh, it's so good. See you next time! Steve:                   Thank you! Bye!  

In this post and podcast episode, we'll be diving into the idea of writing rules and when you can break them. I was honestly surprised with where I landed on this. Keep reading and see if you agree! We've all heard that phrase: "Learn the rules; then you can break them." Or something like it. But how do you know what the rules are? And when can you actually break them?   This post contains affiliate links, which means I may earn a commission if you purchase something by clicking through.  WHY THERE AREN'T REALLY WRITING RULES We live in a time period where things are much more open. Language is changing and has been affected by social media and texting. (Don't feel too upset by this because language is always changing. People were mad at Shakespeare in his day. It's not a new problem!)  There are also different schools of rules. Personally, I adhere to the Chicago Manual of Style for my punctuation and grammar. While others might use the MLA or AP or something else. These don't all agree! (It's a good idea to find out which of these your particular niche uses so you can also adhere to the common guide in your niche!) RULES & EXPECTATIONS The rules we will be talking about today are really more of expectations that your readers have for your particular genre, niche, or medium. When you write a query to an editor and you have two spaces after a period, they may not read your manuscript. PERIOD. They are too busy to read everything and this choice gives them an easy out to toss your manuscript. When you buck the expectations and the rules, you are sending a message. Usually that message is- I'm ignorant OR I don't care. Neither is a good thing. Writer in another group talked about just not understanding why people care about punctuation and spelling. "It's about story," she argued. But readers won't read your story if there are tons of errors. It tells people that you are careless and that you haven't taken the time or effort to do the bare minimum. Same with covers. Constantly in writer's groups, people are saying things like "What do you think of my cover?" And when the responses are, "Hire a designer," they say "No." Cover matter. Period. They sell books. They set expectations. They keep people from buying books. LESSONS I LEARNED ABOUT RULES I personally was surprised (as a rebel) to find freedom in following the genre rules. I started writing clean fiction under a pen name in December. I'm a writer by instinct first, so I wrote, then realized that I had messed up some big conventions and expectations. Namely that one of my short stories didn't have a Happily Ever After ending. THEY MUST in this genre. Typically these books also switch back and forth between the perspectives of the two characters falling in love. I normally like a close third narration sticking to ONE character. This was hard for me. Both were actually hard--I like resolution, but not necessarily happy endings. I also like my choice for sticking to one character. FREEDOM WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK But I found that when I started writing within what seemed like strict confines, I wrote better. I wrote faster. In fact, I've published two full novels in 2018, with the third coming out in June. In addition to two short stories in December. I wrote almost 30k words this past week. I believe MUCH of this had to do with the freedom and framework I found in sticking to the conventions. REFRAMING THE RULES If you are struggling with rules (like me), see if you can reframe. This is a way of sort of tricking your mind by giving something another name and a different association. Call the rules expectations. Call them a framework or best practices. Do what it takes to help wrap your brain around finding and sticking to the rules that you need to for your niche, genre, or medium. Just know that for most of these things, you need to fit into expectations if you want to ever SELL things and connect with an audience. WHEN YOU CAN BREAK THE RULES AND BUCK EXPECTATIONS It's important to note that rules can be broken. New things can emerge. Now we are talking about disruption. Disruptive innovation is when something changes in the market that makes a huge impact. Brand new markets for different kinds of customers. Netflix is an example. They first disrupted the video stores and shut them DOWN. Then they doubled down on streaming and within a few years, TV will be totally different. (My opinion.)  As content creators, writing an unexpected blog post or type of book is more a micro-disruption. You might choose to do something outside the rules and find great success because of the contrast. But generally speaking, if you want an audience and/or money, you should know the expectations and do your best to meet them. The three times you can break the rules are when you are: Famous Genius Lucky Those are typically the only ways that breaking the rules will mean success. You're famous and already have an audience of raving fans, you can do whatever you want. You're a genius and you happen to stumble upon disruptive innovation that WORKS and changes the game. Or...you're lucky. You happen to break a rule at the right time or get in front of the right audience or have some crazy stroke of luck. Often there is hard work behind luck. But sometimes there is just...luck. It just happened to work, even though it shouldn't have. DO NOT BASE WHAT YOU DO ON THESE OUTLIERS. You can't look at what someone famous does and say, "Well, breaking the rules worked for THEM." If you see someone breaking the rules successfully, chances are they are famous, a genius, or lucky. You'll do best to stick to best practices, not base your decisions on the outliers and minority finding success breaking the rules. BREAKING THE RULES CAN BE SELFISH When it comes down to it, if you are breaking the rules because you feel like you need to for your art, you are being selfish. You are putting yourself ahead of your readers. You might say that you're writing for art, not for money. That's fine. But following the rules is NOT just about money. Expectations and rules are a gift to your readers. In some ways breaking the rules isn't just about art, it's about YOU. You are thinking of YOURSELF first when you break the rules. Readers have expectations and they may be best served when you follow the expectations of your niche or genre, whether that's clean romance or the kind of blog you write or even within podcasts. GO OUT AND CREATE CONTENT YOU LOVE THAT SERVES YOUR PEOPLE WELL.  I'd love to hear in the comments if you agree/disagree with this idea of freedom within the rules or my strong statement that breaking the rules can be selfish! {ducks head waiting for tomatoes to be thrown}   LINKS I MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE-   Emma St. Clair - my pen name for clean romance Two free short stories by Emma St. Clair - referenced as not fully adhering to conventions Two spaces after a period Bad reviews given to famous works Disruptive Innovation The Writing Life - being open to cover changes by Robert Kugler Tim Storm & Storm Writing School KDP Rocket - a tool I use for keywords (I'm an affiliate and happy user!!) Go On Write - great affordable covers (I use his branding package) German Creative on Fiverr - affordable cover designs Write to Market - book by Chris Fox

体例，编辑和校对的工作手册，写作者和设计师的参考指南——不仅是巨细靡遗的文本规范，更是逻辑缜密的风格系统。体例又因语言文字、题材体裁、媒介品牌而异，百家争鸣——今日我们管窥一斑，概览几部权威体例，为听众提供些许线索。 第二十轮抽奖活动开启，截至 3 月 12 日零时前。本期奖品为 Type is Beautiful 编辑 Mira 的译作《字体设计艺术：西文字体排印五讲》。 参考链接 Graphic 社編輯部、葉忠宜編著．《Typography 字誌 Issue 04：手寫字的魅力》．台灣：臉譜出版社，2018 年． Hart’s Rules，泛指牛津大学出版社出版的风格指南系列—— 原型为 Horace H. Hart 在 1893 年编纂出版的 Hart’s Rules for Compositors and Readers at the University Press, Oxford 后经 Robert M. Ritter 再编纂，于 2002 年出版为 The Oxford Guide to Style 2003 年，The Oxford Guide to Style (2002) 和 The Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors(2000) 合编，更名为 The Oxford Style Manual 并出版 2005 年，改版为 New Hart’s Rules: The Handbook of Style for Writers and Editors（2014 年亦有再版） 2012 年后，改版为 New Oxford Style Manual（2014 年和 2016 年亦有再版） The Chicago Manual of Style（芝加哥风格指南） APA Style（美国心理学会风格） AP Stylebook（美联社体例书） 知乎上关于引用性分句的后引号与逗号位置关系的问题 〈Case 不是小 case〉，《字谈字畅》第三十三期 TiB (tebibyte) Apple Style Guide Microsoft Manual of Style 《科学出版社作者编辑手册》．北京：科学出版社，2004 年． 新华通讯社译名室编．《英语姓名译名手册》（第四版）．北京：商务印书馆，2014 年． 《標準　校正必携》（第 8 版）．日本エディタースクール，2011 年． Lexique des règles typographiques en usage à l'Imprimerie nationale The Elements of Style 吉姆·克劳斯（Jim Krause）著，‎应宁译．《字体设计艺术：西文字体排印五讲》．北京：机械工业出版社，2017 年． 《字谈字畅》第十九轮抽奖结果 主播 Eric：字体排印研究者，译者，Type is Beautiful 编辑 蒸鱼：设计师，Type is Beautiful 编辑 欢迎与我们交流或反馈，来信请致 podcast@thetype.com。如果你喜爱本期节目，也欢迎用 PayPal 或支付宝向我们捐赠，账户与联络信箱一致：podcast@thetype.com。

Content style guides and voice and tone definitions have been a strong asset in content strategists' toolkits for years. They are vital to align stakeholders on content. But Jason Fox believes many content style guides are flawed, just like the principle of the content style guide. We talk with Jason Fox, a UX writer based in Denver, about his grievances with content style guides, and voice and tone definitions in particular and come up with tactics to improve the concept and the implementation. LinksJason's Medium postMailchimp's style guideTranscriptOne of the staples of content strategy is the content style guide. In it, we define the consistent voice of the organisation and the tone we should take in specific situations. They also define how to use different types of content, how elaborate or concise we can be with words and perhaps point out some specific grammar or vocabulary use. We need style guides to align stakeholders on content.I think it’s fair to say that the most famous content styleguide is the one from MailChimp. The online documentation covers guidelines, from how to use alt text to how to write legal copy.The document is beautiful and makes a lot of sense. But it’s also, huge. You can find it on styleguide.mailchimp.com. I’ll also put a link in the shownotes, which can be found on efficientlyeffective.fm.And then, I came across a Medium post by Jason Fox. According to him, voice and tone guides are overrated, a waste of money, useless. Wow!With the examples he references in his post, I do get where he’s coming from. Let me name a few. In content style guides, writers are being told to ‘Have fun’, ‘be authentic’ and ‘be badass baby’. Well yeah, that does feel a bit weird. He also quotes styleguides that propose you ‘Avoid jargon, trendy constructions and buzzwords’ - these pointers are basic knowledge, according to Fox.I was intrigued, perhaps even startled, and I had questions. So here we are, Jason Fox! Please tell us who you are, and maybe also: who do you think you are for writing this?Jason Fox: “Who do I think I am and who am I... Thank you so much for having me, I am a writer based in Denver, Colorado. I have a lot of experience working in the marketing and advertising world and also in the last several years I've had the opportunity to help write words for software.I think that having that experience in the marketing world and in the product world maybe informed the feelings that I had toward voice and tone style guides. Really that article that I wrote I think ... I don't blame you, I guess, for being startled by the article when I was writing it. I was like, "Do I really want to write this? Is this going to be something that's going to stick with me, that I'll have to have conversations with-"”Saskia: “Yes you do.”Jason: “Yes I do. It's one of the first. I've imagined how I would have this conversation with potential clients. They're like, "We read this article where you said that we don't need a voice and tone style guide and that doesn't seem to make much sense."So I don't know if it's maybe doing more harm than good for my career but where I was coming from with that piece is that to go all the way back when I graduated college in 2010 with a degree in writing I thought, "Okay great. Who's going to hire me and what am I going to write?"I didn't necessarily have any ambitions of going into journalism or into even marketing or advertising. I just went out into the world with the ability to write and wanted to see who needed me to write for them. I realized over time that a lot of the projects that you got involved in early on as a writer are those projects where you can convince people that you are able to sound like a subject matter expert." Or that you are able to provide them with a particular writing service that they need. Very early on there was this feeling of not necessarily being a con artist but in a way it's like being a con artist. Like this copywriter con artist where you're selling people these writing services and often times you need to convince yourself that it's something that they need, and you have to convince them that it's something that they need. I think in that process you might arrive at something that is maybe more than what they need.I started to see this in myself, selling voice and tone style guides to brands. These very large, inflated documents that took a significant amount of time to develop. Especially as the field of UX writing became more popular I noticed that developing voice and tone style guides became more of a necessity. But also more of a skillset that professional writers were using to market themselves to potential clients and to jobs. Then there was this reaction to that where it seemed like companies were beginning to become convinced that they needed to hire somebody with the specific skillset of writing a voice and tone style guide. As all that was happening I would be in meetings. We'd have multiple meetings talking about voice and tone style guides. Everybody in the company was involved in different nuances of how to develop it. I remember sitting with my friend at a bar one evening and we just broke down what a style guide actually could be and how much of it is really just bullshit. When I say bullshit, I mean there's a lot I think in some style guides that can be trimmed away. I guess that was the impetus for wanting to write an article like that."Saskia: “So it's a frustration that has been growing inside of you for a while now after having created a few style guides, perhaps also having to have worked with style guides that other people have created you had to follow?”Jason:  “Yeah. I think that sort of dual experience of writing a style guide that is going to be forced upon writers and then being the writer who is having the style guide directed at them, those two feelings. Which I cannot understand to a certain extent. But I kept trying to compare it to, I wouldn't ask, I don't know, a developer to write a document outlining his understanding of ruby syntax. There's just so much that was built into style guides and the notion of style guides, from my experience, that I was experiencing that was just I think common sense. I think that should be left to the abilities of a writer rather than a document. I don't know. Part of me wants to argue that you should hire good writers rather than hire one writer to create a document that will make anybody the writer that you need.”Saskia: “You mentioned that for you it often felt like bullshit. Can you further define ‘bullshit’ for me? What are particular elements or triggers for you to call bullshit on a style guide?Jason:  “My God. Going in that direction I think it's important to say that style guides are about consistency and about consistency within the context of a brand and consistency within the context of multiple collaborators on a product. I will also preface my bullshit by saying that there are many writers that I really admire who are I think ... Would be able to maybe sway me away from some of the things that I think are bullshit. But maybe not, I don't know.Some of the things that I think are just unnecessary would be like telling a writer to have fun and be playful. The statements that you see in style guides where they're giving you these very broad, sweeping, very ridiculous-sounding ways to use language, I put together this collection in the article that you're referencing of guidelines that say things like, "Make friends by talking to your customer in a caring and friendly tone." Or to have fun by engaging customers with playful language. I think that that stuff is just ridiculous. I don't think that any writer should ever be condescended to in that way. If you have a writer that you need to instruct in that way you should maybe consider transitioning then maybe into a training role where they're learning a little bit more rather than drafting a copy that's going to get shipped to a product. Also, I think a lot of the rules around clarity and simplicity I think can be attributed or not attributed, but can be removed from a voice and tone style guide because I think that any writer who has made it to the point where they've been hired by a company to write copy for software should understand the principles of writing clearly and succinctly. In the absence of those skills within a writer there's references that exist already. There's the Strunk and White Elements of Style. There are very well fleshed out style guides, associated press style guides and MLA, Chicago Manual of Style or so many different types of style guides that I think that it's okay to just refer writers to those resources that already exist. And then within your own documentation to have guidelines and rules that are very unique and specific to your brand, to the restrictions of your software and your process.Especially when it comes to UX writing, especially with developing copy for mobile. There are a lot more restrictions where I think there's probably room to have that type of documentation.”Saskia: “Obviously there's a difference between UX copy and for instance marketing copy and newsletter copy. I think that a lot of the examples that you mentioned in your article feel very marketing-y right?”Jason:  “Mm-hmm.”Saskia: “In that sense, maybe for marketing writers it's still quite useful to have those pointers. But you will also need not only to hear like, "You have to write in a caring, friendly tone." But what is that exactly? I think I would personally still find that okay to read in a style guide as long as it was more defined and also had some examples like, "This is what we mean by that and this is on the other side of that. So, this is too much, or this is too little of that." How do you feel about that? Do you think that for some writing roles it's still useful?”Jason:  “Yeah. I think that's a good point and I think it's interesting because in the context of marketing it can very much be used I think as a helpful resource for writers, for managing writers. I think it can also be helpful for writers to manage the marketers around them. Oftentimes as a brand evolves and as their voice evolve marketing wants to exert more influence over all the messaging in every channel that messaging goes out through. That would even be in newsletters and in some of the more marketing-related assets. I think that for a writer to be able to create this touchstone document where you say, "Here's how we have defined having fun with our audience." As long as there are sufficient examples and not a very generic statement of how to have fun I can see some purpose there. But again, I think that it would be very important to support that type of guidance with clear examples.I think that oftentimes those types of guidelines just come from a place of, "We need to tell the writer that we are an easygoing brand or a brand that doesn't insult its customers, or doesn't use stern language with its customers." I think that, I don't know, it should go beyond that because those are things that again I think have been covered in other style guides. Any writer who's made it to the point that they're writing for a brand probably already understands. But yeah, I do think that it can be helpful. And I think like I said there are some very unique use cases for different brand voices that should be documented. So it's unique to your brand. I suppose that the issues that I have are with the very blanket statements and the things that don't need to be said that are often said I just think maybe for the sense of saying them. I don't know why they're said, I don't know.”Saskia: "I think sometimes it could also be to remind the writer who they are working for themselves. As a reminder what the company is like because a brand itself doesn't necessarily always define that outspokenly. And then you have this document that says like, "We treat our customers like friends," - which is also a quite ridiculous statement. But also you would never read that literally in marketing copy. But as a reminder how what the stance is of an organization towards their customers?”Jason:  “I sometimes feel like these documents are trying to take the place of conversations and collaboration rather than having a document handed to me by a designer or by a product owner or something like that. I think it would be much more helpful to have a way for them to integrate their work process with mine so that I'm not stepping on anyone's feet but that I can still have conversations about what it means to write in a particular channel for the brand without someone saying, "Just look at the style guide." I want to have those conversations, I want to be able to work with people and to not rely only on a static document. But to continue to discover new ways to write about a company without I think saying that it's already been defined and just shut up and read the voice and tone style guide.”Saskia: “I really like the sound of that because something that is also some feedback that you sometimes get as a style guide creator is that people don't always read it. So if you create it for your client as a freelancer and then half a year later you come back and then maybe just one person has read it and the other people just maybe glanced at it and never used it. So it's also not very useful. So I like the idea of what you're saying, of making it more like a way of working together.”Jason:  “Yeah. And I think the ability to have some kind of living documentation, whether it's in a Google document or on paper or in some sort of evolving prototype. Like if you're working in InVision where you can have conversations both about interfaces and about copy that's used in the interfaces. I think outside of the context of having those living documents where people can have conversations, one thing I guess I left out would be Slack channels. I think having an understanding of the processes that people who are working on a product adhere to because depending on a particular individual's project or skill set they have a different approach. A UX designer would have a human-centered design process with six or seven different steps. I think having a place where you can outline those steps, I mean they would generally be something like empathize, define, ideate, develop, validate and iterate and then repeating on those last two steps.I think that having that type of process outlined in a document somewhere and maybe being able to annotate where a writer fits within that process and where a designer fits and where a developer fits within that process can be much more helpful than at the beginning of the process giving the writer a style guide and saying, "At the end of the process we expect you to have filled our application with copy that adheres to this." I think that at each stage when you're going through the ideation of building up personas and brainstorming are you doing it in a way that the writer can have input and can have conversations with developers and designers and with the entire team in a way that's not stepping on their feet? It's not like, "Well let me later on jump into sketch and edit your design files in a way that you're not going to understand and that's going to hurt the design."I found that being able to outline those processes and figure out where everybody fits is maybe more helpful. Because then it allows room for the discussions that I think sometimes style guides try to take the place of.”Saskia: “That's super interesting. It seems that you really pulled it from a marketing place to a more UX place with an approach like that. But it makes sense. I feel that when I first came across voice and tone guides it still was more like a content strategy UX thing and it kind of got sucked away towards marketing. And we're kind of reclaiming it with an approach like this so, yay for revolution!”Jason:  “I think the same could be applied to marketing as well. There's different stages of the marketing campaigns depending on what you're working on.“Saskia: “I was thinking that also for ownership it's a much better thing. Because there's more people working on it instead of just someone throwing this document at you and saying, "Follow it." Whilst when you have this thing that you're working on, this process that you're collaborating on then it's also your document in the broad sense of the word. It's also your style guide that way.”Jason:  “Yeah I think you're right. Yeah you're right. That's interesting. Wasn't that the initial purpose of a style guide, was to align your stakeholders, align all the people on a project and get them to agree and to take ownership over the voice and tone? But then what happens is that you produce the document and it's static and it gets old. People leave, new people come and it loses the shared ownership. That makes sense.”Saskia: “In the process we're just redefining this whole thing that maybe does have a place in our world, in good UX and good content after all. As long as we're doing it right right?”Jason:  “I guess in that way I have resold myself on the idea of voice and tone. Style guidance.”Saskia: “Let's say if your boss asks you next Monday, "Hey Jason, we actually need a style guide, a voice and tone guide." What will you say?”Jason:  “I would say let's talk about it. I would say that I think that there are probably some very specific reasons why we might want to document how we write about particular things. It might be really nice to have a glossary with examples and I think that there are some interesting ways that we can supplement a voice and tone style guide or maybe bypass one entirely by working together differently. I would say, let's talk about it. Let's understand why we think we need it, how we might benefit from it. Maybe ways of doing it that become less restrictive and actually help us write better copy rather than feel like we're being handed a document that we ultimately won't use all that much. The feeling that I've had from the style guides that I've written and that have been given to me are that you read it once and then you forget about it.It's a nice thing to look at and to be like, "Oh okay, I guess that makes sense." I think I myself have very rarely needed to use one as a constant resource and I have very rarely given a style guide to someone who said, "I use this every day." Or something along those lines, yeah.”Saskia: “Same. I think I'm not bad at sensing what an organization is about and what their character is like, what their traits are. To be honest with you, I might be the same and I would take this document and say “thank you” and then just browse through it, skim through it really quickly and then just go like, "Yeah I get it." But to really, really go deeply into it, I don't know. At the same time it's also probably for some organizations a fallback mechanism. It still is a good thing to have in whatever way, to have some sort of style guide or style process documentation or whatever. If there's more than one person writing copy, UX copy, marketing copy, whatever. It's always good to have something to point to like, "Yeah but this is what we mean and this is what we are like." That's why I still think it has a place in what we do and… where was I going with this?”Jason:  “I could sense it. While you were talking I was thinking about a conversation that I'd read in this Slack channel. I don't know. Maybe it's related, maybe my mind was wandering but I think it's related to the direction you were going in. Someone was asking about style guides and whether or not he should try to convince his company that they needed one. He just needed some feedback. There was this guy, Val Klump who works at Gusto. He was talking about how at Gusto they have these three different types of style guides. He said there's a copy style guide, a voice guide and a UX writing guide. Then he broke it down even further and he said that the style guide is just grammar and spelling and whatever special copy cases might exist for the company. The voice guide had attributes of the voice and specifically his company uses like four adjectives.Then there were examples of great writing that showcase those. And then within UX, writing it was primarily like screenshots with hyper-specific rules that were only relevant to the product. I was just then directly quoting Val.There certainly is a place for those very specific and purposeful types of documents. Then you need someone talented and committed, somebody like Val to maintain those documents because I think as brands evolve, like I said, marketing will want to have an influence over those documents and different people. Different people across the organization will want to change it or manipulate it or add footnotes to it. So having somebody as a gatekeeper to those types of things is important. This makes me think of the Mailchimp style guides. I don't know if you've had a chance to look at them?”Saskia: “Oh yeah.”Jason:  “You probably have, yeah. They're magnificent. For whatever reason they have two of them and they're massive. I just can't imagine who's in charge of maintenance for those and that's ... You create a style guide and if you're really going to do it well you almost need a person specifically hired just to maintain it.”Saskia: “That's true. They're impressive documents right?”Jason:  “Yeah they can be.”Saskia: “Maybe for a small company that's also just too much. It's just too much overhead, it's too much hassle. Perhaps you can just all fit it on a one pager or so or fit the most important stuff on one page. But then again we needed a process, we needed the communication and the conversation.”Jason:  “The size of an organization dictating their need for a style guide and also the scope of what their style guide will look like. Because I think a lot of the issue that I have with style guides is I see a lot of freelance writers trying to sell smaller brands and agencies use very elaborate style guides, something that would be similar to a Mailchimp or a list apart style guide that would take weeks to develop and thousands of dollars when really it's not the right fit for a smaller brand. Whereas an enormous company like Mailchimp where there's content everywhere in so many different potential areas where copy could fail the user I guess it makes sense to have a much more comprehensive document. But not everybody needs that. It could be like you said just a one-pager for a particular brand. So maybe understanding what you need is helpful.”Saskia: “Absolutely. So to wrap it up what do we want organizations and people who create style guides to remember from this?”Jason:  “I suppose one of the things, one of the issues that really rubbed me the wrong way, that led me to write the article, is at a lot of times I felt like a voice and tone style guide was designed to micro-manage a writer away from actually being involved in some of the more interesting aspects of developing a product or developing a campaign or engaging with people in the company. It felt like it was a way to isolate the writer so that the writer wasn't always tapping somebody on the shoulder. I would say that consider what you need a voice and tone style guide for and what your ultimate objective is for it.”Saskia: “That's also an interesting point by the way that you just made. They use it so that a writer can use independently but then still if you would use it that way still have the danger that they might misinterpret what you wrote in that style guide. It's just not a waterproof document.”Jason:  “I guess that leads to maybe a very broad piece of advice would be don't let the voice and tone style guide replace conversations and look for areas where you can very consistently use the voice and tone style guide to improve basic units of language so that mistakes aren't made so that you don't ... If you have an application that is going to be tracking a user's location you want to be very sensitive toward privacy and anxiety. There's probably a very specific set of language rules that you want to adhere to that are different from an application. That maybe helps, I don't know, I'm going to come up with some insane example. Helps a user find a recipe for dinner or something like that. It's a much different set of considerations. I think identifying what you really need the guide for and not just what you think you need it for and who you think the guide is going to impress. Sometimes I think the guides are sold up to executives and other people or maybe an agency might sell it to a client to say, "Look, we're actually working really hard."”Saskia: “Overall we'd rather have a conversation than a static document. But might I just conclude by saying that that conversation should maybe be ‘caring’, ‘friendly’ and maybe a little ‘badass, baby’?Jason:  “Yes, okay. I will allow it.”Saskia: “Just this once.”Jason:  “Yes.”Saskia: “Thank you so much Jason.”Jason:  “Thank you Saskia. It was wonderful speaking with you!”That’s it for this episode. We’d love to hear your ideas about content styleguides and how we could improve on them. Share your thoughts in the comment section on efficientlyeffective.fm or on Twitter.If you like what we do and want to support us, there’s a few things you can do: you can subscribe to us in your podcast app, review us on itunes or tell a friend that they have to listen to Efficiently Effective.We’re @effectivepod on Twitter and we love seeing your tweets. No really, just letting us know that you’re listening, commenting on the show or sharing it, like some of you already did, really means a lot to us, you have no idea! Thank you so much to everybody who gave us some love on Twitter the last couple of months. We love you!Editing and technical help by Sander Spolspoel. Music by Kevin McLeod at Incompetech.com.Efficiently Effective is a production by the Dutchess  

It's (nearly) over now...Star Wars Rebels is in its homestretch and we have plenty to say about it! Why are The Ones from Mortis back? What will happen when Ezra meets the Emperor? What is the final fate of our heroes? We go over the air dates, episode titles, descriptions and make predictions about the finale of this epic series, but not before admitting our blood runs thick with mortadella, and daring each other to get our midi-chlorians tested. Godspeed Rebels! Did anybody order a Loveburger? The Star Wars Party Starts NOW! It's time for Brews and Blasters. Also in This Episode: We’re drinking Woodford Reserve Blind Box figure roulette Disney Vinylmation update Bob’s Burger figures Can’t Hardly Wait retrospective Star Wars references in the 1998 movie! Did anyone order a Loveburger? Baby update What if the Emperor was an Ob/Gyn Choosing baby names We have some good ideas. Midi-chlorian counts Toys R Us are closing stores Who is really looking for action figures in 2018? Remember Cap Gun He-Man? Rian Johnson’s Bookshelf and The Last Jedi Inspiration Chris and Joe geek out about Rian having The Jedi Path& The Book of Sith. Then Joe really geeks out about the Chicago Manual of Style (16th Edition). Dr. Evazan went to college for 7 years to be the man he became. The End of Star Wars Rebels Looking back on Kevin Kiner’s best work.The final trailer for Rebels This is it. Ian McDiarmid is coming back! Why are The Ones from Mortis back?! Get ready for the final episodes with “Joe watches the Mortis Arc” Air dates, episode titles, descriptions and predictions The final fate of Thrawn Who’s gonna die? The Jedi Council throws keg parties Ezra’s had the toughest time. The Master of Rejection He’s never got the breaks. Always had to try harder. Update on Darth Vader volume 2 Voicemail The wisdom of Wookiees…in Love The smoothness of Poe Dameron ANNOUNCEMENTS WE ARE ON SPOTIFY! Listen and subscribe for high-quality listening on all devices! New T-Shirt Styles Available Now! Subscribe iTunes | Stitcher | Google Play | Soundcloud | iHeart Radio TuneIn | RSS RetroZap Podcast Network! One feed to rule them all! iTunes | Google Play | RSS Social Connect with us and send us your selfies listening to the show, having a great sandwich, partying hard or grabbing some great figures #needemgotem. BrewsAndBlasters.ninja | Facebook | Facebook Group | Twitter | Instagram Contact Us Wanna talk Oppo Rancisis? Ask us some Star Wars questions? Ask us some Boston questions? Have a game for us to play? We wanna hear from you!! Email: brewsandblasters@retrozap.com Voicemail: (978) 219-6688 Support the Show If you like Brews and Blasters, the best way to support the show is to leave us an iTunes review. We know it's a pain, but it helps, honestly, because more people will find the show. If you take the time, we'll really, really appreciate. Plus, you'll win an Oppo Award! Godspeed Rebels!

2 Minute Tip: Confirm Value At the end of a presentation, I like to ask the audience, "Was this helpful?" or "Was this valuable?"   Usually there is still a lot of energy in the room and folks will answer with an enthusiastic, "Yes!"   Obviously, this is great for my ego, but it also does a couple other things. It gives the audience members a chance to acknowledge their own approval. They have now acknowledged that yes, this session was a good use of their time. They are also more likely to remember that it was valuable because they experienced saying it was valuable. Further, once folks say something out loud among other people, they are more likely to continue to believe it.   Post Tip Discussion: Avoid Offensive language   Among the updates to the 17th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style is a change to pronouns. They now consider "they" and "their" to be acceptable 3rd person, singular, gender-neutral pronouns. This got me thinking about the evolution of language.   Words and phrases that may have been common and acceptable a few years ago may no longer be appropriate in a professional context. It's important to remove those words from most presentations. They may be racially charged, ableist, homophobic, or offensive to another marginalized community.   Whether you see this as the growth of social justice and awareness or political correctness and oversensitivity run amuck is irrelevant. Using inflammatory language in your presentation, even unintentionally, can make you a less effective speaker. It can distract from your message and if you don't land your message or your call to action, then what was the point?   Mark Horstman of the Manager Tools podcast is fond of saying, "Communication is what the listener does."  The intent behind your words doesn't matter because the listener assigns value to your words based on their own experiences and point of view.   If you must include inflammatory language, do it intentionally, not accidentally. Do it because you have a specific goal you want to achieve with those words. Don't let simple neglect undermine your message. And make sure you know your audience and that your word choice is appropriate for it.   Call To Action   Was this valuable? Let me know in the comments below, or leave a message on the listener feedback line at 650-Talk-Tip. After your next presentation, ask your audience if they found it valuable. Watch your language for potentially offensive terms and purge them if need be. Don't get best...get better.

You've finally accepted that it's OK to use the singular 'they'--sometimes--but now you have to decide whether to use 'themself' or 'themselves.' Don't worry, the new Chicago Manual of Style has you covered, and we talk about it today. Also, I've been getting complaints about comma splices, so it's time for a refresher. Read the transcript at http://bit.ly/2ramGjn Check out all the Quick and Dirty Tips shows: www.quickanddirtytips.com/podcasts FOLLOW GRAMMAR GIRL Twitter: http://twitter.com/grammargirl Facebook: http://facebook.com/grammargirl Snapchat: http://snapchat.com/add/thatgrammargirl Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/realgrammargirl Instagram: http://instagram.com/thegrammargirl LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/grammar-girl GET GRAMMAR GIRL BOOKS http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-girl-book-page SHOPPING AT AMAZON ANYWAY? USE OUR AFFILIATE LINK AND HELP THE SHOW! http://quickanddirtytips.com/amazon TAKE OUR PODCAST LISTENER SURVEY http://podsurvey.com/GRAMMAR Grammar Girl is part of the Quick and Dirty Tips podcast network.

AP Style and Chicago Manual of Style Updates FOLLOW GRAMMAR GIRL Twitter: http://twitter.com/grammargirl Facebook: http://facebook.com/grammargirl Snapchat: http://snapchat.com/add/thatgrammargirl Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/realgrammargirl Instagram: http://instagram.com/thegrammargirl LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/grammar-girl GET GRAMMAR GIRL BOOKS http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-girl-book-page AMAZON AFFILIATE CODE http://quickanddirtytips.com/amazon TAKE OUR PODCAST LISTENER SURVEY http://podsurvey.com/GRAMMAR

Episode 82 of Inciting A Riot: the Podcast is a just-in-time-for-Halloween interview with the incomparable Dorothy Morrison - Pagan author, head witch of Wicked Witch Studios, and true southern lady. Topics discussed: Good Popes, Karma Cookies, Magic Kung-Fu, How to have an orgy, Derivative Pagan books, the Chicago Manual of Style is bullshit, Pity Pots, and Dorothy Morrison reveals a brand new spell to fix Congress!Check her out at:DorothyMorrison.comhttps://www.facebook.com/WickedWitchStudioshttps://www.facebook.com/pages/Dorothy-Morrison/42414023364*Swag Draw Reminder* Now through October 19 is the Samhain Swag Draw! Donate to support the Riot between now and October 19 and be entered to win one of 3 amazing prize packages. Full details, as well as links to all of our sponsors, can be found at: http://www.incitingariot.com/2013/09/samhain-swag-draw-2013.htmlLove and Lyte,Fire LyteIncitingARiot.comLike the Riot at Facebook.com/IncitingARiotPodcastFollow @IncitingARiot on Twitter

Style guides.

So, how do you feel when each of the following occurs? You come across a typo in a project document. You receive an e-mail that is pages and pages long. Someone hits Reply All and there are hundreds of people on copy. You're stuck in a meeting listening to a presenter who has mastered every business cliche in the book! Yuck. We're living in a business climate where writing skills matter so much but get so little attention. Tips for Better Business Writing Ever sit there in front of your monitor, your keyboard anxiously waiting for you to start typing your communication and you just feel stuck? Wouldn't it be great if there was a concise guide to improve your business writing? Thankfully, there is! My guest in this episode is Professor Bryan A. Garner. He is the author of over 20 books, including Garner's Modern American Usage, Black's Law Dictionary (editor-in-chief), and the grammar and usage chapter in the venerable The Chicago Manual of Style. Brian recently published The HBR Guide to Better Business Writing, published by Harvard Business Review Press. If you want to raise the bar and think outside the box to leverage best practices in business writing, well, um, just listen to this interview with Bryan! You can learn more about Bryan and his organization at http://www.lawprose.org. Thank you for joining me for this episode of The People and Projects Podcast! Have a great week! Total Duration 23:44 Download episode 91   Business Jargon Gone Wild It's so easy for me to succumb to bizspeak. In the spirit of mocking business jargon, here's a 2 minute video from some friends in the U.K.: {youtube}0MFUE0KgoEQ{/youtube} Sentimental-Fields 3 All Kinds Of Gibberish Sounds by The Superfools is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareALike License. Talk to Me by Jahzzar is licensed under a Attribution-ShareAlike License.

Renaissance 2010 as the basis for charter schools in poor neighborhoods; the main reasons for the depopulation of public schools; and who doesn't send their kids to charters. Length 16.8 minutes.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Now in its 16th edition, The Chicago Manual of Style is the must-have reference for everyone who works with words. On November 8th a panel of experts convened at International House to discuss both the history of this authoritative text and its relevance in an era where instantaneous global publication is only a tap, text, or tweet away. Audience participation was encouraged via live polling on matters of usage and style and submitting comments and questions via Twitter. The discussion was moderated by Alison Cuddy, host of WBEZ’s award-winning news magazine Eight Forty-Eight.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Now in its 16th edition, The Chicago Manual of Style is the must-have reference for everyone who works with words. On November 8th a panel of experts convened at International House to discuss both the history of this authoritative text and its relevance in an era where instantaneous global publication is only a tap, text, or tweet away. Audience participation was encouraged via live polling on matters of usage and style and submitting comments and questions via Twitter. The discussion was moderated by Alison Cuddy, host of WBEZ’s award-winning news magazine Eight Forty-Eight.

Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes 00:00:00 - Speaker 1: It’s very common that you want 3 views. You want a view which is temporal, what is the team working on this week? You want a view that’s personal, what is Mark thinking about right now? What does he want to have at hand. And then there’s a view which is subject base. What is the design of our sync system? And what link cards allow you to do is to have any given thing appear in each of those. 00:00:27 - Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to Meta Muse. Muse is a tool for deep work on iPad and Mac, but this podcast isn’t about Muse the product. It’s about the small team and the big ideas behind it. I’m Adam Wiggins here with my colleague Mark McGrenigan. Hey, Adam. So a little bit of news from the new product side. We recently released a feature called Linked Cards to everyone and been quite surprised and happy with how useful these have proven to be. It was in beta through the Backstage Pass with our pro members for a few months, but yeah, it just seems so valuable to everyone. We are really happy to launch it broadly, and that’s especially true within the Muse for teams. Context. So we’ll talk about that. We’ll talk about the future and our approach, and we’ll talk about some of these use cases that we’ve seen. But of course, we have to start with something philosophical and historical to set the context. So our topic today is linking. So, what comes to mind for you, Mark, when you hear that word? 00:01:26 - Speaker 1: That’s quite a rich set of precedents there. Perhaps the very first thing one thinks of is web links. Although, as we discussed, I don’t think that’s actually the closest case of prior art. Also comes to mind things like citations, but really dialing into linked cards, things like file system sim links, wiki backlinks, the knowledge graphs that you see in emerging knowledge management tools, things like that. 00:01:51 - Speaker 2: To me it’s an interesting topic because it is such a simple idea. It almost seems too simple. It’s just one place or work or piece of information is referencing another place or work or piece of information, but I think there is something very powerful emerges from that. I would say a lot of the current. Sort of tools for thought, excitement or revolution, if you want to call it that, and the productivity software space is largely built on the foundation of linking as a core idea, as well as the web, obviously, hypertext and hyperlinks, even though there’s much more to the web than just the link, that actually is a very foundational piece. And so it’s quite surprising what emerges from that. Yeah, you mentioned citations, be fun maybe to talk about that a little bit more towards the end, but I think that was sort of the original thing is, I don’t know, 1000 years ago, someone is writing a book and they want to reference another book or I don’t know, maybe it’s not even a book, maybe it’s a scroll and you just name it, right? You say the item titled this, maybe you give the author and when it was written as a way to kind of Hopefully unambiguously refer to this thing, and that implies that there is this greater canon of human knowledge, which indeed at some point we started to have a, if not unified, perhaps today you can say it’s a fairly unified sort of sphere of books and videos and newspaper articles and all that sort of thing. But yeah, you go back in history and just a simple idea of referencing another work that is not the one that you’re currently reading implies the larger sphere and indeed then you start to build this network and these connections and this implication of shared knowledge. So again, this one simple idea, just this simple reference of naming another thing from that comes this sort of giant hive mind of all human knowledge. 00:03:46 - Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think it’s really important because, as we’ve said many times on the podcast, knowledge is built up in this web. It’s not a linear process. It’s this very messy, organic, incremental growth of knowledge that happens over time, and so things like citations help reify that. 00:04:07 - Speaker 2: And Another piece of prior art that’s more on the technical side is file systems. I think this was probably my first exposure to thinking about links as a first class item. So in Unix you have what’s called the sim link or symbolic link. There’s also hard links, but we don’t necessarily need to get into those. On Windows you have something that are called shortcuts, which I think a lot of people are familiar with just because there’s a little kind of icon that indicates this isn’t the original item, this is a pointer to that item, and you often get that on your desktop, for example. The application doesn’t live on your desktop, you just have a, well, a shortcut to it there for convenience. And Mac also has something called aliases, although of course it’s also Unix under the hood, so you can use some links, but regardless, this idea of linking things together where a file lives in one place in the hierarchical file system or on your hard drive, but you can reference it from another, that was my first real exposure to both the power of it, but also sometimes can be confusing, or you can tie yourself in knots with, you know, circular references or whatever. 00:05:08 - Speaker 1: I think file systems are interesting because they illustrate, there’s actually several very different types of things that can be happening here. So let me enumerate them quickly. You can have a duplicate to make a copy of a file. You could potentially recognize that those copies are the same objects by content addressing. You can have a transparent pointer. This would be like aiming or an alias where The second object is of a different type. It has a little arrow thing. It’s not a regular icon, but when you, for example, double click on it, it opens the underlying pointed to objects. So it’s mostly but not entirely behaving like the original thing. And then you can have something that behaves exactly like the original thing. If you have the recent tab in your finder, for example, the items there are the same thing as when you go to the original location in your file system, it’s kind of a different view. So when we talk about linking, we’re often referring to one or more of these things. I think it’s useful to remember that there’s several quite different types of objects in play. And maybe one more that we could add is the actual file system path. This would be comparable to the HTTPS URL on the web. Some people call that a link, some people would say the actual underlying hyperlink thing where you click the link, but these are all different objects and they have different properties. 00:06:22 - Speaker 2: Yeah, I would call the path, but I would think of the generic term for that is the address. And within a single computer system you usually have this unified way to reference a file, which is the path. Actually I would argue citations are probably a place where you know there’s all these standards, right? You use the Chicago Manual of style or the this or that. Basically how you do a citation is actually there’s a lot of specific formats and if you mess it up, you get in trouble, especially if you’re trying to do a scientific work. But coming to the web, one of the things that is so miraculous there is this totally unified address format. So there’s links and links have appeared in a lot of different computer software, but maybe what makes the World Wide Web and HTML work so well is that you have the URL, the Uniform Resource locator. And that that single address is unique in the world, or at least in the internet, which is, you know, our digital world, and that now that that is deployed so universally both in desktop browser software, but also in APIs and so on, that if you just have that one string and you don’t need to understand how it works or how to break the pieces apart or even certainly how the packets are routed, you just know that your web request is going to go to where you need it to. Which is again quite a miraculous, not just technical achievement or design achievement, but really kind of human coordination achievement that we’ve managed to deploy that so widely. And probably as long as we’re talking about the history here worth just giving a quick nod to, you know, links and well, the term hyperlink was coined by Ted Nelson, who’s quite good at these rather bombastic terms. Tranclusion is another one of his that we use with some frequency. But then also, for example, Doug Engelbart’s NLS included a version of linking Hypercard. A lot of that is about how cards link together. And so there’s the web, I think rolls together or is the best manifestation of all of those ideas, but the history of it in computing goes back to really to almost the beginning. Now another invention from the 1990s, sort of piggybacking on the web is the wiki, right? And I think Ward Cunningham was the inventor of the first of these, and it certainly builds on that foundation of the web. But one thing it brought that’s unique is what I usually call the double bracket notations, the idea that you can put in brackets a keyword, a very human readable keyword that is a link to someplace else and not the entire internet. It’s not a complete Globally addressable address, but it more makes that keyword into something we’re saying there’s a reference for this in this system in this wiki. And one of the interesting things about that, certainly there’s the accessibility that it’s very easy to use, but I think one of the fallouts of that or one of the implications is that you can link something that doesn’t exist yet. Which is an interesting idea, right? And I’ve certainly used this in Team wikis, for example, where there’s a project page I know I need to write because we’re talking about doing this project, but I haven’t done it yet, but I want to reference that. I can put that in brackets, and sometimes that link shows up in a different color or something like that. Wikipedia has a version of this as well, where you basically can link something that’s not there, you click on it and then it tells you this isn’t here yet. Would you like to add some content, but it’s a nice way to stub something out. 00:09:39 - Speaker 1: And there’s another very important behavior difference. So if we go back to the example of the file system, if you want to refer to a file several times, the first operation is very different. You gotta create the file and write the contents, and then subsequent operations create a different type of object, a similar link or an alias or something. So there’s a huge discontinuity and Typically on a file system, it’s not as native to go the other direction to get the so-called backlinks, and one of those backlinks that you’re basically missing it because there’s nothing pointing back to the place where you did the original operation from. Whereas on a wiki, for example, when you make a double bracket, that’s the same the first time, the second time, the 3rd time you do it. And furthermore, when you go to the backlink page for whatever was in double brackets, those backlinks are all symmetric. I believe, like there’s not special treatment for the first double bracket that you happen to have made mentioning some noun that is the current title of the page. Those properties are subtle, but as we discuss the muse approach to link cards, I think that will become important. 00:10:41 - Speaker 2: Yeah, I think backlinks were present for a long time and things like Wikipedia and other places, but I really think the modern, call it linking back linking trend really came with what are now usually called knowledge graphs. So Rome kicked that whole thing off. The notion it always had linking, but they added backlinks, I think somewhat in reaction to the overnight success of Rome, then you have all these kind of Rome descended products like obsidian, LogSeek, even classic kind of text editor note tools like I writer or get. Into that now and I think what you referenced there with the backlink and links being symmetric, I think that’s why they call them the knowledge graph is this idea that the nodes are the notes and those notes might be something about a person or a thing or a concept or an event or a meeting or whatever, but the edges, those links in the graph represent relationships and actually seeing those relationships and again treating them as symmetric as you said. Of course, it gives you these cool visualizations where you see all the time you’ve invested in your notes and how they all fit together, or if you look at more like a larger scale Wiki like Wikipedia, you can see the relationship, the clustering of different knowledge, but sometimes the relationship between things is as important as the things themselves. 00:11:59 - Speaker 1: Yeah, and I have to be honest, I’ve been surprised by how taken folks are with linking and back linking and explicit knowledge graphs. I certainly think that they’re useful in their own ways, but there’s something about them that people get really excited about. 00:12:15 - Speaker 2: Indeed, well, I certainly think of this trend scene, community. Around tools for thought in the last 3 or 4 years. Obviously I’m very happy. I’m sometimes surprised as well. I certainly find it very powerful. I’m also glad people get excited about it and in general, I think that’s part of what’s been great about this tools for thought, scene or community or just trend that we’ve had in the last few years, which is people getting excited about productivity software and excited about their knowledge tools. Now, sometimes I do think it gets a little bit narrowly focused on Linking and back linking knowledge graphs and lots of different variations on that, but I think that was a really good starting place. It’s a good example of showing how just managing our information in different ways can unlock new possibilities for individuals, for groups, for humanity as a whole, and obviously computing, the dynamic medium of computing has so much untapped potential that we are really just at the beginning of it, so I Certainly hope that the excitement over knowledge graphs is just a door opener to a wider world of tools for thought, productivity, and in general just continuing to explore what’s possible in the world of knowledge and information systems. Well, I guess that naturally brings us to the muse approach and this linked cards feature, and it came up a lot in the very early days of our product because we were part of the tools for Though scene from the beginning and people naturally think of the linking back linking knowledge graph stuff that that’s kind of like a foundational feature and obviously we are more focused on the visual and spatial elements, the free form sketching, bringing together your research materials to ruminate upon. But we always knew, hey, yeah, linking is super useful for all the reasons we just described, and we always knew we would want to bring it to the product at some point, but we wouldn’t necessarily, it wouldn’t be right to just straight up copy the double bracket notation or something like that. I mean, you know, maybe that could fit in, but we wanted something that would be more in tune with how we do things, the visual and spatial approach, and that’s what brought us to linked cards. 00:14:22 - Speaker 1: Yeah, and Muse, we think there’s a lot of value to each piece of content having a place, and for a long time, we said that a piece of content should have exactly one place, but we found that to be a little bit too limiting. So often you would have a board, for example, that you wanted to be able to access that made sense in the context of Say your daily work in the context of a longer term project and that presented a conundrum, what do you do in use to be able to access, say that board from both locations. Now, one thing you could do is the file system type approach where you have some canonical board in one place and you have a second class pointer board in another case, but that felt unsatisfying to us, like we didn’t want this two-tier system and this notion of like a pointer board versus a regular board. So this is where we come to linked cards. And the idea with linked cards is that it’s a set of cards, 2 or more, that point to the same content symmetrically. I think actually back some years ago now, we had this notion of like portals or mirrors, which I think are not as suitable for a public product, but I think described the notion of the sort of two views from two different locations into the same. Underlying content. So you can access the content from either place A or B, but when you zoom in, for example, you’re at the same place. And there’s also a sort of back leaking tight mechanism where you can from any of these linked card instances, say, where else is this card present, and you can seamlessly navigate to those other locations to move across different contexts. And then to close the loop here, if for some reason you were to delete one instance of two of these linked cards, you gracefully go back to the base case of a simple piece of content that’s in exactly one location. 00:16:13 - Speaker 2: Yeah, you mentioned the concept of location quite a bit there, and I think that ends up being key to it. This is something that’s different compared to a, for example, a notes tool that does not have the spatial component. The spatial component is so core to muse and what Muse is offering you as a thinking tool where something is located that’s in a little pile of some things over here versus this other pile over here might be really important for your thinking process or how you’re making sense of a set of materials. So naturally then where something lives, if it’s going to live in two places or more than two places, you need to have some concept of that, and key to this ends up being this little icon that basically goes in the upper left corner that lets you see all the places that it is, and then really importantly switch between them quickly. So you can use it as kind of a portal to essentially teleport to this other location in your larger knowledge sphere, and this proves to be a really helpful and useful concept that preserves the spatialness and preserves that sense of place that we think is so important, but kind of breaks the 1 to 1 relationship and gets you a lot more of the ability to build a more complex knowledge graph. 00:17:29 - Speaker 1: Yeah, and by the way, there’s a pretty slick animation that happens when you change locations like this that I think really nicely reflects what we’re trying to get after, which is when it works correctly, it’s hard to get it to work correctly in all cases because of the literal dimensionality of the canvas and the objects, but the content that is linked in multiple locations sort of stays in the same place, and the background around it shifts. So you are appearing in this new location, but you’re still anchored by this content that was meant to appear in multiple locations. I think that’s pretty slick. 00:17:59 - Speaker 2: Yeah, that was a really clever creation by Leonard and Julia because so much of how you are oriented is based around this navigation in and out of boards and panning around them and so we were worried or even in the early prototypes, I think when you saw you could just jump, it’s disorienting. So this transition animation serves more than the purpose of just being fun to look at or something like that, but actually helps you keep that sense of being oriented. 00:18:30 - Speaker 1: And now that I think about it, I’m actually not sure how common it is to have this backlink style navigation available without going into the object in question. Do you know what I mean? So like on a wiki, you can click on a link and then click on backlinks, and from there, get to a sibling page. But I don’t know how common it is to be able to go directly to a sibling page from the, say, link. 00:18:53 - Speaker 2: Hm, cause yeah, typically you’re viewing the board sort of from the outside, you’re seeing its thumbnail essentially, and then you’re deciding to go to this other place where it is located. Yeah, that’s true. This is why we needed to do our own take on this is that when you’re in that spatial setting, it’s just a different thing than when you’re in lists of documents that aren’t organized or you just don’t have a visual metaphor for it that works in that same way. Speaking of that, animation in general, the transition of being able to quickly jump between locations, this was actually quite a technical challenge to implement. So I thought it might be fun if we could get our colleague Yullia on the phone here briefly and see if she could tell us a little bit about how that worked. 00:19:41 - Speaker 3: Hello. 00:19:43 - Speaker 2: Hey, Julia, congratulations on shipping linked cards. 00:19:47 - Speaker 3: Oh, thanks, yeah, it’s been a long time coming. I guess it’s been sitting there in the backstage pass for a while, but it’s nice that we can finally give it to the whole world. And yeah, it looks like you are pretty excited about it. 00:19:59 - Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I feel like it was one of our smoother betas in the sense that we actually went pretty quickly from, I think it was in the backstage pass for I don’t know, 3 or 4 months, something like that, but it basically worked really great from the start. We needed to make a couple small tweaks, but nothing too dramatic. And yeah, people were finding it really useful, so it just sort of made sense to bring it into production. But Mark and I were just talking about the location switching and the transition animation as well as the challenges there, and I seem to remember in that first implementation there was a lot of technical challenges. I was hoping you could give us a little insight into that. 00:20:35 - Speaker 3: Yeah, there’s quite a few. I mean, I guess we could start with the transition since we were just talking about that, but um there’s actually quite a bit to uncover. So let’s see if we get to all of that. But yeah, one of the things that made this a bit challenging to implement is that of course, as being news, we had kind of high stakes for the UX and how we wanted it to feel. And Leonard, our designer, had initially prototyped something where you could just super quickly like hit a button and cycle through all of the different places where this link card existed. That ended up not being quite feasible, but we still wanted to make it pretty fast so that you can just go and select a different location and you’re basically there quite instantly. But yeah, depending on how large these boards are that these cards live in, rendering a big board can actually take quite a bit of time and there’s some tricks that we do when you transition from one board to the next, kind of just in a normal zoom in, that makes that feel instantaneous, even though it’s actually not quite instantaneous. So for every board that you have, we store a snapshot. They’re basically PNGs that render your entire board content into an image. And those are actually what you see in the little cards that represent your boards, and when you zoom in, we actually load a higher resolution version of that image kind of seamlessly as the transition happens so that when the transition finishes and you’re zoomed in for the first. Depending on how big the board is, 0.5 a second to maybe 1 2nd or 2, you’re actually still looking at the image of the board, and then as everything gets loaded in the background, we switch out that image for the actual board view that where you can interact with the cards and everything. So this usually happens behind the scenes and ideally the user never actually notices it. So for these transitions for the link cards, we basically had to do a similar trick. So when you first select from the drop down menu on the Mac or I think on the iPad, it’s a context menu as well, tapping on this button. When you first select a different location, we actually immediately load in the high resolution snapshot of that board. And we transform it to match exactly the position of the card in the board that you came from. So the idea is basically the card stays in the same place and then the content around it just changes. And yeah, to do that really fast we have to. Load in the JPEG, put the card on top of that image, then in the background, we actually load the entire board hierarchy and the real views, and then once that’s done, we remove the image and you’re actually in that board and you can start interacting with the content. 00:23:27 - Speaker 2: And it feels very quick to me, but certainly your brain needs a moment to process the new scene that you’re looking at before you’re gonna go do anything to it. And so that sort of like, is part of the stage magic there is use that moment of the human is reorienting themselves to the new location to do the work of rendering the interactive view. 00:23:49 - Speaker 3: Yeah, and most of the time it works actually quite nicely. Of course, since the card in the new location that you’re going to might actually be in a completely different position. Let’s say you come from a board where the card is on the very top left, kind of the first thing that you see in the board. And then you go to a board where it’s all the way at the bottom right, like maybe several screen widths away. Then there’s also the thing that we sometimes see where it kind of jumps a little bit because in the destination board it’s actually so close to the edge that you can’t scroll it into the place where the car was in the previous view. Maybe that’s getting a little bit too much into the details. 00:24:30 - Speaker 2: And I also remember really well we were in the midst of implementing this that a lot of other operations in the application that seemed unrelated to linked cards got really slow as a result, once we had this in our internal test flight builds and it just so we were at our team summit last August when we were working on this, and I remember you and Adam Wulf furiously drawing complex graphs and talking through the problem on the kitchen table in the house we were staying in. Can you tell me about what that was all about? 00:25:01 - Speaker 3: Yeah, so this was kind of a surprising turn that the whole thing took. We initially thought seems like a pretty straightforward feature. We just basically create a new card that points to the same document and then we display this little kind of link icon in the top left corner of the card to indicate that this is a link card, so there’s other cards that represent the same document. And the initial implementation of all of this was actually really fast, like kind of done in a few days, and then we noticed the app got really slow and it wasn’t initially clear why that was, but as we looked into it further, it actually turned out that the kind of database queries that had to happen to actually determine whether a card is a linked card or not a linked card. Ended up being extremely expensive. So the first thing that needs to happen is that we check for a given document how many cards actually point to this document. So that’s kind of one database create. That’s relatively simple. And if we have more than one card, you would think, OK, surely this is a linked card, so we should show this little icon. But it’s actually not enough to just look at the number of cards that point to this documents because some of these cards might actually not be in your corpus at all. They might be unreachable from the home board. And this is because when you delete something from your corpus, let’s say you delete a board that has a bunch of subcontent. We don’t actually go in and prune every single subboard and every single document that is contained in the subtree that is that board. We just set the board that you deleted to delete it and it disappears from your view hierarchy and as far as the app is concerned, you can’t actually navigate to it anymore from anywhere. But there might be somewhere in there a board or a card that points to that same board that you have also linked somewhere else, and that card is technically not deleted. It just happens to not be reachable from the home board. So we actually also for each card that points to the board we need to determine. Is this actually in the user’s graph? Is this card something that is in quotation mark deleted, so the user can’t actually reach it from their home board? Or is it actually in the corpus and we should include it in the list of linked cards for this particular document? And that actually ended up being an extremely expensive operation because you kind of have to tee up multiple queries to find the parent board of the parent board of the parent port. And if you eventually end up at the root of the corpus, then yes, this card is reachable. But doing this kind of on every render just because you want to display a board with a couple of cards in it and determine whether or not they should get a little icon in the corner. Just ended up really slowing down the app, just kind of rendering a pretty basic board structure started becoming very slow and affecting all kinds of parts in the app. So what we ended up doing was something that we had thought about on and off anyway because it was kind of a data structure that would help us in all kinds of different scenarios and working on the app and kind of working with the user’s content. We ended up creating a graph structure that actually maps out the user’s content in a very easily queriable way. So in this case we’re only storing the IDs of all the documents and their relationships to each other. So if a card displays a board, that’s basically one node of the graph, and then we build out the graph this way. And every time something changes, every time you add a card or delete a card or you move a card around, we update that graph immediately. So then every time we want to render something, we don’t need to do all of these database queries again. We just need to go to this graph and say give me all the cards that point to this document or give me all the parents of this cards, and from there on it then got very fast. Now of course you have kind of an additional. Data structure kind of model around the user data that you constantly have to maintain. So that’s of course leaves new surface area for bugs or kind of forgetting to update this as the code grows, but it’s so far had been really helpful and has made the app a lot faster in that regard again. 00:29:27 - Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is all in memory, right? 00:29:29 - Speaker 3: Yes, exactly. This gets built once when you launch the app and then just continuously updated. 00:29:35 - Speaker 1: Yeah, and we have a similar thing on the server and it’s definitely true that it’s a little bit troublesome to get all the details right of maintaining basically a second view over all the data, but at least it’s just a memory, so you get to blow it away each time the app starts, it makes it much more forgiving in my experience, versus something on disk, which is a whole another level of ordeal. 00:29:55 - Speaker 3: Yeah, that’s true. 00:29:56 - Speaker 2: And I think that’s always a trade-off with database or persistence layers is that the more indexes you have that slice the data in different ways you want to view it, the faster it will be, but now all those indexes have to be maintained, and if they get messed up, you need to regenerate them or something like that, and that’s the fine art of data persistence. 00:30:17 - Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. 00:30:19 - Speaker 2: As Mark and I were talking about earlier, one thing that introducing linked cards to Muse did was to break this strict 1 to 1. Cars are only in one place. Everything is a very direct hierarchy, and that changed things in the user interface. Certainly, for example, that you can navigate into a board from several different locations, and that comes up, I think, in both the individual user just, you know, when you pinch out, you expect to go back to the board you were on. Originally, but it also comes up even in our multiplayer world in terms of like where we’re going to show an avatar floating over a board relative to the path they took to get into it. Curious to know what kinds of challenges there’s been in adapting all of that. 00:31:04 - Speaker 3: Yeah, this is something that we kind of noticed in hindsight when certain things in the app that used to be really easy, like navigate to a particular document based on his ID now suddenly had kind of unclear implications because that document isn’t just in one place anymore. So if for example, I have a deep link that points to a specific document and I open news. Clicking on that deep link, where do I actually go? Like, of course I go to the document, but what’s the context? Is it the linked card on my home board or is it the one that’s 5 levels deeply nested in one of the subboards or is it one that’s, you know, linked from somewhere else? So we can’t actually describe a position in your corpus anymore just by a particular document or board ID. This also became evident when Something that seems really trivial, like you close the app and then you open it up again, and we have to like launch it afresh and ideally bring you to the place that you’ve left off because that’s probably where you want to continue working. Previously we just basically always stored the idea of the board where the user was last on, and when the app launched, we opened that board and built the view hierarchy underneath it, so all of the parent boards all the way up to the root board underneath and that was it. So now we actually have to store the entire navigation stack, including every card, basically kind of leaving bread crumbs of where the user went to end up on the board that they’re currently viewing. And this all gets serialized to disk when the app quits so that when you launch the app again, we can look at these bread crumbs and retrace the steps to exactly where the user had come from. And we’re going to have to do that probably with all kinds of things like deep links or like sharing URLs for go to this sports. Well, which one do you mean? Do you mean the one on the home board or the one? levels deep down below, so we’re, we’re gonna have to start encoding these path information into all kinds of things, including, I think like you said, the presence of avatars in a board. Like if you’re in this board, you’re technically in 5 different locations, but we don’t want to show you avatar and all of these different locations. We want to show exactly the path you took to get to that board. 00:33:26 - Speaker 2: Do you remember anything about detecting cycles, like sort of putting a linked card inside itself and dealing with that as being part of the initial technical challenge as well? 00:33:37 - Speaker 3: Yeah, so detecting cycles actually has always been a big challenge for M and linked cards actually was a big relief for that because now instead of having to be really careful to prevent cycles, we can kind of allow them and embrace them. So in the pre-link cards were, there were. A few weird edge cases, for example, when you had two windows of muse open, so like split screen on the iPad or two actual windows on the Mac. And let’s say you have board A, B, C, where A is your root board and B is the board in between and then C is deeply nested, and you have board A in the one window and have board B open in the other window. And then you pick up board B, the card for board B in the window of board A, and then drag it into the other window and drop it into board B. Then you just drop B into B. So now B is contained in itself and you’ve effectively detached it from the view hierarchy. This is now also something that we can nicely detect with the corpus graph. And previously we had to really make sure to prevent these accidental operations. So basically disallow you from dropping the card there because that could very easily lead to not technically data loss, but data loss in the sense of you can’t get to that content anymore and we didn’t have any UI of kind of surfacing these detached cycles. So now when you do this instead of disallowing the operation, it’ll just drop a linked card of itself into B. And keep card B and A, but then also put a link card of B into B. And so now you have an endless loop of B and B, and you could try it out. I think you could basically go indefinitely navigate and probably at some point the app will crash because you have put hundreds of view controllers onto the navigation stack. I’m not actually sure what happens, but it does work well for quite some time and I guess technically if you’re 10 levels deep into B and you’re still on B. When you then quit and relaunch the app, we should also build the stack 10 levels deep, although I guess in this case, the card is actually the same, so I’m not quite sure how that would work, but yeah, there’s definitely lots of fun little edge cases like this. 00:35:52 - Speaker 2: And I think almost always if someone does one of those things you described, it’s an error essentially or they’re just doing it to see what happens. So it’s not so much that we need to make it make perfect sense, but more that just we need to not yet have the app crash or screw up your data or get you into a state that you can’t get out of. Yeah, exactly. Well, my head’s spinning a little bit with all the complexities here. I’m glad I get to just be a user and not need to load all of that into my brain. So thanks for taking us through it, and we’ll let you get back to your ex code. 00:36:26 - Speaker 3: Yeah, my pleasure. Have a good one. 00:36:29 - Speaker 2: Bye bye. Bye. Few, I actually didn’t fully know what was there. I had a sense of it because we actually have one of our earliest boards that we have in our Muse for Teams shared workspace is one of the kind of scribblings that Wulf and Julia did together when they were thinking through this whole, what she was calling the corpus graph, this kind of relationship index. So, I had a sense there was something there, but I didn’t know quite how deep that rabbit hole went. Now another area to talk about is the design considerations that went into this. I think Yullia mentioned some of those in the sense of what happens when you do particular edge cases in the sense of the user’s mental model about this. I think you also mentioned briefly in passing the idea of having cards which were more of a reference, more like that file system shortcut. was one of our first prototypes. So if I remember correctly, they implemented prototypes of what we ended up with, which is this kind of each card is a mirror of each other and essentially any change you make to one happens to the other and there is no kind of source or original, but they had also mocked up something where there was a link card that was very similar to our web links, which of course are a reference, not a mirror. But that had a little richer of a preview, and we basically tried that out, and that actually felt pretty good. We liked that in a lot of ways, but somehow I think the mirror felt just more of the kind of embodied or physical or spatial style that fits with Muse. And actually that fed into the the name of it as well. When I was chatting with Leonard about this, he mentioned or he pointed out that we call them linked cards linked ending with an ED, not link cards, right? Link cards, which we have for web links, for example, where you can put deep links to other iOS apps. It’s really clear that that thing is not in use. It’s someplace else. This is a reference that will take you there. We’ll open it in a browser, that sort of thing. But the idea with the linked cards, which are usually boards, but can also be a PDF or a video or something else, they really are like the same thing and they are linked together and the content will always stay the same. 00:38:38 - Speaker 1: Yeah, and if you think about it from first principles, I think it makes sense that we ended up here, because when you’re dealing with external content, you don’t really have a choice. It has to be a link without an ED object, because it’s not something that you control. But when it’s internal, why not? You have full control over this, including the magical ability to make it appear in multiple locations. 00:38:58 - Speaker 2: Another design consideration here is what you do with things that are untitled. So this is something we consider a key feature. It was part of the Muse white paper that we published from the research lab a few years back, which is the ability to create something and not have to give it a name. Which I’m a fan of generally, I don’t necessarily want to have to name a project before I’ve decided what’s gonna go into it, but usually, of course, you end up with something that’s called Untitled, and then you end up with untitled parentheses 234, and so forth. That’s a really common thing you see in, I don’t know, classic word processors or whatever. But in Muse, you can put all kinds of items. In fact, most of your items don’t have names necessarily. You may only title a board or an image or something later, once you kind of know what it is or what it’s about. But of course, what that also means, the location switcher is showing you a text representation, so then we need to show you basically, this is an untitled board in the case, or an untitled card of some kind. I think that’s not fully solved. I think Leonard is still kind of chewing on that a little bit in the best way to manage that, but certainly as we get into more and more things that are not pure spatial and visual, things like search, for example, that’s gonna come up more and more. So I think this untitled boards design or untitled cards design challenge. That’s a key feature of the app. We want to keep that, that’s desirable, but at the same time, how do we handle that in a more of a text or list kind of setting like this. 00:40:26 - Speaker 1: Yeah, we’ll continue to noodle on that. I think in practice it hasn’t been too bad because the places that you tend to put linked cards are relatively important and therefore tend to have titles. It has been my experience. So, more often than not, you have a suitable title in place, but yeah, I agree that as we get into more non-spatial content types, as I’ve been calling them, it’s gonna become more important. 00:40:47 - Speaker 2: Yeah, well, maybe that brings us nicely to just talking about linked cards in practice, the use cases we’ve seen from users and customers as well as what we’ve experienced ourselves on the team, and definitely going into it, we didn’t necessarily know what all the use cases would be or what the best use cases would be, which is sort of a funny thing. I think you even raised the flag on this a little bit, which is you want to have a lot of clarity usually about what your use cases are before developing a feature. And we had a list of them, but it was sort of more driven by where we started the podcast, which was linking is just really useful, and probably if we add it, things will emerge that we wouldn’t have even predicted necessarily and I think that’s kind of how it panned out. Many and most of the use cases that we had in mind initially did come to light, but basically immediately once we released this in beta and then we had some lively discussion on our Discord and the beta’s channel where folks were trying this out and sharing what they were using it for, and we were almost immediately surprised by some of the interesting stuff that folks were doing with it. So maybe we could start with how we are using it personally or on the team. How have you found linked cards that fit into your new workflow, or have they? 00:42:01 - Speaker 1: Yeah, for me a little bit. So in both my personal corpus and on the team’s corpus, I’ve seen us use them for what I might call workflow purposes, where you have a board, it’s usually a board that you find that you want to access from a few different contexts. It might be, for example, you have a technical design for something that you want. On the one hand, in the context of your larger technical board and also in the context of your weekly planning, say, that sort of thing I find happens pretty frequently, and I do some stuff like that for personal projects where I want it on some maybe more temporal board versus more subject matter board, and it’s helpful to see the thing in both places. I also use it a little bit as a sort of bookmark feature where there’s some topic that you know is referenced in a few different places in your corpus, and you can create a board for that notion and then make a linked instance of that board in those handful of other places and you have a sort of bookmark access portal network, you know, underground tunnels to your different boards. Now, what I don’t use it for is the really high cardinality. Super dense reified web that you sometimes see with knowledge graph tools where like, each page has 10 links and you’re trying to form this really explicit graph of concepts. I’ve argued that I mean, I think there’s something to that, but the in fact network of concepts is so massively dense. It’s like the branching factor is thousands or more that I think you’re kind of fooling yourself if you think you’re gonna fully reify that in the tool. There’s still some uses to it, right, but in my mind, that stuff happens in my head, and where I find myself using the links is more for workflow purposes where I know I’m gonna want to traverse these networks of boards and non-hierarchical ways. 00:43:52 - Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I was surprised how useful it turned out to be. I guess I didn’t feel quite the burning desire for it, but again, we heard this just so often from users and customers and a few folks on our team also were really, really driven about it. And of course this reflects, yeah, a very flexible and general purpose tool like Muse. People use it in lots of different ways. Everyone has their own approach, not everyone uses every feature and so forth, but I was surprised how much I did find myself using it. Certainly a good bit in my personal muse, but where I’ve really been surprised about how useful it is is the team setting, and I guess I shouldn’t be so surprised from this because, you know, using something like Notion or even Google Docs back in the day when that was when we used more of our internal memos and project documentation. Yes, it’s just really, really useful. You’re going to build up this network collection of projects and concepts and processes and so forth, and it’s just very good to be able to reference them to each other. A really simple version of that that comes up basically every week in our planning is we’re having a discussion about, OK, these 3 people are working on this task this week, and they’re doing this and this and this, and by the way, they had previously had. You know, a whole design sketching section and talked through exactly what they’re going to do next. Here’s the board for that. And so kind of in the call, what will happen is someone will go and grab a linked card for that and drop it in the planning document right alongside. There’s the explicit list of tasks and assignments of what we’re doing for the week, but here’s the reference to and as these projects get more complex, particularly as our team is growing and so forth, sometimes it’s, you have 3 lines. Of tasks for the team that just describe what they’re doing for the week, but then you double click or you pinch to navigate into that subboard and you see this huge world of things whether it’s technical or design or whatever it is, and you either get a glimpse of it or maybe you think, OK, I’m going to sort of make a note to go review this later because I think it touches on my work or maybe you just go, Oh man, I’m glad those people are working on that and not me because it’s a whole huge world and I’m not going to load the context into my brain. But just that ability to just drop that reference there, and very casually, I think it’s just a really nice way to offer the depth if you want it, but you don’t necessarily need to go into it right there in the meeting. 00:46:10 - Speaker 1: Right. Another way to describe this might be different views into the same data. So I think it’s very common that you want 3 views. You want a view which is temporal, what is the team working on this week? You want a view that’s personal, what is Mark thinking about right now? What does he want to have at hand. And then there’s a view which is subject base. What is the design of our sync system? And what link cards allow you to do is to have any given thing, boards say appear. And each of those. And really importantly from you, as you alluded to this, it’s all symmetric because often the way this stuff happens in practice is someone is off noodling in their own world and, you know, how to do graph indexing for linked cards as he was describing. And it would really be a shame if You either disallowed or made it look weird if that was to get promoted into the weekly work and then into the sort of canonical subject matter board for sync or the client and what have you. But with linked cards, these things get promoted and they’re really peers among each other, so it’s very natural for stuff to Flow in organically versus you can imagine a world where there are 2 class links and then the subject board, for example, is this weird mix of like boards versus second class link boards, it just be kind of weird. Whereas here you get this very nice minor link icon to indicate that this board appears in other places, but otherwise it’s all symmetrical. 00:47:34 - Speaker 2: Another thing I’ve noticed is that the number of links, the number of other locations, I guess number of linked cards that is in that Droptown serves as a sort of measure of importance. So as one example here, you wrote a description of the roadmap essentially for multiplayer or multiplayer features in terms of technical capabilities we needed to build as well as some of the user facing stuff, and you wrote that pretty early in our process, and that’s been An important reference point for a lot of project planning and design work and so on. And so now there’s a pretty good list of stuff there and almost an interesting parallel there with, I think citation count in scientific papers where you can measure the influence of a paper by how often it’s cited some. Similar for boards. Our most important boards tend to get referenced a lot, and notably, I don’t think you necessarily know ahead of time which you’re going to turn out to be that, and maybe that’s to your point about the canonical location, which is something that might start in a board that I call Adam’s weird ideas in November. And it turns out that one of them is useful or interesting enough that it keeps coming up and gets referenced a lot, and the fact that it started life there isn’t important for its longer influence that it’s going to have on what our team is up to. 00:48:56 - Speaker 1: And speaking of personal workspaces and then promoting content into team spaces, I think the elegant transition from single instance to multiple linked instances is going to work really well because, so right now in our use for teams, basically everything is visible to everyone. Each of us has our own little workspace that’s carved out and some of it a little like pseudos screens over it so people don’t, I don’t know, annoy us too much or, you know, look in before stuff is ready. But ultimately, if you, Adam, have something in your personal workspace and then link to it from the team’s weekly planning board, for example, that backlink is gonna appear to everyone in the current views for Teams space. But you can imagine a world where the backlink calculation is done per user. So, in a world of more granular sharing that we’ll have in the future, it could be that when you do that promotion and you go to the weekly team planning board, you see the backlink to your personal space. But when I go, I don’t see that backlink. And in fact, it might just look like a regular board to me because that’s the only place that appears for me. And then perhaps if I want to link it from my scratch board, then I see the two ends. Says it’s on the weekly planning board and it’s on my personal space. So that’s, I think an important example of how the linkedness is a property that emerges of how many times a given document is visible to you. And right now that’s all the same because we’re all sharing the same team space, but eventually it’ll be more granular. 00:50:21 - Speaker 2: Right, right now you got your personal muse where it is by definition only visible to you, and then you’ve got teamwork spaces, which in our current data are essentially everyone on the team can see everything. But in the future world, we have in mind is one of much more granular sharing, as you said, the ability to share individual boards, as well as even within a team space having a private office, private workspace where you can get stuff ready, even though it is intended to be in that bucket of There’s something I’m doing for work or for this particular team or project, and it may be something that has some kind of a privacy screen over it, but you can relatively seamlessly move it into the shared space when you are ready to work on it. So yeah, it definitely opens up or it fits really cleanly into that paradigm. Well, maybe as a place to end, we’re gonna reference Ted Nelson again, I mentioned earlier, he invented the term for hyperlinks, but he also invented this term transclusion, and the muse take on transclusion so far is that you can grab what we call an excerpt from a PDF or an image, or even a frame from a video, and have a source link and indeed a little portal that takes you back to that place. But in some ways, linked cards have some of the same transclusion quality to them, and indeed, I think something we would like to see in the future is essentially a called a linked section or a linked portion of a board or other card, and actually at that point, then you start to see it as a sort of transclusion, right, a portal to that source, something you could potentially not only see but potentially change, you can obviously navigate into it. And the fact that it is this one specific subset, I think is also part of the potentially usefulness. Now, what the interface for that would look like, I think would be quite a design challenge, but I think the value of that would be fairly obvious and hopefully would make Ted Nelson proud. 00:52:24 - Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that would be very powerful. I’ve definitely found myself wanting something like that and have received several support requests looking for that kind of capability. And just reasoning by analogy, this is super useful on the web. You have vanilla URL links, and then you have so-called anchor links where you have the URL, the pound sign, and then some anchor tag, which typically corresponds to some heading or some other section of the web page. And when you click on that link, it takes you to the web page and scrolls right to the point. And sometimes with jobs you can even make it highlight the particular thing that you scrolled right to. Super valuable. And importantly with web links, the former is sort of a special instance of the latter. It’s like you’re basically link into the whole thing, and I kind of wonder if we can make that same thing work in Muse where instead of having separate linked card and excerpt slash transclusion features, there’s sort of a continuum. So you can think of a linked card as you have underlying content. You make an excerpt, but the excerpt is like the whole thing. If the window is the size of the entire document. And there’s another thing you can do, which is make an excerpt where the window is smaller than the entire document. But you can see how those are on a continuum, and then things like the back linking, for example, would be unified. I don’t know if that’s gonna work out. We need to think about it more, but I think that’d be pretty powerful if we can get to work. I also think both linked cards and excerpts could be relevant for maybe you call them computed views or derived views. The example that I constantly go to is search. So there’s one way to do search, which is like search is a totally separate thing with a totally separate interface, just kind of its own world. And then you click on links and it brings you back into the main app. The vision that I have for search is more like there’s some content type that you’re programmatically. Computing. So in the current muse, you can imagine you type some search terms and it computes a board that has a bunch of linked boards on it, which correspond to your search results, which would be a little bit weird, but you can imagine if a muse eventually has a non-spatial content type, basically a set type, which is more comparable to like a Maciner, and there. When you do a search, you compute a set of results in order to set maybe or a list and you present that in the same way that if you want to make a manual list, it would be, you know, very comparable how the set is built. And then furthermore, you can imagine. If you’re searching for text, for example, and it’s searching within PDF, it actually computes an excerpt object so that you can, you know, see where in the PDF the result is popping up and when you click on the excerpt in the same way that you animate a manually create excerpt, it goes to the PDF source. So I think these are pretty cool building blocks for eventual computed types like search results. 00:54:59 - Speaker 2: Yeah, I know something I always find myself wanting with search, generally, Google does a version of this, but I’m also thinking of Unix text search tools like Grap has a command line option to essentially give yourself a couple lines of context around the search term, maybe log search tools like Splunk. And when they don’t have that, you’re struggling to see, OK, like I found the error I searched for, but I really want to know what happened in the few lines before it. That context is really important, but sometimes there’s not even a way to get to that. So the idea of the excerpt where you can easily see the context or even go completely to the source, is something that’s generally very powerful in computing. Well, then maybe I’ll just encourage our listeners, if you haven’t given linked cards a try yet, to go check that out and use. You can basically use the right click contexts menu on your Mac or the context menu on the iPad and make yourself a little linked card and fool around and see if you like the metaphor we landed on there and tell us if you have any feedback, and we can wrap it there. Thanks everyone for listening. Join us on Discord to discuss the episode with me, Mark, and our community. I’ll put the link in the show notes. You can also follow us on Twitter at mAppHQ. And Mark, I think the 1st 50 or so years of linking and computing have been pretty good. I’m looking forward to seeing what the future holds. 00:56:28 - Speaker 1: Great I.