"A sequel to the first volume I've used often for the editing classes I teach -- hooray!"
--James Guthrie, professor, Wright State University
"Your publications are wonderful -- we are fast accumulating our own EEI Press library."
--Nicole Turenne, SHL VISION* Solutions
EEI Press Web Site, February, 2002
Summary
A completely new collection of articles from The Editorial Eye newsletter. Stet Again! offers practical guidance
from cover to cover: grammar and punctuation, self-tests to sharpen skills, and firsthand reports on editing, design,
and management trends.
Authors include some of the foremost authorities in the field -- people like Anne Soukhanov, Arthur Plotnick, Edward
Johnson, Maron Waxman, Alex White, and many others. Fully indexed, Stet Again! is both a pleasure to read and a
useful reference. For nearly 20 years, The Editorial Eye has helped define standards and offered resources for
upholding them. Stet Again! provides an up-to-the-minute look at the field and a glimpse of where we'll be tomorrow.
The only thing better than this collection of The Eye's "greatest hits" would be a subscription to The
Eye itself!
Table of Contents
1. The Art of Writing
Infected Prose
The Right Word: specialty/speciality
When Less Is More: Avoiding Repetitious Writing
Test Yourself: Breaking the Wordiness Habit
The Right Word: percent/percentage
Eight Problems of Logic in Writing
Verbless Sentences: Fresh or Just Fragments?
When Writers Have Trouble Getting Started
The Right Word: while/whereas
Handpicked Descriptive Words
Getting Print-Worthy Quotes from Interviews
Writing Spoken Comments
Test Yourself: Misplaced Modifiers
Writing "Behind the Scenes": The Art of Ghostwriting
Five Nonfiction Writing Ailments
Six Elements of Good Technical Writing
Five Rules for Writing User-Friendly Technical Manuals
Scare Tactics
The Right Word: prone/prostrate/supine
Promotional Writing That People Will Believe
Test Yourself: Shifts in Construction
Humor Your Readers: The Uses of Wit
Writing Short without Cutting Essentials
On Kindly Teachers and the Generic He
Honoring Diversity in Business Writing
The Grooves of Academe
The Struggle for Gender-Free Language: Is It Over Yet?
2. The Craft of Editing
Why Edit?
Not by Intuition Alone: Taking Stock of Editing Habits
English as She Is Spoke
Keeping Things Consistent When You're the "Guest" Editor
How to Edit Long Documents Online
Some Ways to Make Online Editing Less Wearing
The Considerate Editor: The Art of Criticizing Colleagues
Do unto Authors...
How to Query Authors Effectively
Editing a Moving Target
Communicating Story Ideas to Writers
The Right Word: gibe/jibe
Do Scholars Need Editing?
How to Edit Instructions
The Right Word: as bad as ... or worse than
Getting Ducks in a Row: The Rules for Displayed Lists
Singin' the Blues
Test Yourself: Pin Down Vague Terms of Measurement
Where Do Errors Lurk?
Substantive Editing: The Words-Upward Approach
Rules for Substantive Editing
How Careful Should Editors Be?
Are Editors on Their Way Out?
One Last Look: The Final Quality Control Review
3. Usage and Grammar
Changing American English in Times of Change
Passing Whose Test of Time?
The Right Word: abbreviation/acronym/initialism
Skirting the Generic He
Of Hyphenated Americans and Editorial Rigidity
The Right Word: compare with/compare to
Maintaining Distinctions with a Difference
On Naming the Problem
The Right Word: gamut/gantlet/gauntlet
Test Yourself: Precision in the Choice of Words
Cracking the Code: Making Verbs Agree with Collective Nouns
Making Verbs Agree with Fractions and Percentages
Test Yourself: Subject-Verb Agreement
Split Infinitives: Yes or No?
Using the Correct Tense with Infinitives
Test Yourself: Feeling Tense and Moody
Bite-Size Morsels and Long-Horned Cattle
The Right Word: comprise/compose
Not Enough of That
That vs. Which: Is the Distinction Useful?
Rules for Using That vs. Which and Who
Test Yourself: That vs. Which and Who
Two Possessive Constructions in Search of Approval
The Right Word: prolific/prodigious
Test Yourself: The Right Preposition
The Right Word: classic/classical; historic/historical
Two Views on Usage and Why Each Needs the Other
4. Style and Punctuation Perennials
How (and Why) to Create an In-House Style Manual
Who Said That? On Handling Quotations
Can You Edit a Direct Quotation?
Test Yourself: Punctuation with Quotation Marks
Numbers: To Spell Out or Not?
Test Yourself: Punctuating Restrictive/Nonrestrictive Elements
The Acrobatic Apostrophe
Test Yourself: Commas, Colons, and Semicolons
Test Yourself: Help Stop Comma Litter
Compound Adjectives: To Glue or Not to Glue?
Test Yourself: Hyphenated Compounds
Self-ishness: Capitalization with Compounds
Rules for Commas with Modifiers
Test Yourself: Commas with Compound Adjectives
Spelling Out Abbreviations
Test Yourself: Em Dashes, Parentheses, or Commas -- How to Choose?
Test Yourself: Punctuation with Conjunctions
The Right Word: anyone ... their/anybody ... their
Test Yourself: Dashes
The Right Word: more than/over
5. Design and Typography
The Music Is Not in the Violin
Six Rules for Jumping Newsletter Stories
On Breeding Hardy Hybrids
A Design Primer for Editors
The Right Word: if/whether
Choosing a Designer
Editors and Designers: Talking the Same Language
"Doing Art" before You've Learned How
Can One Picture Be Worth More Than a Thousand Words?
Pull Quotes Enhance Newsletter Layout
Editing a Table
Editing a Word Table for Less Space and More Sense
Orphans and Widows
What Editors Need to Know about Desktop Publishing
It's All in the Links: Readying Publications for the Web
Using Graphics on the Web
6. Publications Management and Trends
Estimating Editorial Tasks: A Five-Step Method
Managing Collaborative Writing Projects
How to Prioritize When Everything Is Urgent
Taking a Team Approach to Publishing
The Editor's Authority
Defending Your Staff When Things Go Wrong
Testing for Editorial Skills
How One Company Handles Editorial Testing
What's in a Name? Plenty, if It's a Job Title
Working with Vendors
Delegating without Getting Burned
Managerial Burnout -- Is There a Cure?
Making Sure That Big, Important Rush Project Gets Done Poorly
Taming the Beast: Lessons for Managing Large Projects
Steps for Reviewing an Index
Crossing a Bridge of Shyness: Public Speaking for Communicators
Proofreading in the Computer Age
"Endurance Training" for Electronic Publishing Specialists
Surviving the Transition to a New Electronic Publishing System
Electronic Copyright: We'll Be Spending the Next 10 Years Figuring It Out
Will Web Publishing Change the Way We Edit?
Multimedia Storyboarding for Technical Writers
