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writing skills for print, radio, new media, and commerce

writing skills for print, radio, new media, and commerce

Blogging – publish your writing

October 1, 2009 by Roy Johnson

a selection of resources + how to get started

If you want to try the latest thing in Net publishing, it’s called Blogging. A Blog (short for Web Log) is usually a combination of a personal diary, links to items of interest on the Internet, a commentary on them, plus personal thoughts and essays. It is a form of self-publishing, and because you can write whatever you wish is very popular with authors who have strong and unorthodox opinions.

Blogging began as a medium for Web-based personal diaries, and most people still use it for this purpose. But some bloggers have started to develop the medium for what is essentially self-publishing. They might post notes reflecting briefly on a topic or discuss it with other bloggers, but they also upload essays, articles, or opinion pieces which count as serious pieces of journalism, expressing ideas and points of view which might not be available elsewhere.

The mainstream media (MSM) made fun of blogging when it first appeared – but now they can’t get enough of it. Newspapers, radio and TV stations, and magazines of all kinds have their own blogs – and they can’t get enough user-generated content either. That’s writing done by you and me, which they don’t have to pay for.

Some bloggers with access to popular information have suddenly found their hobby has been transformed into a thriving business. Paul Staines’ Guido Fawkes started as an amateur political gossip blog, but now gets 2 million visitors a month and makes him a full time living via advertising. Ric Turner’s Blue Moon did the same thing for supporters of Manchester City FC.

In fact the latest generation of bloggers at the time of writing are uploading digital photographs, video clips, and audio files – which have spawned the term podcasting. It’s also free and easy to do. You simply add your own text into a ready-made form and press the SEND button.

Essential BloggingEssential Blogging offers a tour of the best blogging sites, how to upload and maintain your pages, and how to configure the options to get the best effects. A series of chapters, clearly written by enthusiasts, takes you through which Blog sites and software are available – from Blogger, Radio Userland (free software), Moveable Type, WordPress, and Blosxom. Some of these have developed rapidly beyond mere blogging tools into small-scale content management systems.

Are you likely to make an income from all this? Not directly – but there are all sorts of possible spin-offs. Lots of bloggers sign up as affiliates to Amazon, Google, and other commercial sites. They earn a small residual income from sending potential customers to buy books and software. Click one of the Amazon ads on this page, and you’ll see how it works.

There’s also the possibility of micro-payments. This is a system in which people are prepared to pay a small amount for downloading an article of interest. There’s still some resistance to this idea, but it’s now fairly common in downloading music files – so it might catch on.

 

Blogging GeniusBlogging: Genius Strategies for Instant Web Content Biz Stone covers most of these new possibilities in his book. He shows how to log onto the most popular site of all – Blogger – and establish your Web presence. Then he shows you how to add colour, text manipulation, and layout variety to your pages, then on to the serious business of making money.

There’s a chapter on arranging archives of your blogs, which can be done on a weekly or monthly basis. He also shows you how you can increase traffic to your blog. This text shows how to turn your home page into a microportal with fresh content to keep your readers coming back.

There are now all sorts of blogging support and development services springing up as the number of bloggers gets bigger and bigger. These range from online tutorials which will show you how to get set up — try BlogBasics — to tracking and site visitor statistics — try BlogFlux. And just to repeat the point yet again — it’s all free. If you want to see our blog, go to mantex.blogspot.com

 

The Weblog HandbookThe Weblog Handbook Rebecca Blood’s book is for anyone who has ever thought about starting a Weblog but isn’t sure how to post, where to find links, or even where to go to register. She certainly knows what she’s talking about, as you can see if you look at her own blog at RebeccaBlood.net.

She blogs regularly on topics which range from food and knitting to political activism and blogging itself. The Weblog Handbook is a clear and concise guide to everything you need to know about the phenomenon that is exploding on the Web. She expertly guides the reader through the whole process of starting and maintaining a Weblog and answers any questions that might pop up along the way, such as the elements of good Weblog design and how to find free hosting.

 

Blogging for DummiesBlogging for Dummies Brad Hill’s advice is aimed at getting you up and running as quickly as possible – though he begins with what blogs are – and what they are not. He explains the different types of blogs, and how and why they are different from web sites. The good thing is that he looks at all the options and draws up comparison charts which show the features, cost, and options offered by the various providers and software programs.

 

return button Publish your writing

© Roy Johnson 2009


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Filed Under: How-to guides, Journalism, Publishing, Writing Skills Tagged With: Blogging, Blogging for Dummies, Journalism, Publishing, The Weblog Handbook, Writing skills

Blogging for Dummies

June 27, 2009 by Roy Johnson

set up, publish, and maintain a blog that draws readers

The blog trackers at Technorati now reckon there are 450 million blogs in existence, and new ones are being created at the rate of one per second – that’s 86,400 per day. It’s an unprecedented opportunity for people to broadcast their thoughts and observations – and it’s completely free. So where do you start? Brad Hill’s advice in Blogging for Dummies is aimed at getting you up and running as quickly as possible – though he begins with what blogs are – and what they are not.

Blogging for Dummies He explains the different types of blogs, and how and why they are different from web sites. The good thing is that he looks at all the options and draws up comparison charts which show the features, cost, and options offered by the various providers and software programs. This includes popular features such as the ability to display adverts and upload photos.

First he covers MSN Spaces and Yahoo 360 – both of which combine written blogs with lots of picture uploading features. Each step of the process is illustrated with screenshots – so you can follow his instructions and have something online within a few minutes.

Next comes the ubiquitous Blogger (which I use at Mantex) where he points to two disadvantages. One is that you see their templates everywhere, and the other is that Blogger forces you to edit your template code by hand if you wish to personalise your pages.

However, Blogger lets you do so many other things that its benefits outweigh the disadvantages. You can create audio blog entries (podcasting) and send photo postings from your mobile phone (moblogging). Then he does the same thing for TypePad, another popular blog service.

Unlike the other blogging manuals I have read and reviewed he takes on the crucial issue of blogging frequency. If you want a regular readership, you have to maintain regular postings.

Then comes the more complex option of installing blogging software on your own hard disk. This gives you more control, but more technical responsibility and expense. If you go down this route you are basically controlling your own blog from your hard disk, but it’s running from your blog provider’s server. This is an option for the more ambitious or technically gifted, but he gives you plenty of support and talks you through Moveable Type, WordPress, and Radio Userland.

His latter chapters deal with what he calls ‘Total Blog Immersion’ – that is, the techniques you need if you want to take blogging seriously, as many people now do. He explains RSS feeds, which help you to syndicate your blog content; making money from your blog by including adverts; and setting up the two most popular recent spinoffs, audio-blogging and photo-blogging.

So it’s not really just for Dummies at all. He covers the whole issue of blogging – from beginners to quite advanced users. The style is friendly and chatty – though you have to put up with a few lame jokes which are part of the Dummies house style.

But the main efficacy of his approach has already been proved to me. A friend of mine who read the book and followed its advice has recently gone quite quickly from novice to blogger to someone quoted in the national press. Now that’s not bad going.

© Roy Johnson 2006

Blogging for Dummies   Buy the book at Amazon UK

Blogging for Dummies   Buy the book at Amazon US


Brad Hill, Blogging for Dummies, Indianapolis: IN, Wiley, 2006, pp.367, ISBN: 0471770841


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Blogging genius strategies

July 19, 2009 by Roy Johnson

web log writing techniques and software

Web logging, known as blogging, is an easy way of updating a web page via a browser without the hassle of launching an FTP client or HTML editor. Some people claim that the blog is an entirely new form of communication – and Biz Stone is one of them. Blogging genius strategies is written from the perspective of a breathless young enthusiast, and yet the guidance he offers is perfectly sound and well organised. He starts off by telling you how to establish your blog – which is what most people will want. He shows how to log onto the most popular site of all – Blogger – and establish your Web presence. It’s rather like the world of email and newsgroups ten years ago. (That’s about a hundred years in Internet terms.)

Blogging genius strategiesEveryone is posting their diaries, rants and raves, and creating gonzo journals with links to everything that’s hip. He gives an overview of major blog service providers – Blogger, Moveable Type, Diaryland, and Radio Userland. Then, assuming that you are keen to make your blog visually attractive, he throws in a little HTML coding advice. This shows you how to add colour, text manipulation, and layout variety to your pages.

In fact for the more adventurous he even goes as far as Cascading Style Sheets and JavaScripts – then on to the serious business of making money from your blog. How can this be done? Well, via micro-payment systems, affiliate programs such as Amazon’s, and even advertising – though I wouldn’t hold your breath on this last one.

There’s a chapter on arranging archives of your blogs, which can be done on a weekly or monthly basis. Then it’s on to group blogs, blogs which invite comments on themselves, and even corporate blogs.

You can add search engine features, and he also shows you how you can increase traffic to your blog. This goes from making connections at Google to trading links with like-minded bloggers. If that’s not enough, you can even syndicate your blog.

In the latest part of his advice the blog is elaborated and extended until it becomes, logically enough, a Web site. In fact he then goes on to discuss software applications which can download selected blogs you wish to read in the form of daily emails.

Since Biz Stone went on from writing this book to become one of the key players at Twitter – so he knows new media when he sees it. He takes the subject of blogging seriously, and leads you through all the basic elements to get you started, then on to the more advanced techniques which allow you to turn your blog into a modern communication art form. Why not start now – Its all free!

© Roy Johnson 2002

Blogging genius   Buy the book at Amazon UK

Blogging genius   Buy the book at Amazon US


Biz Stone, Blogging: Genius Strategies for Instant Web Content, Indianapolis (IN): New Riders, 2002, pp.309, ISBN: 0735712999


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Filed Under: Creative Writing, Journalism, Media, Publishing Tagged With: Biz Stone, Blogging, Computers, Journalism, Technology

Blogging, Citizenship, and Media

July 20, 2009 by Roy Johnson

When blogging first took off, the mainstream media (MSM) poo-poohed it, saying it was a fad that wouldn’t last. Next, they started lifting ideas and news from bloggers and quoting them without attribution. Nowadays all newspapers and broadcasters have their own featured blogs and urge their readers to supply copy. They have been turned around within about ten years. So citizen journalism, as Dan Gillmor called it, has arrived and only a fool would pretend otherwise any more.

Blogging, Citizenship, and MediaMark Tremayne’s collection of academic essays takes this fact as a starting point and looks at the current state of blogging as a cultural phenomenon. What are the facts, as revealed? Well – that the number of blogs continues to rise exponentially, that most have single authors, the majority of whom are adult males, the most popular feature political comment, and that only a small percentage generate comments from their readers.

It’s pointed out that most blogs are in the form of personal diaries, but unlike conventional personal records they are intended to be read by others. And indeed, readers can add their own responses in the form of comments.

Whilst traditional journalism provides individuals with pictures of a world they cannot experience firsthand … blogs operate in the opposite direction, broadcasting the pictures in our heads back to a worldwide audience.

Many of the early chapters are academic studies of blog postings and activity – mainly focused on US political blogs around the period of the 2004 elections and the invasion of Iraq. There’s a lot of technical data related to the way comparisons were made, and the language of discussion is rather abstract and heavily jargonised

Homophily theory underlies Sunstein’s (2000, 2002) work on hate group polarization and cybercascades theories within the Internet’s effect as deleterious to democracy because it enlarges fragmentation, insulation, and enclave deliberation.

It’s largely a sociology of Web use, the motivation of bloggers and blog readers, and the reliability of sources. The latter part of the collection deals with the impact of blogging on traditional journalism. Does the freedom of the press enshrined in the First Amendment apply to bloggers? And if not, why not?

There’s also an extended consideration of international jurisdiction in libel and defamation cases. Where should a case be brought – in the country where the offending material is downloaded for reading, or where it is stored on servers? The answer to this question seems to vary, depending on the case, the country, and the legislation. The same is true of copyright infringement cases, though the good news is that the costs of prosecuting across national boundaries are so high that individual bloggers are unlikely to be pursued.

The main thrust of the pro-blog argument is supplemented by a report of a citizen journalism project – MyMissourian.com – which set up a community blog in one month using free open source Mambo software. Within a year it had gone from online blog to supporting a print edition.

Mark Tremayne sums up all these issues and looks at the future of both blogging and traditional media. It’s obvious that individual bloggers won’t suddenly replace large-scale news-gathering organisations, but they might have significant impact at a local micro-news level. News organisations might start to invite citizen journalists to create content (as the Guardian is already doing on its in-house blogs ‘Comment is Free’).

There’s also a future for individuals in database journalism in which existing sources are mined for original analyses and comment. And the Wikipedia project proves that the combined efforts of individuals can add up to an overwhelming whole.

What’s certain is that the print and broadcast media are losing their traditional audience and power, the bloggers are gaining in strength and number, and journalism has a new force to be reckoned with.

© Roy Johnson 2007

Blogging, Citizenship, and Media   Buy the book at Amazon UK

Blogging, Citizenship, and Media   Buy the book at Amazon US


Mark Tremayne (ed) Blogging, Citizenship, and the Future of Media, London: Routledge, 2007, pp.287, ISBN: 0415979404


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Content: Copyright and DRM

December 2, 2009 by Roy Johnson

Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future

Cory Doctorow is a young Canadian freelance writer and web entrepreneur who lives in London. He’s an editor of Boing-Boing and former director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation; he writes science fiction novels, and he gives his work away free of charge – yet makes a living from his writing. How can it be done? That’s one of the things he explains here. Content: Copyright and DRM is a collection of speeches, essays, and articles he has produced in the last few years, proselytising in favour of open source software, against digital rights management (DRM) systems, against censorship, on copyright, and in favour of the free exchange of information, unhindered by state controls or commercial prohibitions.

Content: Copyright and DRMAt their most fervent, his arguments come across like those of a students’ union activist – but he’s brave. He speaks against Digital Rights Management (DRM) to an audience at Microsoft. The reason he’s a successful journalist is that he understands new media technology, and he has a gift for wrapping up his arguments in a vivid and succinct manner:

Books are good at being paperwhite, high-resolution, low-infrastructure, cheap and disposable. Ebooks are good at being everywhere in the world at the same time for free in a form that is so malleable that you can just pastebomb it into your IM session or turn it into a page-a-day mailing list.

He has a racy and amusing journalistic style. He writes in short, almost epigrammatic statements with a no-holds-barred attitude to any potential opposition.

As Paris Hilton, the Church of Scientology, and the King of Thailand have discovered, taking a piece of [embarrassing] information off the Internet is like getting food colouring out of a swimming pool. Good luck with that.

Some of the items are quite short – quick reprints of web pages from the Guardian technology section – but they are all pertinent to the issues of creativity and new media. Why for example does the best eCommerce site in the world (Amazon) want to control what you do with your Kindle downloads? Doctorow argues that these are short-sighted policies which prevent the spread of information and the creation of new developments.

He’s gung-ho about the business of eBooks and eCommerce. He makes his books available free as downloads on the Internet, confident that this will result in more sales of the printed book. There’s no actual proof that it results in more sales – but he’s happy with the results, and so is his publisher, and the publicity gives him income from other sources, such as journalism and speaking engagements.

Having said that, more than 300,000 copies of his first novel were downloaded for free, resulting in 10,000 printed books sold. As he argues, that’s like thirty people picking up the book and looking at it in a bookstore for every one who made a purchase. But the thirty pickups cost almost nothing, and I think many authors would be very happy with sales of ten thousand.

[It should be remembered that the average full time writer makes approximately £3,000-5,000 a year – and if you look at that in terms of a forty hour week, it’s less than £2.50 per hour.]

The sheer range of his subjects is truly impressive. There’s a chilling insider report from a committee discussing DRM, an essay on a sub-genre of science fiction writing called fanfic, and even a satirical piece calling into question the limitations of meta-data.

He’s at his strongest on the subject of copyright – and that includes the rights of the person who buys the book, the film, or the MP3 music file. The author has the right to be paid for selling it to you, but you have the right to do with it (almost) whatever you wish.

He has any number of interesting things to say about the nature of eBooks – from their apparent problems, their multiple formats, and their malleability, to the issues surrounding copyright. And the encouraging thing is that he writes not just in theory but as a working writer who is exploring the eBook business and what it can do – for both authors and readers.

If you want to know what’s happening at the sharp end of digital publication and new ideas about the relationships between authors and their readers – do yourself a favour and listen to what he has to say. You might not agree with it all, but it will give you plenty to be thinking about.

copyright   Buy the book at Amazon UK

copyright   Buy the book at Amazon US

© Roy Johnson 2009


Cory Doctorow, Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future, San Francisco: Tachyon Publications, 2008, pp.213, ISBN: 1892391813


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Filed Under: e-Commerce, Journalism, Media, Open Sources, Publishing, Theory Tagged With: Business, Copyright, Digital Rights Management, DRM, e-Commerce, Media, Open Sources, Publishing

Copy Editing

May 31, 2009 by Roy Johnson

a handbook for editors, authors, and publishers

Judith Butcher’s Copy Editing is now firmly established as the UK classic reference guide for editors and others involved in preparing text for publication. It is written from the perspective of a professional copy-editor, and covers just about everything you would need to know in preparing any sort of text for publication. It deals with all the details of preparing a typescript for setting, house styles and consistency, reading and correcting proofs, and how to present indexes and bibliographies.

Copy-Editing - The Cambridge Handbook for Editors, Authors and Publishers Every suggestion is scrupulously illustrated without being pedantic, and there is a very helpful degree of cross-referencing. I originally bought my own copy of this book to sort out the finer points of bibliographic referencing for academic writing – and I’ve been using it regularly ever since. The book itself is almost a tutorial on the very principles it illustrates, and it is a very handsomely produced and elegantly designed publication. You will learn a lot on the presentation of text just from turning the pages.

It contains explanations of every part of a book – from details such as preliminary matter, frontispiece, title page, and content, through to lists of tables and illustrations, acknowledgements, bibliographies, notes, and indexes. And it covers many types of printed book – from conventional prose, through books on mathematics, music, books with tables and illustrations, and books set in foreign languages.

The latest edition also deals with issues of copyright, the conventions of presenting text in specialist subjects, guidance on digital coding and publishing in other media such as e-books, and a chapter devoted to on-screen copy-editing.

It has also been updated to take account of modern typesetting and printing technology. This is a good investment for writers who are serious about preparing their work for publication, and an excellent source of reference when you get stuck with the minutiae of bibliographies and typographic presentation. It’s also now available in paperback.

© Roy Johnson 2007

Copy Editing   Buy the book at Amazon UK

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Judith Butcher, Copy-Editing: The Cambridge Handbook for Editors, Authors and Publishers, 4th edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp.558, ISBN: 0521847133


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Digital Magazine Design

June 27, 2009 by Roy Johnson

magazine design principles – plus practical examples

Digital Magazine Design is a guide to computer-based graphic design principles based on modern magazine production and its requirements. The manual provides detailed descriptions of all the necessary rules of design, and uses these rules to cast a critical eye over a selection of contemporary high-street magazines. It starts off by emphasising the need for understanding basic interface metaphors. If we know our way around one desktop, we can usually work out how to find our way round another. The same is true of print publications.

Digital Magazine DesignThere is a convention to the order of items in a magazine of which casual readers are often unaware. Then Paul Honeywell goes through the elements of page design – using grids to structure graphics and text; controlling the density and appearance of the text by using line-spacing, hyphenation, and tracking. There’s also quite a lot of technical detail pertaining to colour mixing and the use of images.

A couple of chapters deal with the details of digital type design – though more illustrations would have been useful in demonstrating the issues at point here. There’s also advice on using a bureau when it is appropriate to outsource work. This goes into the details of file types, pre-press document checks, and keeping an accurate account of work flow.

The second part demonstrates how the tools of design can be applied to the
analysis and practice of contemporary magazine design. It’s a collection of case studies – ranging from Hi-Fi News, Kerrang!, She, and Empire, to Classic FM magazine.

These cover analysis of magazine design, with before and after accounts of layout and typography – complete with effects on sales and readership. There’s a lot of description here, where an illustration would have been far more effective.

These are post-graduate projects – revealed in the use of academic signposting (‘This essay aims to closely analyse …’) – which might easily have been edited out. This could easily be done if the book ever goes to a second edition.

© Roy Johnson 2003

Digital Magazine Design   Buy the book at Amazon UK

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Paul Honeywell and Daniel Carpenter, Digital Magazine Design, Bristol: Intellect, 2003, pp.160, ISBN: 1841500860


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Editing and Revising Text

May 25, 2009 by Roy Johnson

beginner’s guide to editing and re-writing

Oxford University Press have just brought out a series of short beginners’ manuals on communication skills. Their emphasis is on compact, no-nonsense advice directly related to issues of everyday life. Jo Billingham’s Editing and Revising Text provides a practical approach to reworking your writing for students, office workers, and newsletter editors. She covers editing your own work and text written by others, and her whole approach is designed to help you make any writing more effective.

Editing and Revising Text Every part of writing is covered – from the choice of individual words, through sentence construction and arranging paragraphs, to creating firm structure in the parts of a longer piece of work. She discusses the differences between editing, re-writing, and proof-checking, and shows how to revise sentences for brevity, simplicity, and clarity (move the subject to the start!).

There’s an interesting section on how to edit if there’s too little or too much information in the text, plus the importance of how to judge if it’s right for its intended audience.

She also covers the process of making multiple edits – on paper and screen – and quite rightly suggests that it is best to edit for one feature at a time.

I was glad to see that she emphasises the usefulness of the word-processor as an aid to editing. It’s amazing how work can be improved by using spelling and grammar-checkers, as well as the powerful tools of cut-and-paste, and search-and-replace.

The book has examples from real articles, essays, letters and reports, and the last part is a series of checklists for different types of editing – technical, academic, business, and even email.
She also gives a brief explanation of proof-reading, and perhaps the most difficult task of all – making sure that there is structural and linguistic ‘flow’.

The chapters of these guides are short and to-the-point; but the pages are rich in hints, tips, and quotes in call-out boxes. The strength of this approach is that it avoids the encyclopedic volume of advice which in some manuals can be quite frightening.

© Roy Johnson 2005

Editing and Revising   Buy the book at Amazon UK

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Jo Billingham, Editing and Revising Text, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002, pp.136, ISBN: 0198604130


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Editing on screen and paper

November 18, 2009 by Roy Johnson

an email discussion amongst professional writers

Editing documentsThis discussion first took place on the WRICOM (Writing and Computers) mailing list, which is hosted by Mailbase (UK). Note that these are personal opinions, exchanged in the casual manner of email messaging. The language and style are deliberately informal. There is no guarantee that the email addresses of individual contributors will be up to date.

 

From: Roy Johnson <Roy@mantex.co.uk>

If you write using a word-processor, you may have noticed something rather odd. You can create a perfect document, check the spelling, and even check the grammar – but when you come to print out the document you notice things which you missed on screen.

These might be mistakes, or they might just be points of style or emphasis you want to change. If it’s a long document, you’ll feel like kicking yourself and you might feel guilty about all the paper you’re wasting.

For many writers, editing work on screen and on paper appear to be two different things. Why is this?

Maybe writers are reluctant to edit their work when it is in the ultimate form it will assume prior to being published. But perhaps not when it is still in its penultimate form?

That is, if my electronic text, on disk, is destined to become a printed book, I am reluctant to change the contents of the disk on which I have worked for hours and hours.

However, when I print out the pages, they seem to me a penultimate version which can still be chopped around with impunity.

This seems puzzling. Does anybody have the same experience, or observations on what’s happening?

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

From: Jane Dorner <Jane@editor.net>

my theory is that you edit and edit on screen and the printout (long works) *becomes* the penultimate version that gets the final tweaks because it looks different.

I’m just editing a 200-page document and am extremely unwilling to print it out more than once for final tweaks. Its also far easier to edit for consistency using search & replace with the full document in memory.

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

From: Janet Atkinson-Grosjean <janag@whidbey.whidbey.com>

a laser printed page looks so *finished-product-ish*, I was trying to make the writing perfect, before it ever hit the page. Not surprisingly, my writing became constipated, for lack of a better word. I was on-screen editing instead of writing/drafting, because, in my mind, I wasn’t allowed to edit laser-printed copy because it was *finished.*

After driving myself nuts for a while, I decided to print all drafts in the yukkiest-looking Courier typeface I could find. This works. It tricks me enough. Only the ultimate, finished product uses a different font.

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

From: Austin Meredith <rchow@benfranklin.hnet.uci.edu>

the WYSIWIG technology is not adequately advanced at this point. Even in the very best of the current technology … the display of the material on the screen and the printing of the material across the printer does not result in precisely the same level of clarity.

my reluctance to edit heavily on phototypesetter page proofs can entirely be accounted for by the hard and unpleasant fact that the publisher is going to charge me money for each change I make which is not the publisher’s fault, and deduct that amount unilaterally from my royalty checks later!

I am editing on the screen _and_ on paper. Despite the excellence of my equipment, my print display is still superior to my screen display. But there are types of editing which are better done on screen. Spell-checking is an obvious instance of this, but there are other types of editing which are better done on screen.

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

From: Rich Berman <rich@interport.net>

I see things like puncutation and misspellings more easily in hard copy, but also sentence structure. Things like too many short sentences together, or too many compounds etc. I also find them easier to correct in hard copy, with pen and paper.

Is it possible that this is because with hard copy you can compare new with old. When you make a correction on the screen, you see only the new. When on hard copy on the other hand, both are there, the original typed, and the new in pen and ink, (and somewhat in the imagination.)

certain media allow us to see some things more clearly than others, although I have read advice to writers that suggested that saving all the material that we cut helps us experience it as not lost, and therefor feel no sense of loss. That might support your idea, Roy.

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

From: <Robert_P_KOLKER@umail.umd.edu>

Ive had similar experiences as Roy Johnson of written text on and off the page. Ive done a number of books which Ive edited entirely on screen, and which looked just fine when they got to print. However, in the instances when I do print out a text to edit, I see things–nuances of word patterns, mostly–that I miss on the screen. Whats happening I think, is a holdover from pre-computer days (yes, I’m a middle-aged early adopter, or is it adapter?). I still find the printed word of a different texture than the word on CRT. I find this neither good nor bad. While I cannot read large amounts of text on the screen, I can write them. And edit them. A different kind of fine tuning comes when I hold the words in my hand.

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

From: Eric Johnson <johnsone@dsuvax.dsu.edu>

I write and edit on a computer screen, but when I think the document is in final form and print it, I want to make more revisions. The reason may simply be that it is much easier to see more of the document at one time when it is printed on paper.

Now, as graphic word processors attempt to present on the screen what will be printed (WYSIWYG), we may end up doing more — not less — editing on paper since a monitor that displays WYSIWYG type in reasonable size often cannot display a whole line at one time.

Regardless of whether WYSIWYG word processing will result in more editing on paper, it may be a step backward for careful writers: good writers want to focus on the words, the language, but WYSIWYG forces writers to pay more attention to the appearance of the letters and lines (not to mention the temptation the tool bars offer of fooling around with fonts, etc.)

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

From: “R. Allan Reese” <R.A.Reese@gri.hull.ac.uk>

I agree with other contributors that, despite twenty years of writing on screens (yes, honest, I was using a single-user mini-computer in the mid 70s and previously used a mainframe editor), I still have to at some stage revise on a print-out. I suggest that having a small window on the screen tends to make one focus on micro-revision – getting the words right in each sentence. I can also read through and consider the linear logic on screen. However, with the print out I will look backwards and forwards, review the overall structure, and the “feel”. Since the “reader” will usually be given a paper copy, I need to see the same.

What I would say is that the number of printed-out drafts is considerably reduced, and the marks made on the paper copy are either minor points of appearance or notes to prompt major revisions. I do almost all my “writing” on a screen – as I’m doing at this instant.

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

From: Christopher G. Fox <cfox@unix.cc.emory.edu>

I don’t think we should neglect the brute, ergonomic factors here as well. My eyes may be somewhat over-sensitive to this kind of problem, but I simply cannot stare at the screen with the kind of intensity I need for visually editing a document. All of the possible combinations of backlighting, glare reduction, etc. don’t change the fact that its still a VDT I’m looking at. As LCD displays become more prevalent and more sophisticated, a fully on-screen writing process will most likely become more prevalent, but I don’t think the current state of interface technology (video display, keyboard, mouse) is quite up to the task. Although I do compose and do preliminary editing on screen I inevitably need to print out in order to make typos visible and and to notice more large scale grammatical and rhetorical mistakes/changes.

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

From: Mike Sharples <mike@cogs.susx.ac.uk>

For me, whether or not I edit on screen or on paper is not just a matter of choice – I seem to catch different errors and problems in the two media. On paper, not surprisingly, I get a better overview of a large document – its structure and narrative flow. I also seem to be able to spot niggly errors, such as repeated words, better on paper. On screen I can often read text more rapidly (by scrolling it past me) to scan for gist. &&

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

From: Barbara Diederichs <bdiederi@artsci.wustl.edu>

Electronic word processing tools and of course hypertext facilitate a way of writing that is not very concerned with linear structures. When I write a paper using the computer, I start with a handwritten outline and within that framework put down mythoughts and research results as more or less independent pieces and with little regard to logical order. I superimpose that in the printout, which in a way allows to combine the particularities of both media.

I am wondering, though, if the necessity to eventually cast (almost everything we want to say in the traditional paper form, cuts us off from a form of creativity that might become accessible in the electronic medium. The fragmented and associative way of not only expressing oneself, but thinking, that the electronic medium allows for, might open new directions for scholarship.

An example might be the idea of an ‘ultimate’ or ‘penultimate’ version that Roy Johnson mentions in the above quote: the openness of electronic systems that Landow (‘Hypertext. The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology’ 1992) claims as ‘a revolution in human thought’, abandons the very concept of final versions. What would that allow for in scholarship? Maybe bold hypotheses that would provoke dialogue, tests, verification or dismissal rather than having to be ‘right’. Coming straight to the point, rather than justifying the path from one point to another. Giving details that would be uneconomical in the printed medium but might help us develop the collective intelligence of the ‘giant compound’ that David Megginson mentions. Etc.

Has any of you written research in hypertext format? Would you accept a dissertation written in hypertext?

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

From: Jerome J. Mc Gann <jjm2f@lizzie.engl.virginia.edu>

1. ANY scholarly-critical edition is ‘research in hypertext format’. and here one wants to remind everyone that ‘research’ etc., and litcrit, is hardly confined to the setpiece essay — indeed, that form is one of the most constricting and restrictive we have evolved. not to make advertisements for myself, i would still suggest that the implicit and often explicit subject of both _The Textual Condition_ and _Black Riders. The Visible Language of Modernism_ is ‘hypertext’ (see in the latter the ‘Dialogue on Dialogue’ in particular).

2. look at the back issues of postmodern culture, especially the last couple (http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/pmc/contents.all.html).

3. look at the ‘general publications’ of UVAs institute for advanced technology in the humanities

(http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/generalpubs.html).

4. finally, look at various online homepages for courses. aren’t courses ‘research projects’ (in my experience, courses are scenes where _everyone_ learns; ‘teaching’ is a topdown model of learning ive never been able to find very attractive. or much help.

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

From: ‘J. A. Holmes’ <starfyr@access.digex.net>

I find I still do a lot of editing on paper (for text or code) because watching the screen is not easy on my eyes. Initial creation I do lots of moving stuff around, but when I think Im getting close to done the need/desire to linger over each piece (keep/throw away/modify) while deciding its fate just has me staring too intently at the screen. Also Ive not ever used a editor with markup capability. I can make the changes or just move along. When doing an edit, particularly the final, (or hopefully final) version, I just want to mark problem spots/changes. If I actually stop to make the changes I lose the thread, and cant properly deal with how the local changes affect the document as a whole.

In a similar vein, the trend towards online documentation for programmers is beginning to be a problem to me, I just cant read 400+ pages onscreen.

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

From: Patrick TJ McPhee <ptjm@io.org>

For what they’re worth, here are a few thoughts.

1. its (measurably) easier to read text printed at even low (300dpi) resolutions than current screen resolutions

2. a paper version of a document displays more of the document at a time than an on-line version, even if you have a big monitor

3. you think differently with a pen in your hand.

These aside, I agree with you that its easier to make a change to a copy of a document than it is to the master. When you go back to change the original, you can rethink the changes you write on the paper, which effectively gives you two revisions for the effort of one. Its nice to keep an RCS copy of the document, so you can always go back to an earlier version if you change your mind.

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

From: ‘J. Hartley’ <psa04@cc.keele.ac.uk>

1. Familiarity with the genre is important as well as length. Well practiced skills will require less editing. I write long letters, but rarely edit them – so who the text is for is important too.

2. The method one is using plays a part. I dont edit much on e-mail, as readers will discover if they read on, no doubt.

3. I used to write by hand and my secretary word-processed the script. I then copiously edited her paper versions. I now do all (well nearly all) my writing by machine. I now do a lot more editing on screen before making a print out – which I then edit by hand. For much the same reasons as other have expressed.

However, if I am starting an article I sometimes like to rough it out, and then print it out to see how it is shaping up. I then try and do as much as I can on screen, and then print out. But I always regard the print out as a cue to further editing by hand. Until I force myself to stop.

4. I wonder if people who write differently, edit differently? Do the planners, who think first and then write, with little corrections, do less editing than the thinkers who edit as they go along. Obviously they do, but I wonder how they balance screen and paper editing in each case?

5. The editing one does may vary if one is _co-authoring_. Here, how much use of screen and paper editing may depend on whether one is the main, equal or subordinate author? Currently with my research assistant, I often print out a paper version for him to read. I do not give him my disc. When he writes something for me to check, he hands me his disc as well. So I edit his text on screen, and he edits mine on paper! If I were co-authoring with another colleague in a different department I suspect we would both use screens.

6. I find screen editing good for re-jigging old articles for a fresh audience. One can scissors and paste away. But I then like to see the result on paper, and I then edit it with the fresh perspective of the new audience in mind.

7. I always find it helpful to leave something, and then come back to it to edit it. I find this with both paper and screen – but am inclined to make bigger changes when dealing with paper versions.

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

From: AM DUDLEY-EVANS <DUDLEYAM@novell1.bham.ac.uk>

But it has always seemed to me that there are two kinds of writer, the one who composes by getting down the ideas as quickly as possible without worrying too much about accuracy, coherence etc. This is followed by the crafting stage, in which it is all tidied up, made coherent etc. The second kind of writer seems to enjoy crafting as s/he writes and does the polishing along with the composing. I suspect that the former type of writer is more common, but I know of at least one of my colleagues who fits into the second category.

But I wonder how the second kind of writer writes with the word-processor. Does s/he craft on the screen?

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

From: Judy Madnick <judy.madnick@accessnt.com>

I currently edit court transcripts on-screen. I also have edited manuscripts on-screen. I must admit that its very easy to miss things, probably because our reading methods on-screen are not the same as those off-screen. Ive learned to force myself to slow down (which seems to be the big issue) and almost say the words to myself. (Remember how our teachers told us not to move our lips? Well, they wouldnt want to be watching me proof on-screen!)

So . . . yes, for many people seeing their work on paper seems to result in additional editing; however, I do believe that with careful analysis of the methods being used on-screen, editing CAN be done successfully either way.

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

From: Ellen Kessler <etk@panix.com>

Ive been a writer/editor for almost 30 years, and I have noticed a few curious and inexplicable things:

1. The way a piece looks affects the way it is read. I often think that Ive finished editing something in manuscript, for instance, only to see the typeset galleys and shudder. Ive never understood this phenomenon, but now that I think about it, I believe that when I read something back, I read it as a reader not the author, and react to it as new material, which, of course, I must improve. I also think it has something to do with the way the brain processes visual information.

I can work for a long time on my computer, but when I have various versions and want to compare them, I often print them out. I save discarded text at the bottom of the file, in case I want to use it later. Eventually, I always print the stuff out and read it away from my computer. I think a bit of distance, in the forms of time and space, are helpful. I believe everything I write can be better edited the day after I write it.

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

From Clare Macdonald <mead@nada.kth.se>

For me, a lot of the pleasure of revising on a printed copy comes from the fact that the text stays put. This creates an additional context(location on the page) that I can use to mentally navigate.

When working with a long document, remembering where on the page (and on which page) a particular passage is can help me locate it quickly. I could probably find it even faster by searching for the phrase with my word processor, but then I’d lose something of my mental image of the structure of the document – or at least my working memory would start to feel seriously overloaded. I’d probably get several matches for my search and have to spend some mental resources considering each and rejecting the ones I don’t want. With a printout, I don’t have to bother with instances that occur early in the text if I know that what I’m interested in is part of the Conclusion – just scan the last few pages.

Of course, each time I print the revised document the location of the text changes, so perhaps this is part of the reason I’ll notice different problems in different versions – the location-context supports slightly different comparisons.

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

From Carol Buchanan <buchanan@sprynet.com>

I work as a technical writer, in the area of cabin electronics and computer systems, for the Boeing Company. (I also have a PhD in English.) Although my writing skills are excellent, I cannot edit my own work. I see what I expect to see. I find I cannot do without the help of an editor who scrutinizes the manuals for everything from grammar, punctuation, and spelling to format and logic. She edits online, and I make corrections online, but for really knowing what the document’s pages look like and for catching more errors, she prints every draft and subjects it to another scrutiny. Then, after we think we’ve got it right, we pass it to a proofreader who reads it closely on paper and catches still more errors.

The same thing occurs with the books I’ve written. I write the book online, print it, read it, fix the problems I see, and print the final copy which I send, along with the diskette, to the publisher. The editor there edits the typescript, then returns it for correction. I make the corrections, and back it goes. The editor sends the book to a copyeditor, who has other questions and sees other problems, which I respond to and return the typescript and diskette. Then the typesetter sets the book in final pages, which I read through for the last time while the proofreader reads the paper copy. Invariably, I find more mistakes. This time I do not make corrections in the files, but on the paper.

I offer this lengthy description of what happens in corporate technical editing and in commercial publishing in support of two points:

  1. For some reason, we do not see quite the same online and on paper.It would take an expert in perception to explain it. I can’t.
  2. To do a professional job of bringing writing to publication, several people have to collaborate in a team, each with his or her own skills. Even after that, mistakes will still occur.

© Roy Johnson 2009


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Filed Under: Creative Writing, How-to guides, Journalism, Study Skills, Writing Skills Tagged With: Editing, Editing on screen, Electronic Writing, Publishing, Writing skills

ePublishing and eBooks

October 2, 2009 by Roy Johnson

a selection of resources reviewed

One rapidly expanding opportunity for writers using the Internet is the creation of eBooks. These have the advantage that they can be written, stored, and sent electronically. ePublishing is available for whatever you wish; it doesn’t cost much; you can start small; there are no printing, storage, or postage costs; and you can control the whole process from your back bedroom.

eBooks can be read on desktop computers, but many people prefer to use laptops, eBook readers, or PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) such as the Palm Pilot. Other people print off the pages and read from the conventional page. So you’ve got to be prepared to supply your text in a number of different formats if you want to reach all audiences.

ePublishingCreating E-books
Chris Van Buren and Jeff Cogswell address all these issues, and provide you with all the information you need to make a start. They include a survey of the e-publishing business; planning and creating an e-book; getting the book published; finance and copyright; and a selection of personal success stories. One of the more interesting features of the advice they give is that it’s suitable either for individuals with just one book to market, or for people who might wish to set up as publishers, ready to promote several titles. As usual with the excellent Topfloor ‘Poor Richard’ series, every chapter is packed with recommendations for online resources – many of which are low-budget or free.

You can market your own eBooks, but a very popular alternative is to place titles with distributors like Fatbrain and split the proceeds. There are also electronic versions of conventional publishers who will pay you royalties up to fifty percent.

 

The Internet Writer's HandbookThe Internet Writer’s Handbook
This is a detailed guide to publishers of the two formats which are most digital – e-zines and e-books. It’s in the form of an international A-Z listing of the best websites for writers to target, with full contact details for all websites listed. It offers plenty of detail on how to submit your work , how much publishers will pay, and even how they are most likely to respond. The topics these publishers cover range from poetry and fiction, through non-fiction writing, to specialist publications.

 

eMail Publishing - Click for details at AmazonEmail Publishing
It’s quickly apparent to most writers that this system means that self-publication is an attractive option. In fact Chris Pirillo argues that email publishing can be much more effective than the Web. How is this? Well, he describes publishing via a web site as “like opening a hamburger stand in a dead-end street”. Not many people will pass by, and even fewer are likely to make a purchase.

On the other hand, almost everybody reads their e-mail, so why not use it as a vehicle for publishing instead? Some of the more popular e-mail newsletters have up to 400,000 regular subscribers. In he outlines all the possibilities – discussion groups, bulletins, and announcement lists – but it’s the free e-mail newsletter which is at the heart of this book. He takes you through all the technicalities of how to run one.

This can be used to promote your writing – or even as a hot and direct form of journalism if you are a non-fiction writer. And this guy knows whereof he speaks. He publishes several email newsletters every day, draws down revenue from advertisers, and earns a living from it.

return button Publish your writing

© Roy Johnson 2009


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Filed Under: How-to guides, Journalism, Publishing, Writing Skills Tagged With: eBooks, Electronic Writing, Journalism, Newsletters, Publishing, Writing skills

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