[bksvol-discuss] Re: Bolded words in text
- From: "Monica Willyard" <rhyami@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 9 Nov 2009 06:04:40 -0500
Cindy, I think your question is a good one. It's impossible for us to tell
for sure that a word needs to be bolded or italicized if it didn't scan that
way. I think there is a break even point where blind submitters and
proofreaders have to say that we've done our best and let it go. For us,
it's hard enough just getting at the content of a book. It's like when a
book has a misprint in the text. We don't know it and think it's a scanno,
so we correct it. We can't know that the word is misspelled in the text. I
guess what I'm saying is that at some point we have to have faith in
ourselves and act on that.
What's interesting to me is that sighted proofreaders have a few problems
too. I've seen several cases where the proofreader mistook a 1 or l for an
i. That's impossible with Braille or speech because they are very different.
Yet in print, in some fonts, the 1 and I are similar. That happens with the
0 and o sometimes too. The lesson I take from this is that we each have our
week spots and strengths.
The bulk of the Bookshare collection has been scanned and proofread by
volunteers with all kinds of disabilities, over 50,000 books. Our diversity
has given us so much and has taken us so far. I'm amazed by what we have
done as a group. There are over 60,000 books in the collection now, thanks
to publishers and the work Carrie and her staff are doing. In many
instances, people can't tell which books were scanned by whom these days,
and that makes me happy. (smile)
Monica Willyard
"The best way to predict the future is to create it." -- Peter Drucker
-----Original Message-----
From: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Cindy
Sent: Monday, November 09, 2009 1:54 AM
To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: Bolded words in text
Not just foreign words, but also names of boats and titles of books and
things that in English classes one learns should b be in italics--smile--but
most importantly, from the point of view of the author, italics indicate
words to be emphasized. That's why I asked if speech readers emphasize words
in the course of reading, and when people use it to scan.; Monica explained
nicely what it does with books that have bold and italics, but what I was
wondering was if in the course of reading sentences without indication of
anything a speech machine would emphasize certain words. When reading a
sentence or several, the order of the words or something sometimes indicates
that a particular word should be emphasized. Sometimes when I've been
proofing files that have no italicized words but it seems seems as if one
should be; I check the print book and sure enough, it is, so I change it.
The file book I'm about to upload soon had no italicized words but I've put
them all in--but am I correct in thinking that a scanner has no way to know
if there are words that should be emphasized and thus would not be able to
ask that a sighted reader proof the book?
Cindy
To unsubscribe from this list send a blank Email to
bksvol-discuss-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
put the word 'unsubscribe' by itself in the subject line. To get a list of
available commands, put the word 'help' by itself in the subject line.
Other related posts:
