[bksvol-discuss] Re: Italics

MessageHi Kim,

Commendations on adding those accent marks, and  resisting the urge to fix the 
misprints. I know that the temptation to do so can be nearly irresistible. I've 
encountered that temptation on many occasions, so I feel your pain when having 
to let those pass uncorrected.

However, I was uncomfortable while reading your description of how you modified 
the text of the Scholz story. The author had his reasons for using, or not 
using, punctuation in a certain way. That was the style in which he chose to 
write the story. It is not up to us to help readers understand what the author 
intended, or alter the author's style because we think it will make it more 
readable, particularly when the alterations were based on "impressions", 
guesses, of what the author meant. It is our responsibility to preserve the 
author's style. Copy editing is not a part of the proofreading process. Most 
importantly, it is a violation of our volunteer agreement to alter the text.

Evan

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Kim Friedman 
  To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  Sent: Monday, October 17, 2011 7:48 AM
  Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: Italics


  Oh, thanks for telling me. Anyhow, the book I proofread was a SF anthology 
compiled in 1995. It's called New Legends and the authors are Greg Bear and 
Martin Harry Greenberg. If you can't get it from Bookshare, you might be able 
to find it somewhere. I'll tell you the book was very straightforward except 
for two stories called High Abyss by Gregory Benford and Radiance by Carter 
Scholz. Benford used greater-than signs to indicate the beginning of 
conversation and lesser-than signs for close quotations rather than the usual 
punctuation. This is challenging because some Braille displays can't deal with 
those marks, in particular, my device called the BrailleNote MPower would 
actually spell out "greater-than" "lesser-than" and that's awfully hard to read 
anytime you encounter it on the display because it takes up much too much 
space. Fortunately for me, the signs did show up (I haven't downloaded the book 
in its finished form to look at it on my display so I can't swear it will look 
the same). The story by Scholz had weird punctuation throughout. He'd use a 
whole lot of commas and dialog was indicated by a dash at the start of 
conversation and no marks whatsoever to indicate its close. There were no marks 
to indicate interrupted speech. I was concerned the reader might have a hard 
time with the story because of it. I couldn't use the usual way of indicating 
interrupted speech. If something modified a statement or thing and if I had the 
impression it was parenthetical, I surrounded the modified part with 
parentheses and used ellipses to indicate interrupted speech. I also put in 
accents for words like the A in Sao Paulo or the acute E in café. There were a 
couple of typos in this story and of course I couldn't fix them which bugged me 
no end. If I were reading this on my display, I think I would have been sort of 
confused by the story. Fortunately for me, I did write about this stuff to 
Carrie Karnos and of course I mentioned this in the comments section before I 
checked in the book. I don't know how sighted folks would have perceived this 
story, but I was really concerned about its readability for people using 
Braille devices. Regards, Kim Friedman. P.S.: I don't know if you'd mind, but 
I'd like to write you off list and you can write me if you like. Then we could 
write about off topic stuff which won't get us in trouble with the list. K.
  -----Original Message-----
  From: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
[mailto:bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Tim Syfert
  Sent: Monday, October 17, 2011 2:35 AM
  To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: Italics


  Thanks, Kim, but I am sighted and not eligible to download library books.  Tim




------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  From: Kim Friedman <kimfri11@xxxxxxxxxxx>
  To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  Sent: Sunday, October 16, 2011 8:26 AM
  Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: Italics


  Hi, Tim, I saw those books you mentioned in the Bookshare collection. 
Congratulations. It's always a delight to see stuff you worked on ready for 
other people to read. It still is delightful to me. Incidentally, if you like 
SF, I just finished proofreading a SF anthology which is in the Bookshare 
collection. Boy, what a challenge that was. Regards from a fellow proofreader 
and wishing you much success, Kim Friedman.
  -----Original Message-----
  From: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
[mailto:bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Tim Syfert
  Sent: Sunday, October 16, 2011 2:57 AM
  To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: Italics


  Valerie, I am a proofreader. It was a formatting problem. Everything is okay 
now. Thanks.


  Tim




------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  From: Valerie Maples <vlmaples@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  Sent: Friday, October 14, 2011 9:13 PM
  Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: Italics


  What you are saying toggles everything on or off, style wise, Tim.  You do 
not need to release it to download it again.  Just go to your checked out book 
page and the last column after the books name is RTF and clicking it will start 
a new download.   


  I still think it is probably either a formatting or scanner problem.  Are you 
the scanner or the proofreader?  I am a little confused by your wording.


  I will be gone all day tomorrow, but maybe Mayrie or someone else can walk 
you through possible problems and solutions...


  Valerie




  On Oct 14, 2011, at 2:27 PM, Tim Syfert wrote:


    Valerie, I highlighted the whole text and clicked on italics and the whole 
text became italics. I'm going to release the book and then download it again. 
I'm also going to read the manual. (grin)   Tim




----------------------------------------------------------------------------
    From: Valerie Maples <vlmaples@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
    To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
    Sent: Friday, October 14, 2011 12:51 PM
    Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: Italics


    It sounds like you might be pulling down regular in the font menus which 
removes all font formatting including italics. 


    Hopefully it is easy like that.


    Another option could be your scanning software if you scan as plain text.


    Valerie




    On Oct 14, 2011, at 6:00 AM, Tim Syfert wrote:


      Hi Everyone,


      As proofreaders, we are suppose to keep all italics in the book, right?
      I have Word 2003 and when I set up a book for proofing, it takes all the 
italics out. Does anyone know what could be set wrong? It's a real pain to put 
them back in one page at a time. Thanks.  Tim

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