electronic submissions
Larry, the Other White Meat
Why don't more magazine accept electronic submissions via email?
It strikes me as more efficient and less time consuming for everyone
concerned. Perhaps even saving both parties some money as well.
For the author e-submissions certainly saves money spent on postage (agreed
postage on most unsolicited manuscript doesn't amount to much, but over a
while, especially if a story is not bought on the first submission, does
amount to a healthy chunk of change), e-submissions saves some time better
spent writing, and -- one would hope -- e-submissions would result in a
quicker response time from the editor (or editorial staff) of a magazine.
For the editor e-submissions saves a lot of time. He no longer has to sort
through a "slush pile" of manuscripts not formatted to his liking. With 5
minutes clicking and "mousing" he can reformat a manuscript's margins, font,
size, line spacing, ect. Or just delete the damn thing with a single click
if it's too much of a mess. An editor and magazine also saves time and money
with mailing rejection slips or contracts to an author. He can just open up
his email program and send his thoughts to the author post-haste.
On just about every angle I could view this idea from electronic submissions
seems like a giant improvement over the old paper manuscripts. But why don't
more magazines do it? Is there something I'm missing? A economic issue that
makes electronic submissions unworkable, or more work than paper
manuscripts? Or is it just that peculiar form of Luddism that seems to
pervade parts of the publishing industry, and infects certain editors?
Btw, at the magazine I work at 99.9% of all manuscripts are submitted
electronically. Either attached as TEXT, or Word files, or copy and pasted
in the body of an email.
Larry -
--
ICQ No. 77704089
Brenda
Larry, the Other White Meat wrote:
> I was playing with Word 2000 and a recurring question popped into my head:
>
> Why don't more magazine accept electronic submissions via email?
>
>
> For the editor e-submissions saves a lot of time. He no longer has to sort
> through a "slush pile" of manuscripts not formatted to his liking. With 5
> minutes clicking and "mousing" he can reformat a manuscript's margins, font,
> size, line spacing, ect.
>
Hello? Five minutes per manuscript is a time savings? Multiply that by 800
manuscript submissions per week.
Brenda
--
---------
Brenda W. Clough, author of DOORS OF DEATH AND LIFE
From Tor Books in May 2000
http://www.sff.net/people/Brenda/
Larry, the Other White Meat
>
> Hello? Five minutes per manuscript is a time savings? Multiply that by
800
> manuscript submissions per week.
>
Five provided you know next to nothing about computer or a basic Word
document. I think I can format your average file in 1 -2 minutes, not
counting the time it takes to set up the headers (which an editor wouldn't
be doing).
Larry -
Larry, the Other White Meat
Graydon <anga...@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:slrn8l5iv5....@localhost.localdomain...
> On Thu, 22 Jun 2000 20:35:59 -0500,
> Larry, the Other White Meat <globa...@mindspring.com> scripsit:
> >Why don't more magazine accept electronic submissions via email?
>
>
> The existence of manuscript formats and the necessity to buy a stamp
> acts a a filter on the submissions received, and it's perceived as a
> necessary filter with a degree of unamiminity which makes me suspect
> that is really _is_ a necessary filter.
In other words you can only get into my club if you know the secret
handshake (which involves a lot of kneeling and sucking and leaves a nasty
taste in your mouth)?
I guess that makes a decent amount of sense. Although I tend to dislike
filters and dislike even more people that claim that there is a need for
them. Akin to the librarians at Alexandria who wouldn't let the unwashed
masses inside.
Larry -
piranha
Larry, the Other White Meat <globa...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>I was playing with Word 2000 and a recurring question popped into my head:
>
>
>concerned. Perhaps even saving both parties some money as well.
it's only more efficient for the writer who has the ms on
a computer already.
>For the editor e-submissions saves a lot of time. He no longer has to sort
>through a "slush pile" of manuscripts not formatted to his liking.
you gotta be kidding me. pick me 10 random people, and
they will likely be sending me stuff in 8 different for-
mats, most of which my word processor might not be able
to read. well, if it were me, it could read them, but a
lot of editors have other things to do than to stay on
the cutting edge of word processing.
format problems are _worse_ with electronic submissions.
it doesn't take that much to read other fonts than courier
if one is so inclined (unless the author was a true fool
and sent it all in in a variety of fancy fonts). it does
take quite a bit more effort to convert MyPersonalWordpro-
cessor 1.03 (which was old in 1983, but this author swears
by it) to whichever wordprocessor the publisher has pushed
on this particular editor. if the disk can be read on the
editor's platform, that is. once you realize that people
are fool enough to send mss in fancy fonts when every damn
how-to book out there tells you not to, you know they will
not be too bright about their electronic formats either.
>An editor and magazine also saves time and money
>with mailing rejection slips or contracts to an author. He can just open up
>his email program and send his thoughts to the author post-haste.
that can be done via email whether or not the ms was sub-
mitted electronically.
i would actually encourage that part of it. if it didn't
open the door to every dimwit who thinks getting a res-
ponse from the editor means one can now email that person
with impunity, asking stupid questions. but that could
be bypassed by having the reply-to set to an auto-respon-
der that courteously tells such people off.
>On just about every angle I could view this idea from electronic submissions
>seems like a giant improvement over the old paper manuscripts.
i think it becomes an improvement only after your ms has
been bought, and you're sending edits back and forth --
i do like doing that with a good tracker on. but again,
this only works well if the wordprocessors of authors
and publisher are in sync.
it's amazing how resistant some people are to learning good
email habits, even. i keep getting this stupid word-for-
matted email from a client who uses outlook with word 2000
as the editor. and as usual with MS products, nothing is
compliant with usage standards developed since before the
days when MS took notice of the internet. it can't handle
the usual quoted text. are these people learning to make
up for that? not any time soon, it seems. and they are
not stupid. just not very computer-savvy. how is this go-
ing to make an editor's work easier, an editor who might
not be the most computer-savvy person around either?
not likely.
and that doesn't yet cover the fact that lots of people do
not want to read mss on a computer screen; it bothers their
eyes. they want hardcopy. it's easier on the eyes, and it
is more portable.
-piranha
Lois Tilton
> Why don't more magazine accept electronic submissions via email?
It hurts their eyes.
--
LT
White Crow
> electronically. Either attached as TEXT, or Word files, or copy and pasted
> in the body of an email.
Didn't you bring this up before?
I know why they don't. Because it is a pain in the ass. They'd still
have to print it out anyway (toner and paper costs), since reading on a
screen sucks.
It takes *time* to do conversions. I work for a company that publishes 29
chemical journals. We have a handfull of those accepting online
submissions. We still only take them in certain formats, and it requires
3 full time people to handle support. For 3-4 journals. (I am constantly
amazed at the amount of effort we go to to lure and keep scientists
publishing with us. We just now, after 120 years of publishing, made
cover letters *mandatory.*)
People have a format specific to submit in, and it still falls apart a
lot--converting from Word or WordPerfect to PDFs, which are emailed to the
editors.
Doing it by hand with be a pain, under the normal workload of editors. If
it works for your mag, then that's fine. But I'd be very surprised if
most editors would put up the effort we do for stuff they probably won't
print. I don't know our ratios or submissions to accepteds vs a normal
pro mag, but I think ours are substantally higher (close to 100% on some
journals, less on others).
Jennifer
--
The White Crow
FUDGE Deryni and more: http://www.io.com/~whytcrow/rpg.html
"I hope I never do anything without due thought, even if the thought sometimes
has to shift its feet pretty briskly to keep up with the deed." -- Cadfael
"You must have been very wicked, for your God has sent me to punish you
for your sins." -- Ghenghis Khan
Kevin Russell
> Why don't more magazine accept electronic submissions via email?
> ...
> For the editor e-submissions saves a lot of time. He no longer has to sort
> through a "slush pile" of manuscripts not formatted to his liking. With 5
> minutes clicking and "mousing" he can reformat a manuscript's margins, font,
> size, line spacing, ect. Or just delete the damn thing with a single click
> if it's too much of a mess. An editor and magazine also saves time and money
> with mailing rejection slips or contracts to an author. He can just open up
> his email program and send his thoughts to the author post-haste.
For publishers, the real win for electronic submissions comes only in the
production stages. It allows them to cut out the typesetters (who have
good unions) and replace them with fewer hours by production assistants
(who usually have no unions at all).
Even here, the savings aren't as great as you might expect.
A typical scenario: your magazine uses some expensive Windows-based
layout program. The five articles you want to publish this month come
in:
a) a raw ASCII text file from your correspondent in France -- which
unfortunately had all the quotation marks, dashes, and accented
letters deleted by an intolerant e-mail relay somewhere along its
route.
b) nothing at all from your cooking columnist, who's still not too
familiar with computers and hasn't succeeded in including the attachment
in any of their last five attempts at e-mail.
c) a diskette from your Mac-using theatre critic, which you can't read
on your own computer so you go to your friend's office down the street,
e-mail it to yourself from her Mac, but now can't do anything with the
e-mail because your file-format converter has decided to flake out
today and is throwing hissy fits over the Mac file's resource fork
(and what's a resource fork anyway?).
d) a 5-1/4" floppy from your star fiction writer, who refuses to use
any word processor but ScoobyText 0.3. The diskette can only be read
on Mango++ computers, of which only 60 were manufactured in Argentina
in 1983.
e) e-mail attachments from your corporate computer columnist, who
uses Microsoft Office 2003 (which you don't have). To show off, he's
attached the article in five different formats, four of which can't
be read by any computer on earth. After your computer recovers from
the I-Love-You virus it caught when you first tried to open his
e-mail, it now succumbs to three other Microsoft Word macro viruses.
The viruses erase article (a), whose punctuation you had almost
finished putting back in, plus your resume, which you were hoping
would get you out of this job.
Because of scenarios like this, which are all too common, many
publishers still find that the most economical options are the two
extremes: Do Everything (typeset from scratch from a typescript)
and Do Nothing (demand camera-ready copy from your authors).
If your magazine can avoid these problems by forcing your authors
to use *your* one favourite word processor, then you're essentially
close to the Do Nothing end of the spectrum.
And production is the easy part.
There's very little chance that the editorial process will become
paperless anytime soon. Purchasing editors usually want paper to
evaluate, if only because they don't want to be tied to their
desktops for that part of the job. They might want to read the
manuscript over lunch, in a hotel room at a conference, on the
subway, wherever. A magazine might be able to by-pass this for
submissions whose publication is already guaranteed (e.g.,
commissioned pieces), but any magazine that accepts unsolicited
manuscripts is going to do it at *their* convenience.
(Purchasing editors who take the time to fiddle with the margins
of authors who can't follow the style guidelines! Film at eleven:
right after the snowstorm in Hades.)
Copy-editors/line-editors unfailingly want paper to make their
scribbles on. I have yet to meet a copy editor who even could,
let alone wanted to, revise on a computer screen. Undoubtedly
there are people who can, but not enough to make a dent in the industry.
So every manuscript is going to end up on paper sooner or later.
It's no surprise that the editors don't want the printing to be at
their expense (and the ozone from the laser printers stinking up
*their* offices).
Almost all of the benefits you mention are benefits for the writer.
There *are* some minor benefits for publishers, but usually not enough
to justify the monetary and human cost of increased computerization.
The paper-based system works well enough for most publishers.
They'd be silly to throw it away and try an unproven new system.
Appropriate computer technology is supposed to solve problems, not
create them. If there are no problems (for the publishers!) in the
current system, there's no reason to try to fix them. That isn't
Luddism -- it's common sense.
On the other hand, since I now spend far more of my time on the writer's
end than on the publisher's end, I can't help wishing you were right. :-(
-- Kevin
Patricia C. Wrede
Meat" <globa...@mindspring.com> writes:
>Five provided you know next to nothing about computer or a basic Word
>document. I think I can format your average file in 1 -2 minutes, not
>counting the time it takes to set up the headers (which an editor wouldn't
>be doing).
Which is still somewhere between 5 and 20 hours a week
of some editor's time, assuming a fairly conservative 300
to 600 manuscript submissions per week. That's 5 to 20
hours in addition to the full-time jobs they're already doing...and
assuming that the presence of easy e-mail submissions
doesn't double or triple the slush pile. And assuming that
the editor is as conversant with e-mail and computers as
you are, which many of them aren't. And which still ignores
printing costs -- reading stuff on a computer screen hurts a
lot of folks' eyes, and even laptop computers aren't as
portable as paper (assuminig, of course, that the editor
*has* a laptop, which he/she probably won't unless he/she
is a technophile and has bought one with his/her own cash).
Electronic-format submissions are useful to the publisher when
the publisher gets to the production stage. They're not much
help before that, and they have a number of significant costs
associated with them. It makes no business sense to spend
more money to do the same job one can do now for less money,
when one can spend the less money and still get the savings
benefit by asking writers whose submissions have been accepted
to send in electronic copies. Which is what some publishers are
starting to do.
Sure, electronic slush would be more convenient for some writers,
but publishers aren't in business to make things convenient for
writers.
Patricia C. Wrede
WooF
On Thu, 22 Jun 2000, Larry, the Other White Meat wrote:
>
> Graydon <anga...@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
> news:slrn8l5iv5....@localhost.localdomain...
> > On Thu, 22 Jun 2000 20:35:59 -0500,
> > Larry, the Other White Meat <globa...@mindspring.com> scripsit:
>
> In other words you can only get into my club if you know the secret
> handshake?
Well, back when I was editing Asimov's SF and the quality of
manuscripts was far worse than it is nowadays, we used to say, of
authors of manuscripts in apalling format, "If he's that dumb,
he's too dumb to write science fiction."
It's less a matter of a secret handshake, and more on the order
of putting the clubhouse of the Veteran Tree-Climbers' Society
half-way up a tree.
George Scithers of owls...@netaxs.com
WooF
On 23 Jun 2000, White Crow wrote:
> I don't know our ratios or submissions to accepteds vs a normal
> pro mag, but I think ours are substantally higher (close to 100% on some
> journals, less on others).
The ratio of acceptances to submissions on the various pro
magazines I've edited runs somewhat less than one percent.
George Scithers of owls...@netaxs.com
Larry, the Other White Meat
> close to the Do Nothing end of the spectrum.
Well, it's not as though computer were freshly minted and borne last month.
For a while now the standard word processor for businesses has been MS Word.
In fact, the few times I've thought about taking temp work, invariably the
first question out of their mouth was "Do you know MS Word?" (Or Office).
(Okay, I did use ClarisWorks for a long time, but that was because Apple
always bundled shitty word processors with their computers.)
In a way you could see the type of word processor used become the new
"e-publishing" filter. Much the same way now we expect writers the correct
way to format a manuscript (something which I was never taught in EngComp,
btw). Sure, you might exclude a handful of writer's who still use off-brand
word processors, but you would also, theoretically, cut down on the slush
submission. Although not by much since Word or Office comes with most
computers sold nowadays.
Dorothy J Heydt
Larry, the Other White Meat <globa...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>
>Why don't more magazine accept electronic submissions via email?
The great variety of formats has something to do with it.
So does the fact that it's hard to read lots of text all day on a
computer screen, and editors are very careful about their eyes,
by means of which they make their living.
Also, by no means all editors have laptops onto which they could
download the e-submissions and read 'em on the train going home
or AT home, which is where they do most of the reading because
there's never time for it at work.
Even if they did, editors are an old-fashioned lot, they like
paper copies they can scribble on, and if you sent them e-text
they would have to print it out on their printers with their
paper, and that would be less convenient for them. That it would
be more convenient for you cuts very little ice.
Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djh...@kithrup.com
http://www.kithrup.com/~djheydt
Dorothy J Heydt
>taste in your mouth)?
>
No, you can only get into that subset of mankind designated
"people who get their Mss. at least read, if not bought" by
taking the trouble to get off your duff and print the thing out
and haul it to the PO and buy stamps for it. There would be a
lot more Mss. arriving on editors virtual desks if sending them
were as easy as sending email. Sending email is too easy, as
we have all observed.
That said, I can think of one case where an MS was submitted
electronically, and bought. But the editor already (a) knew the
author, (b) knew she was on the other side of the Atlantic, (c)
knew from her postings that she really could write, before he
asked her to e-send it.
Dorothy J Heydt
I was quoting bits of this thread to my husband, who remarked,
"Plus, one of these days some editor will open an attachment that
purports to be an MS. and it will be a virus."
Dorothy J Heydt
>
>
>Hello? Five minutes per manuscript is a time savings? Multiply that by 800
>manuscript submissions per week.
Keep in mind that most MSS don't get five minutes' attention
in total, since a glance at the first page or two is enough to
inclue the editor to the fact that the thing is hopeless.
WooF
On Fri, 23 Jun 2000, Kevin Russell wrote:
> "Larry, the Other White Meat" wrote:
>
> > Why don't more magazine accept electronic submissions via email?
Kevin's response is entirely right. Editors have entirely too
many manuscripts coming in that they (the editors, not the
manuscripts) can afford to reformat the damn things (the
manuscripts, not the editors) at five minutes per. And I have yet
to see a CRT or liquid crystal display that is as easy to read as
12-point courier type on 24-point spacing, on ordinary, cheap
bond paper.
Having bought something that was submitted on paper, we at Weird
Tales usually ask for an e-mail or disk copy in pure ASCII --
that is, as a pure text file (which, by the way, is a lot shorter
than the bloated things that MS Word puts out). I code for
italics where the paper copy has underlining (underlining is
L*O*T*S easier to spot, which is why editors demand underlining
on paper manuscripts), using a couple of "obsolete" programs that
crash maybe once every two years -- if that -- and produce page
proofs (on paper, again) for the author and our in-house
proofreaders to work on.
And if no digital file is available, there's always our scanner
and optical character recognition program (which actually seems
to recognize words rather than individual letters).
Limericks and haiku are simply re-keyed.
John C. Bunnell
> submissions via email?
The main answers to this have pretty much been given, at
length. What I'll try to do is summarize:
# It's flat-out impossible for an author to reliably
control
the appearance of a manuscript on the editor's
computer; there are too many variables.
# Slush is slush. Most slush e-manuscripts will probably
be just as badly formatted as most slush paper
manuscripts.
# Spending time and effort to run text conversions on
slush is counterproductive for editors.
Now, *solicited* material is another matter. I've been
delivering book reviews by e-mail for years -- but those are
expected, and my editors have from time to time given me
stated preferences for formatting those columns.
--
= John C. Bunnell
= JCBu...@sff.net
= http://www.sff.net/people/jcbunnell/
"There are strange things done in the midnight sun...."
-- Robert Service
Joe Mason
>Well, it's not as though computer were freshly minted and borne last month.
>For a while now the standard word processor for businesses has been MS Word.
>In fact, the few times I've thought about taking temp work, invariably the
>first question out of their mouth was "Do you know MS Word?" (Or Office).
EEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
>In a way you could see the type of word processor used become the new
>"e-publishing" filter. Much the same way now we expect writers the correct
>way to format a manuscript (something which I was never taught in EngComp,
>btw). Sure, you might exclude a handful of writer's who still use off-brand
>word processors, but you would also, theoretically, cut down on the slush
>submission. Although not by much since Word or Office comes with most
>computers sold nowadays.
GGGGGGGGGGGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Joe
(Works for Corel. In the Linux department.)
Jo Walton
> That said, I can think of one case where an MS was submitted
> electronically, and bought. But the editor already (a) knew the
> author, (b) knew she was on the other side of the Atlantic, (c)
> knew from her postings that she really could write, before he
> asked her to e-send it.
He'd also read my previous novel, on paper, double spaced, with one
inch margins all around, and when declining to buy it he asked to see
what I did next, and I asked if he'd like to see the one I'd just
finished, electronically.
:The King's Peace: is going to be a real bound and printed hardback and
I've still never printed it out myself.
--
Jo - - I kissed a kif at Kefk - - J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk
http://www.bluejo.demon.co.uk - Interstichia; Poetry; RASFW FAQ; etc.
my fantasy novel :The King's Peace: coming from Tor in October
sample chapters on http://www.tor.com/sampleKingsPeace.html
Pete McCutchen
<globa...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>
>For the editor e-submissions saves a lot of time. He no longer has to sort
>through a "slush pile" of manuscripts not formatted to his liking. With 5
>minutes clicking and "mousing" he can reformat a manuscript's margins, font,
>size, line spacing, ect. Or just delete the damn thing with a single click
I think you overestimate the amount of time that is spent looking at
bad manuscripts before they're rejected. Five seconds is a lot closer
than five minutes. I'm reasonably certain that it's easier to simply
glance at the first page and toss it in the rejection stack than it
would be to fiddle with fonts, etc.
>if it's too much of a mess. An editor and magazine also saves time and money
>with mailing rejection slips or contracts to an author. He can just open up
>his email program and send his thoughts to the author post-haste.
Sending rejected authors your e-mail address doesn't strike me as a
good idea.
--
Pete McCutchen
Pete McCutchen
<globa...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>> The existence of manuscript formats and the necessity to buy a stamp
>> acts a a filter on the submissions received, and it's perceived as a
>> necessary filter with a degree of unamiminity which makes me suspect
>> that is really _is_ a necessary filter.
>
>In other words you can only get into my club if you know the secret
>handshake (which involves a lot of kneeling and sucking and leaves a nasty
>taste in your mouth)?
Does the Writers' Guild have things sewed up so tightly in your
timeline? In my timeline, things evolved differently: anybody who
wants to can write a book, send it to a publisher, and, if it's good
enough, get it published. There are even publications such as
_Writers' Market_ and _Speculations_, which provide information about
required manuscript format and even a list of markets. In my
timeline, anybody with the brains to make wee-wee by himself can
probably get a properly-formated manuscript on the desk of an editor
(or at least the editor's assistant).
You must envy me, living, as I do, in such an open society!
>
>I guess that makes a decent amount of sense. Although I tend to dislike
>filters and dislike even more people that claim that there is a need for
>them. Akin to the librarians at Alexandria who wouldn't let the unwashed
>masses inside.
I could point out that in a world where there are no printing presses,
and manuscripts have to be copied by hand, it actually makes sense to
restrict access to books.
But, in any case, even a cursory glance at much of the fiction
"published" on the Web should make the need for filters glaringly
obvious.
--
Pete McCutchen
Pete McCutchen
<globa...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>> If your magazine can avoid these problems by forcing your authors
>> to use *your* one favorite word processor, then you're essentially
>> close to the Do Nothing end of the spectrum.
>
>Well, it's not as though computer were freshly minted and borne last month.
>For a while now the standard word processor for businesses has been MS Word.
>In fact, the few times I've thought about taking temp work, invariably the
>first question out of their mouth was "Do you know MS Word?" (Or Office).
Many writers choose to use a word processor other than MS Word, and I
see little or no reason why "the standard word processor for business"
ought to become "the standard word processor for writers." Most
businesses, after all, produce little more than one or two page
letters, and maybe a ten-page memo or two. A word processor suitable
for such a task may not work for a 100,000 word manuscript.
--
Pete McCutchen
Nick Mamatas
"Dorothy J Heydt" <djh...@kithrup.com> wrote in message
news:FwLEH...@kithrup.com...
> In article <3952D6D8...@erols.com>, Brenda <clo...@erols.com>
wrote:
> >
> >
> >Hello? Five minutes per manuscript is a time savings? Multiply that by
800
> >manuscript submissions per week.
>
> Keep in mind that most MSS don't get five minutes' attention
> in total, since a glance at the first page or two is enough to
> inclue the editor to the fact that the thing is hopeless.
Yes, and electronic subs would probably not even get that much attention. I
read the slush at the company I work for (not SF-oriented really, but I have
both accepted and rejected SF mss) and I usually push myself to read the
first ten pages of anything we get in, even when I can tell after the first
two that This Isn't For Us (TIFU). Esubs would be just toooo easy to delete
after reading one awkward sentence, and mss with only one awkward sentence
wouldn't make it past my temptation to blast it from the universe. I would
have ended up ignoring some stuff I bought.
Also, paper subs are handier. I can read them on the subway on the way
home, pass them to an intern or to the executive editor, make notes quickly,
etc etc.
Btw, TIFU can mean anything from "Gah, no mo' poetry this year, we lost
enough money as it is!" to "We already did a book on prisons" to "English,
motherfucker! Do you speak it?" to "Geez, not another punk rock novel about
a young guy from a small town who starts a band, moves to a big city, and
meets an attractive girl (always introduced tits-first, of course) who
really blows his mind with her outrageous sexuality. Oh look, and he does
some drugs, wanders the streets looking for God and cursing his father, gets
picked up by the cops, sees a real live black person in the joint and learns
something about The Power Of The Man. Well, that's the third one this week!
TIFU!"
Nick Mamatas
ni...@softskull.com
Lisa A Leutheuser
>handshake (which involves a lot of kneeling and sucking and leaves a nasty
>taste in your mouth)?
That so-called "secret handshake" is published in numerous writer
how-to books and market guides. In addition, many markets supply
submission guidelines upon request. If you can go to the trouble
of finding the snail mail or email address for submissions, you can
take the extra minute to read their submission guidelines.
>I guess that makes a decent amount of sense. Although I tend to dislike
>filters and dislike even more people that claim that there is a need for
>them. Akin to the librarians at Alexandria who wouldn't let the unwashed
>masses inside.
<boggle>
You dislike filters, yet you proposed elsewhere in this thread
that editors should filter manuscripts based on what word processor
writers use?
(paraphrased: "...some writers would be excluded for using "off-brand"
word processors.")
--
Lisa Leutheuser
eal (at) umich.edu
http://www.umich.edu/~eal
Beth Friedman
Heydt) wrote:
>In article <8iuevi$7n2$1...@nntp9.atl.mindspring.net>,
>Larry, the Other White Meat <globa...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>>
>>Why don't more magazine accept electronic submissions via email?
>
>The great variety of formats has something to do with it.
The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them.
(I'd give credit to the author if I could remember who it was.)
--
Beth Friedman
b...@wavefront.com
Lisa A Leutheuser
Larry, the Other White Meat <globa...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>
>In a way you could see the type of word processor used become the new
>"e-publishing" filter. Much the same way now we expect writers the correct
>way to format a manuscript (something which I was never taught in EngComp,
>btw). Sure, you might exclude a handful of writer's who still use off-brand
>word processors, but you would also, theoretically, cut down on the slush
>submission. Although not by much since Word or Office comes with most
>computers sold nowadays.
How much is MS paying you to say this?
Kevin Russell
The only publisher I know of who's succeeded in making a large
percentage of their authors submit electronically in a consistent
format is O'Reilly, the computer book publisher. They have a
number of advantages going for them that other publishers don't:
1) Their authors are *all* sophisticated computer users, otherwise
they wouldn't be writing computer books. Their editors are all
sophisticated computer users, otherwise they wouldn't be working
there.
2) The format they use is DocBook, an HTML-like mark-up system
designed specifically for computer books. Since it's plain ASCII
with no fancy characters, it will survive any trip between
different computers and different operating systems. (Note that
they didn't even think of using Microsoft Word!)
DocBook actually isn't all that intuitive to use. There are no
cute WYSIWYG editors for it. This is where point 1 helps.
3) Books are written under the usual non-fiction proposal-and-
contract system. O'Reilly doesn't comb the slush pile looking
for the complete manuscript of their next book on CORBA/DCOM
integration.
Unless you have all these advantages going for you, electronic
submissions aren't going to help you anywhere near as much.
-- Kevin
James Nicoll
>handshake (which involves a lot of kneeling and sucking and leaves a nasty
>taste in your mouth)?
>
>filters and dislike even more people that claim that there is a need for
>them. Akin to the librarians at Alexandria who wouldn't let the unwashed
>masses inside.
I had a competitor with the same rule: he had gaming tables
and his store had poor ventilation.
Given the finite size of magazines, you need to filter out most
stories somehow.
--
"Sure, Len, just because something is old doesn't mean it's
engraved in stone. We know a lot more about entertainment now than they
did back then. Look at Lawrence Olivier! You think he was in any of
Shakespeare's original productions? No! They added him years later!"
Wendy Shaffer
White Meat" <globa...@mindspring.com> wrote:
> On just about every angle I could view this idea from electronic submissions
> seems like a giant improvement over the old paper manuscripts. But why don't
> more magazines do it? Is there something I'm missing? A economic issue that
> makes electronic submissions unworkable, or more work than paper
> manuscripts? Or is it just that peculiar form of Luddism that seems to
> pervade parts of the publishing industry, and infects certain editors?
Just a data point:
There's a new fantasy magazine called _Black Gate_ starting up,
scheduled for launch in October or so. It accepts both paper and
electronic submissions. Editor David Truesdale mentioned that he
somewhat prefers paper submissions, in part because reading manuscripts
on the computer screen for hours a day hurts his eyes, and in part
because he gets a lot of oddly formatted things that he doesn't know
how to reformat.
I think that the biggest factor is the eyestrain issue - editors
who like reading on computer screens tend to accept electronic subs,
and those who don't like to read on computer screens don't.
----wendy
--
Wendy A. Shaffer
wsha...@uclink4.berkeley.edu
WooF
On Fri, 23 Jun 2000, Lisa A Leutheuser wrote:
> That so-called "secret handshake" is published in numerous writer
> how-to books and market guides. In addition, many markets supply
> submission guidelines upon request. If you can go to the trouble
> of finding the snail mail or email address for submissions, you can
> take the extra minute to read their submission guidelines.
In fact, you don't even have to request a particularly
well-spoken-of set of guidelines; below, those of Weird Tales.
George Scithers of owls...@netaxs.com
GUIDELINES
<MI>Weird Tales(R)<D>
123 Crooked Lane, King of Prussia PA 19406-2570
owls...@netaxs.com
<MI> = begin italics
<B> = begin bold
<D> = go back to normal type
<MU> = underline
There are only three <B>RULES<D> for writing;
all else are merely comments.
****************
<B>RULE ONE: You must seize, then hold, your readers' and your
editor's interest and attention, then repay the readers' time and
the editor's money by having something to say and sharing it with
them.<D>
Rudyard Kipling wrote:
``There are nine and sixty ways
of constructing tribal lays,
and every single one of them is right!''
What follow are comments, not rules. These may help, but
what's important is the result -- selling an <MI>interesting<D>
story.
The archetypical plot consists of a <MI>Situation<D> (the
protagonist meets a problem), a <MI>Complication<D> (the problem
makes the protagonist do something about it in a series of
actions/reactions of rising intensity), a <MI>Climax<D> (the
protagonist must solve the problem or be broken by it), a
<MI>Resolution<D> (the problem unwinds, the protagonist succeeds
or fails), and an <MI>Anticlimax<D> (left-overs are carted off or
explained away). Most (but not all) stories follow this pattern.
<MI>One<D> of those nine and sixty ways to construct your
story is based on suggestions from the science-fiction writer and
teacher, James Gunn:
*** Begin with an idea: What would happen if . . . ? and
then work out its logical, believable consequences.
*** Create a background, colorful enough to hold interest;
but don't overwhelm the story. Remember background is
<MI>back<D>ground; write a story, not a gazetteer.
*** Select characters who will best dramatize the conflict
you've plotted. Observe <MI>real<D> people, and model your cast
on them. Show them in action from the start; show their
characters by what they say and do. Write a story, not a set of
r‚sum‚s.
*** Pick the best viewpoint for telling <MI>this<D> story
(almost always the most important decision made when writing
fiction). Put the reader so firmly into that viewpoint that as he
reads, he <MI>is<D> that character. Do not pull the reader out of
a viewpoint character to describe what he looks like or to
present his biography. Get <MI>on<D> with the <MI>story<D>. If
your protagonist's appearance is important to him, he'll think
about it or act on it soon enough, <MI>showing<D> the reader that
facet of character without <MI>telling<D> the reader about it; if
it's not, get on with the story.
*** Begin your story where and when things become
<MI>interesting.<D> Homer began the <MI>Iliad<D> right in the
middle of a war (``I sing of the anger of Achilles . . .'') and
Homer sings to us still! Backtrack to explanation or flashback
only when it's so relevant to the story that the viewpoint
character and the reader, still <MI>being<D> that character,
remember what happened before this story began. You'll be
surprised how few flashbacks you <MI>really<D> need!
*** Write in scenes, dramatizing everything possible. In
every scene, put your characters -- and readers -- firmly into
the time and place of that scene. Appeal to the senses -- go
beyond how things look, go on to the sound and smell and
<MI>feel<D> of the setting. But don't overdo it; omit everything
that doesn't advance the story.
*** Don't lecture; exposition is all dead matter. Avoid
clich‚s like the plague! Learning to avoid triteness in word and
phrase <MI>and<D> in ideas, plots, characters, and backgrounds is
easily half of becoming a good writer.
Mark Twain wrote, in his famous essay, ``Fenimore Cooper's
Literary Offenses,'' that:
*** <B>1.<D>A tale shall accomplish something and arrive
somewhere.
*** <B>2.<D>The episodes of a tale shall be necessary parts
of the tale, and shall help to develop it.
*** <B>3.<D>The personages in a tale shall be alive, except
in the case of corpses, and always the reader shall be able to
tell the corpses from the others.
*** <B>4.<D>The personages in a tale, both dead and alive,
shall exhibit a sufficient excuse for being there.
*** <B>5.<D>When the personages of a tale deal in
conversation, the talk shall sound like human talk, and be talk
such as human beings would be likely to talk in the given
circumstances, and have a discoverable meaning, also a
discoverable purpose, and a show of relevancy, and remain in the
neighborhood of the subject in hand, and be interesting to the
reader, and help out the tale, and stop when the people cannot
think of anything more to say.
*** <B>6.<D>When the author describes the character of a
personage in his tale, the conduct and conversation of that
personage shall justify said description.
*** <B>7.<D>When a personage talks like an
illustrated, gilt-edged, tree-calf, hand-tooled, seven-dollar
Friendship's Offering in the beginning of a paragraph, he shall
not talk like a Negro minstrel in the end of it.
*** <B>8.<D>Crass stupidities shall not be played upon the
reader by either the author or the people in the tale.
*** <B>9.<D>The personages of a tale shall confine
themselves to possibilities and let miracles alone; or, if they
venture a miracle, the author must so plausibly set it forth as
to make it look possible and reasonable.
*** <B>10.<D>The author shall make the reader feel a deep
interest in the personages of his tale and in their fate; and
shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate
the bad ones.
*** <B>11.<D>The characters in a tale shall be so clearly
defined that the reader can tell beforehand what each will do in
a given emergency.
*** <B>12.<D>The author shall <MI>say<D> what he is
proposing to say, not merely come near it.
*** <B>13.<D>He shall use the right word, not its second
cousin.
*** <B>14.<D>He shall eschew surplusage.
*** <B>15.<D>He shall not omit necessary details.
*** <B>16.<D>He shall avoid slovenliness of form.
*** <B>17.<D>He shall use good grammar.
*** <B>18.<D>He shall employ a simple, straightforward
style.
Elsewhere, he wrote: ``The difference between the right word
and the almost-right word is the difference between the lightning
and the lightning bug.'' Also: ``Truth <MI>is<D> stranger than
fiction, because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities.
Truth isn't.''
But all these are comments, not <B>Rules<D>.
*********************
<B>RULE TWO: You must put your story into a format the
editor can read, the copy-editor can edit, & the compositor can
set into type.<D>
Ursula Le Guin, in her <MI>The Language of the Night<D>,
writes: ``Your story may begin in longhand on the backs of old
shopping lists; but when it goes to an editor, it should be
typed, double-spaced, on one side of the paper only, with
generous margins -- especially the left-hand one -- and not too
many grotty corrections per page.
``Your name and its name and the page number should be on
the top [right corner] of every single page; and when you mail it
to the editor it should have enclosed with it a stamped, self-
addressed envelope.''
<B>Typed<D> (or <B>machine-printed<D>) means just that. If
you use ribbons, have a supply of new ones on hand; change to a
new ribbon when you start the final draft of a story. The output
must be <MI>black,<D> not grey. But do not overink; be sure no
letter looks like a black blob. The typesetter must follow copy
to the letter. To do this, he must be able to read, without
guessing, every letter on every page. Although your printer may
have no end of fancy fonts, it's best to use a simple font that
looks like the output of a typewriter, like 12-point Courier
type, which is ideal; the closer to that, the better.
<MI>Italic<D>, script, or ALL-CAPITAL-LETTER typefaces are Not
Acceptable. Never change typefaces within your manuscript; if you
want the editor to make such a change, say so in a penciled,
marginal note. AVOID typefaces that confuse ``i,'' ``I,'' and
``l,'' or the comma ``,'' with the period ``.''
<B>Double-spaced<D> means leaving a full, blank line after
every typed line; it does not mean putting extra space between
words! On a typewriter, set the line-feed control to advance the
paper two full lines at a time; on a printer, set the line
spacing at 24 points. Either should give you three typed lines
per vertical inch. Do NOT use the one-&-a-half-line setting some
typewriters have; do <MI>not<D> reduce the line spacing
<MI>any<D>where in the manuscript.
Indent every paragraph five spaces, <MI>including dialog.<D>
Leave extra space between paragraphs only where you want to mark
a shift in scene or a lapse of time.
<B>On one side of the paper<D>, which should be white, 8.5
by 11 inches (or European equivalent), 16 or 20 pound bond. Do
NOT use ``erasable'' paper.
<B>With generous margins<D>, about an inch, all the way
around. It's quite all right to put a small mark on the paper
about an inch from the bottom to tell you where to stop typing.
Margins much larger than one inch waste paper and postage. If you
use a word processor, check its manual, and then turn OFF the
right-justification <MI>and<D> the hyphenation; do NOT let it
suppress ``widows & orphans.'' Do NOT break words at the end of
lines. Editors (all editors!) prefer ragged right margins with
even spacing between words, and we prefer the same number of
lines on every page but the first and the last.
<B>And not too many grotty corrections per page.<D> Neither
editors nor compositors are grading for neatness; we don't demand
letter-perfect-the-first-time typing. We <MI>do<D> object to
erasures. If you use a typewriter, <B>XXX<D>-out or line out your
deletions, and type or legibly hand-print any corrections above
the place each is to be inserted. If you are using a word-
processor and printer, proofread before you print the submission
copy.
<B>Identify your story. <D>Type (or machine-print) your full
real name, your social security number, <B>and your address<D>
(so we can send you money!) at the upper left-hand corner of the
first page, an inch inside the top and left edges of the page.
Your story's title (<MI>your<D> responsibility; editors don't buy
nameless stories) goes about a quarter of the way down the first
page, with your name (or your pen name, if you use one) directly
under that title. (Two suggestions: Avoid cutesy pen names; your
own real name, especially an unusual one, is far better. But if a
well-known writer has the same name as yours, change yours in
some way, such as spelling out your middle name instead of an
initial, or the like.) Use paper clips, NOT staples, to hold
manuscripts together.
Pages sometimes do go astray. Therefore, a glance at
<MI>any<D> page in the manuscript should reveal the story title,
its author, and the page number. So: type or print your last name
(plus initials if your name is a common one), a word or two from
the title, and the page number on the upper <MI>right<D>-hand
corner of every page, starting with page 2, like this:
<B>XmasCarol/Dickens/pg 26<D>, or <B>Cujo/S. King/7<D>. (If you
use a separate title page, page numbering starts with the first
page of text.)
<B>And when you mail it to the editor, it should have
enclosed with it a stamped, self-addressed envelope.<D> Editors
much prefer a new, 9-by-12-inch, NON-clasp envelope to carry the
story to the editor, with a second envelope of the same size,
folded once, paper-clipped to the back of the manuscript.
(Neither the Post Office nor editors do not like clasps, those
brass things that stick through holes in envelope flaps; and
non-clasp envelopes are cheaper.) Please do not use envelopes
larger than 9 by 12. Address the return envelope to yourself.
Both the outgoing and return envelopes should be addressed by
typewriter or printer; if the envelope won't fit, type or print
addresses on labels. Please <MI>affix<D> U.S. postage stamps
(foreign postage is useless to us, and you do us no favors by
sending loose stamps!); do NOT use padded envelopes, binders,
or stiffeners; do NOT use registered or certified mail; your
<MI>only<D> protection against loss is to keep a good copy of
anything you send out. Need U.S. postage? See below.
The more standard your format, the less editors are
distracted from what is really important: <MI>the story
itself.<D>
To find out how long the story is, you don't actually count
the words. Instead, take an average-length, mid-paragraph~ line.
Count the letters and spaces and punctuation in that line. Divide
by six. Multiply by lines per page. Multiply by pages (correcting
for partly blank pages at beginning and end). Put this ``word''
count in the upper right corner of the first page.
Call for <MI>italics<D> by <MU>underlining<D>; do NOT use an
italic typeface in the manuscript itself. Distinguish between the
hyphen, as in ``mother-in-law'' and the dash -- which in your
manuscript should appear like this -- with a space before and a
space after.
It's hard for an editor to take seriously an author who
keeps mixing up <MI>its<D> and <MI>it's,<D> or<MI> lie<D> and
<MI>lay<D> and their various tenses (<MI>lying, laying, laid,
lied, lain,<D> and so on). Other words you should watch out for
are <MI>there/~their/~they're, through/threw, were/we're,
yoke/yolk,<D> and <MI>form/~from<D> (we have trouble with that
last pair ourselves). Spell-check programs do NOT catch errors
like these; <MI>you're<D> responsible for poofreadnig <MI>your<D>
manuscripts.
On dialog and manuscript format:
*******
We say, ``You must punctuate, paragraph, and indent
carefully and correctly.''
``How about in dialog?'' you ask.
<MU>``Especially<M> in dialog,'' we say. ``If in doubt, you
must look up how to do it properly. Note that when two or more
<MU>consecutive<M> paragraphs are spoken by the <MU>same<M>
speaker, all have quote marks at the beginning, but only the last
has quote marks at the end.
``Also,'' we suddenly, excitedly expostulate unto thee,
``when you're writing dialog, do <MU>not<M> reach for substitutes
for `say' or `said,' as we did in this paragraph, nor hang
unnecessary adverbs on `say.' Doing so will soon get silly;
worse, it distracts from the <MU>story.<D> Notice how we
punctuated and capitalized all through this conversation.''
You look puzzled. ``Can I identify the speaker without using
`said' or a synonym for `said'?''
``You just did.'' We smile reassuringly. ``Just don't overdo
it. Identify the speaker often enough that the reader always
knows who is speaking. Don't let pronouns run wild, as in: `He
saw him look at him.' Since `ten foot long sticks' can mean `ten
sticks a foot long' or `sticks ten feet long,' use commas or
hyphens (`ten foot-long sticks' or `ten-foot-long sticks') to
tell the reader which.''
**********
Cover letter? No more than one page long, and only if you
really want to; remember that editors don't buy cover letters;
they buy stories. Don't spoil the suspense with a synopsis; and
don't include your bibliography or r‚sum‚. You may cite two or
three earlier sales; then get out of the way and let the story
sell itself.
However, if the editor's seen the story before, a cover
letter <MI>is<D> necessary, to remind her what she said about the
story before and to tell her exactly what you've done about her
suggestions. Use a cover letter to explain anything unusual about
the rights offered -- for example, if the story is part of a
novel to be published by [insert name] on [insert date]. Put your
typed name and address, and your story's title on every cover
letter. But if you don't <MI>need<D> a cover letter, omit it.
If it's cheaper to send a disposable copy, mark the
manuscript ``disposable'' so the editor can throw it away if she
doesn't buy it. Provide a business-letter-sized return envelope,
what stationers call a number 10 envelope (NOT a postcard!), with
letter-postage affixed, for the editor's reply.
If you are sending us stories from outside the U.S.,
remember that only U.S. stamps can be used for return postage.
Since international postage is so expensive, we strongly
recommend that you send a disposable manuscript (so marked) and a
return envelope at least 10 by 22 centimeters in size, for the
editor's reply. You can send International Postal Reply Coupons
to pay for the return postage; each is worth about US$0.60 to us.
To send a one-ounce (28 gram) letter to Canada costs us US$0.52;
to an overseas address, US$1.00. Reply Coupons cost you a lot,
but you can buy U.S. postage by sending a postal money order,
payable in U.S. funds, to cover the cost of 10 stamps or more, to
Postmaster, Bridgeport PA 19405, U.S.A. (or to the Postmaster of
any other U.S. city). Include your own address. Explain what
stamps you want, and how many of each.
When a reply envelope is to be mailed in the U.S. for
delivery to another country, put the name of that country at the
<MI>end<D> of the <MI>last<D> line of the address.
Dot-matrix printing is acceptable only if one cannot tell at
a glance that the print <MI>is<D> dot-matrix. Do not use draft
mode, nor seven- or nine-pin dot-matrix machines.
Submissions to us must be on paper in the format described
above, <MI>not<D> on disk and <MI>not<D> by e-mail. Unless an
editor announces otherwise, assume this is so for all
publications. An editor who buys your story will want to know if
you can supply it by disk -- and if so, which word processor and
which kind of computer: PC, Apple, or MacIntosh -- or by e-mail.
Put these data on the man~u~script's first page. (We use a PC,
XyWrite and Ventura.)
Manuscript format is not the place to be innovative; do not
divert the editor's attention from the <MI>story!<D> What editors
buy is your choice of words (including punctuation!) and the
order you put them on paper. Manuscript format, therefore, should
be as invisible as possible.
***********************
<B>RULE THREE: You must put your story before an editor who
might buy it.<D>
Parents, siblings, spouses, offspring, teachers, and friends
don't count; neither do closets or desk drawers. You simply
<MI>must<D> send your story to editors (one editor at a time).
Remember that editors do not reject people, nor do they predict
careers. At worst, editors reject pieces of paper that you typed
on; at best, editors send you money. The only opinion that really
counts here is that of someone who might buy your story.
We call your attention to the chorus in the opening song of
<MI>The Music Man<D>: ``But ya gotta know the territory!'' Read
your target publications. See what kind of stories they use; note
what kinds of stories they do not use. Send for guidelines,
always including a return envelope (with postage affixed) for the
reply. (You've already done that if you're reading this. Thank
you.)
In the short-story market, it is almost always better to
send a complete manuscript rather than a ``would you like to
see?'' letter. If you fear that a particular market might not be
open for submissions, write to the editor and ask if it's open
now; and if it's not open, when will it be, with a post card
(addressed to you, with postage affixed) for the editor's reply.
How does the ``who might buy it'' part of the Rule apply to
<MI>Weird Tales<D>? Please keep in mind our mag~a~zine's title. We
almost never buy a story or a poem which has no fantasy content;
we hardly ever buy science fiction which lacks fantasy elements.
But this leaves room for an extraordinary range of fiction
-- and poetry: Robert E. Howard's Conan the Cimmerian and modern
swordplay-&-sorcery were born in <MI>Weird Tales.<D> H.P.
Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, Miskatonic University and all, are
welcome to our pages, as are stories set in fantasy-worlds of
your own invention. We're looking for the best in fantasy-based
horror, heroic fantasy, and exotic mood pieces, plus the
occasional ``odd'' story that won't fit anywhere else. We want to
please our readers with superior writing and to surprise them
with new ideas. To this end, we will <MI>occasionally<D> publish
a story in which the ominous, eldritch, and/or squamous horrors
waiting to pounce turn out to be quite harmless. We almost never
use material already published in the U.S.
A 10,000-word story is about the longest we use. Almost
everything we buy is shorter than 8,000 words. We do not
serialize novels. We have no minimum length. Short-short stories
(less than 1,000 words or so) are very hard to write, but they
are easy to sell.
<MI>WT<D> does use humor, but the humor should touch on
fantasy or horror themes. We find that humor works best when
structured like other fiction, with high points and low, tension
and relief, building to a climax and (usually) a very quick
anticlimax or none at all. Beware of trying to make every line
screamingly funny.
Remember that printed fantasy stories (and science fiction,
for that matter) are usually years -- even decades -- ahead of
movie and TV versions of the same themes. Especially beware of
building a story (<MI>any<D> kind of story) on current newspaper
headlines, which may well be forgotten by the time the story
could be printed. As an example: spousal and child abuse, and
school-yard shootings are real-life problems, yes -- but they're
much too familiar to our readers to work as fiction just now.
To know <MI>our<D> territory (``. . . ya gotta know the
territory!''), look at what we publish in <MI>Weird Tales<D>.
Then try to do even better. (Back issues of <MI>Weird Tales<D>
(and <MI>Worlds of Fantasy & Horror,<D> our title for four
issues) are available from the address above: single copies,
$5.00 each, including postage; four-issue subscriptions, $16.00
in the U.S. and its possessions; in Canada & Mexico, $6.00 and
$22.00; and elsewhere, $10 and $35 by air mail, all prices in
U.S. dollars; make checks and money orders payable to DNA
Publications.)
We respond as fast as we can, and we write an individual
letter for almost every rejection. In return, we expect that your
submission is not now being seen by any other editor, and we hope
you will not get <MI>too<D> upset if we tell you why <MI>we<D>
don't want to use it. Ours is only one opinion, but it <MI>is<D>
possible for us to be right, and our comments might help you to
do better with your next story. Again: we reject pieces of paper;
we cannot and will not reject <MI>you.<D> We pay from 3› to 6›
per word on acceptance.
<B>Story elements we see too often:<D>
*** We don't object to corpses nor to tragic endings, but
protagonists who exist only to wallow in woe and then succumb
quietly to an undeserved doom really don't belong in <MI>WT.<D>
Your protagonists must at least <MI>try<D> to cope, and must try
to change <MI>some<D>thing, even if the outcome is tragic.
Stories whose only point is that the world is a dreadful,
dreadful place would just tell our readers what they already
know; people read <MI>WT<D> to escape everyday futility, not to
be be splattered with more.
*** Mere description of a horror is not as effective as
telling a <MI>story<D> about people trying to cope with one,
successfully or not. Believable, often sympathetic <MI>people<D>
make horror stories scary; but standard-issue, cardboard villains
rented by the yard from Central Casting and who come to a
(usually predictable) bad end do not.
*** The pseudo-Medieval never-never land, overrun with
generic swords-persons, wizards, and dragons has been sword-
played (and ensorcelled) into the ground by now. But<MI> your<D>
imaginary-world setting, characters, and plot elements can be
fresh, and new, and <MI>interesting.<D> Look at real histories;
get a feel for just how complex the pre-industrial world was.
Don't base your characters or your magic on a r“le-playing game;
invent your own.
*** Now, there's nothing inherently wrong with stories about
classical vampires, deals with the Devil, formalities of the
Hereafter, or people eating people (and vice versa); but our
readers have already seen stories based on these ideas. If you
wrap a story around an old, familiar idea, add something new and
different! A story never surprises readers if all it does is
reveal, as a ``surprise'' ending, that the protagonist is a
vampire, or that he finally noticed he's been dead since page 2.
*** Please remember that <MI>Weird Tales<D> is a
<MI>fiction<D> magazine; the Real Inside Truth About The Occult
belongs elsewhere, as do real-life ghost sightings and
<MI>any<D>thing about airborne crockery and/or alien abductions.
<B>To sum up:<D>
Most manuscripts rejected by <MI>any<D> fiction editor are
rejected for one or more of these flaws:
*** Text too hard to read or in outrageously bad format (see
Rule Two).
*** Lack of a clear, consistent point of view.
*** Failure to establish the characters' identity and
setting, in both time and place, early in the story.
*** Too much exposition and too little narration, especially
at the beginning.
*** Characters so uninteresting, unpleasant, or unconvincing
that the readers don't <MI>care<D> whether or not those
characters get eaten alive (or worse) on stage. Characters who
don't even <MI>try<D> to cope with their problems (<MI>your<D>
protagonists should <MI>protag!<D>).
*** Plots that fail to resolve (tragically, happily, or
otherwise) problems or conflicts, but just present them. Plots
with neither problems nor conflicts. Plots based on ideas so old
and tired that the ending is obvious half-way down page 1. Plots
that cheat readers by holding back information for a ``surprise''
ending.
*** Writing so flowery and so filled with sesquipedelian
prose that the basic story is lost under too many adjectives,
adverbs, and not-quite-right words. Writing which <MI>feels<D> as
if the author were being paid by the word (well, you <MI>are,<D>
but don't let the reader know <MI>that<D>). Writing too murky or
opaque to decypher and decode. Writing so filled with errors in
spelling, punctuation, and grammar that no editor wants to wade
through the mess.
<B>Things for you to read:<D>
<MI>The Elements of Style<D> by Strunk and White, third
edition, published by Macmillan, is widely available from good
bookstores in hard covers and soft. Absolutely essential. Get
hold of a copy, and you better believe it!
<MI>On Writing Science Fiction: The Editors Strike Back!<D>
by Scithers, Schweitzer, and Ford -- we wrote it, so of course we
recommend it. Also: <MI>Science Fiction Writer's Workshop I<D> by
Barry B. Longyear. Both discuss fantasy as well as science
fiction; you can order them from Owlswick Press, 123 Crooked
Lane, King of Prussia PA 19406-2570, for $19.50 and $9.50,
respectively, postpaid. (In Pennsylvania, please add 6% sales
tax.)
Any good library should have copies of two different books
with the same title: <MI>The Craft of Fiction<D>, one by Percy
Lubbock, the other by William Knott. The chapters on viewpoint in
both books are outstanding.
<B>Another Resource:<D>
The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America publish the
<MI>SFWA Bulletin,<D> with market reports, news, interviews, and
so on. For information on the <MI>Bulletin<D> or on SFWA, send a
stamped, return envelope to SFWA Bulletin, 522 Park Ave, Berkeley
Heights NJ 07922 USA, or visit the site www.sfwa.org.
END OF GUIDELINES
WooF
On Fri, 23 Jun 2000, Wendy Shaffer wrote:
> Just a data point:
> There's a new fantasy magazine called _Black Gate_ starting up,
> scheduled for launch in October or so. It accepts both paper and
> electronic submissions. Editor David Truesdale mentioned that he
> somewhat prefers paper submissions, in part because reading manuscripts
> on the computer screen for hours a day hurts his eyes, and in part
> because he gets a lot of oddly formatted things that he doesn't know
> how to reformat.
Unless the good David Truesdale has spent some time with a slush
pile before, he is learning a lot in a hurry about bad
manuscripts. I wish him well, but sympathize what he's going
through.
(An example: the Weird Tales guidelines mention that "double
spacing means between lines, not between words. That's because
lots of would-be writers do indeed make the wrong guess, unless
told, and will hit the space bar twice between words.)
George Scithers of owls...@netaxs.com
Larry, the Other White Meat
> Does the Writers' Guild have things sewed up so tightly in your
> timeline? In my timeline, things evolved differently: anybody who
> wants to can write a book, send it to a publisher, and, if it's good
> enough, get it published. There are even publications such as
> _Writers' Market_ and _Speculations_, which provide information about
> required manuscript format and even a list of markets. In my
> timeline, anybody with the brains to make wee-wee by himself can
> probably get a properly-formated manuscript on the desk of an editor
> (or at least the editor's assistant).
>
> You must envy me, living, as I do, in such an open society!
>
HA! HA! Your wit doth slay me, sir! Pardon me, dear sir, as I fall upon my
sword all shits and giggles.
I actually do know how to format a manuscript and have gotten on plenty of
editorial desks. Rejected but gotten there nonethless (99% of the rejection
letters I have gotten usually begin with or contain the phrase, "I (or we)
like your writing, BUT--").
I simply don't "get" the way the publishing industry is stuck in the mud of
19th Century technology. And the reason because too many people might
submitt manuscripts doesn't cut it with me.
> >
> >I guess that makes a decent amount of sense. Although I tend to dislike
> >filters and dislike even more people that claim that there is a need for
> >them. Akin to the librarians at Alexandria who wouldn't let the unwashed
> >masses inside.
>
> I could point out that in a world where there are no printing presses,
> and manuscripts have to be copied by hand, it actually makes sense to
> restrict access to books.
>
Please, did some one drop a Sophist Bomb on your house? The reason knowledge
(i.e. books, ect) were restricted to the few because it keeps the mass
ignorant and few in power. Simple equation:
Books = knowledge
Knowledge = power
> But, in any case, even a cursory glance at much of the fiction
> "published" on the Web should make the need for filters glaringly
> obvious.
>
Not really. I think the Internet makes a good case for tearing down all
filters, and letting people make their own decisions about what they do and
do not view.
Larry -
J. Simon
: >In other words you can only get into my club if you know the secret
: >handshake
More like, "No shoes, no shirt, no service". Do you really think every
monkey with a computer should be able to deluge editors with their latest
ten Star Trek regurgitations at the click of a button... and then, when
they're rejected, start sending detailed explanations of exactly how and
why the editor failed to understand their genius? Sure, that's the
bottom layer, but even a doubling in volume could prevent editors from
reading the slushpile *at all*. If an editor is gracious enough to
consider my unsolicited piece, I'll be gracious enough to format, print,
and mail it.
: >I guess that makes a decent amount of sense. Although I tend to dislike
: >filters and dislike even more people that claim that there is a need for
: >them.
Oh yeah. The intelligence and dedication to actually PUT SOMETHING IN THE
MAIL is vastly beyond most people. I can just imagine all the future
Asimovs we've lost because they couldn't figure out how to buy stamps.
Of course, filtering does have its problems. My crayon-drawn epic,
the "Burnt Sienaid", was left in the slushpile so long it melted.
Tragic.
- J. Simon
Larry, the Other White Meat
> <boggle>
>
> You dislike filters, yet you proposed elsewhere in this thread
> that editors should filter manuscripts based on what word processor
> writers use?
>
Simply because of the logistics involved in using multiple formats when
e-publishing. In an ideal world I dislike them. The world isn't ideal. At
least restricting e-submissions to .doc format has a legitimate purpose
beyond filtering out the unwanted. Other word processors can present
problems when it comes to formatting.
Larry --
--
ICQ No. 77704089
WooF
On Fri, 23 Jun 2000, Pete McCutchen wrote:
> Most businesses, after all, produce little more than one or two
> page letters, and maybe a ten-page memo or two. A word
> processor suitable for such a task may not work for a 100,000
> word manuscript.
Boy, is that the understatement of the week!
George Scithers of owls...@netaxs.com
WooF
On Fri, 23 Jun 2000, Pete McCutchen wrote:
> In my timeline, anybody with the brains to make wee-wee by
> himself can probably get a properly-formated manuscript on the
> desk of an editor (or at least the editor's assistant).
Well, over in **my* timeline, I've had to make up a form
rejection slip for the increasing number of would-be writers who
think 8-point type (or smaller!) is just the thing for
manuscripts.
George Scithers of owls...@netaxs.com
Kevin Russell
So you admit that publishers have the right to trammel the untrammeled
freedom of submitters in order to make life more convenient for them.
What I don't understand is your refusal to believe that that is
*exactly* what they are doing right now.
I sincerely hope your proposed .doc format never becomes the *only*
acceptable way to submit.
The way it is now, getting onto an editor's desk is open to anyone who
can afford five bucks for a ream of twenty-pound bond paper, maybe
twenty bucks for an IBM Selectric bought at a garage sale, a couple of
bucks for postage, and maybe 50 cents for a SASE.
In your ideal world, you would need a license for Microsoft Word 2000
(maybe $100), a specific kind of computer bought in the last three years
(since nothing earlier can run Word 2000 -- probably $500 to $1000,
depending on how fussy you are about luxuries like reliability), an
account with an internet service provider, not to mention education in
how to use all of these.
Talk about secret handshakes for the club of wealth...
-- Kevin
Pete McCutchen
<globa...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>> You must envy me, living, as I do, in such an open society!
>>
>
>HA! HA! Your wit doth slay me, sir! Pardon me, dear sir, as I fall upon my
>sword all shits and giggles.
If only you had done so.
>
>I actually do know how to format a manuscript and have gotten on plenty of
>editorial desks. Rejected but gotten there nonethless (99% of the rejection
>letters I have gotten usually begin with or contain the phrase, "I (or we)
>like your writing, BUT--").
Then why do you think it's a "secret handshake"? I mean, if these
guidelines are so simple to follow, why not just follow them?
>
>I simply don't "get" the way the publishing industry is stuck in the mud of
>19th Century technology. And the reason because too many people might
>submitt manuscripts doesn't cut it with me.
But they're not "stuck in the mud of 19th Century technology;" they
simply choose not to accept submissions in a particular format.
You're trying to sell the publisher your work. If they want
manuscripts in calligraphy on wet toilet paper, give them manuscripts
in calligraphy on wet toilet paper.
>
>
>> >
>> >I guess that makes a decent amount of sense. Although I tend to dislike
>> >filters and dislike even more people that claim that there is a need for
>> >them. Akin to the librarians at Alexandria who wouldn't let the unwashed
>> >masses inside.
>>
>> I could point out that in a world where there are no printing presses,
>> and manuscripts have to be copied by hand, it actually makes sense to
>> restrict access to books.
>>
>
>Please, did some one drop a Sophist Bomb on your house? The reason knowledge
>(i.e. books, ect) were restricted to the few because it keeps the mass
>ignorant and few in power. Simple equation:
That's sometimes the case, of course, but that doesn't change the fact
that librarians tend not to let just anybody paw over irreplaceable
manuscripts. That's true, even today, at libraries with rare book
collections.
But that's neither here nor there. Even if I give you your contention
that the librarians at Alexandria were keeping the oppressed masses
from revolting, it still isn't relevant to whether publishers should
accept manuscripts submitted electronically.
>
>Books = knowledge
>Knowledge = power
>
>
>> But, in any case, even a cursory glance at much of the fiction
>> "published" on the Web should make the need for filters glaringly
>> obvious.
>>
>
>
>Not really. I think the Internet makes a good case for tearing down all
>filters, and letting people make their own decisions about what they do and
>do not view.
I stand by the claim that most of the fiction "published" on the 'net
is absolute crap, unless, say, you're one of the three people in the
world with a fetish for midgets in sheepskin jackets, in which case
you can almost certainly find a web pate that caters to your
particular taste.
As a reader of fiction, I'm happy to delegate the task of filtering to
the folks at Baen and Tor and the other publishers. Perhaps they'll
fail to pass on a good story or two, but they'll also pore through,
and reject, all the absolute crap that's out there.
Forcing somebody to go to the post office is hardly a high bar. Since
it undoubtedly filters out some of the most abysmal slush and allows
them more time to look at the slush from people (like me) who are
actually motivated to put something in the mail, I see no reason to
object to this practice.
--
Pete McCutchen
Pete McCutchen
<globa...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>Simply because of the logistics involved in using multiple formats when
>e-publishing. In an ideal world I dislike them. The world isn't ideal. At
>least restricting e-submissions to .doc format has a legitimate purpose
>beyond filtering out the unwanted. Other word processors can present
>problems when it comes to formatting.
Filtering out the unwanted _is_ a legitimate purpose, far more so than
enforcing conformity in word-processing software.
--
Pete McCutchen
Lisa A Leutheuser
>> <boggle>
>>
>> You dislike filters, yet you proposed elsewhere in this thread
>> that editors should filter manuscripts based on what word processor
>> writers use?
>>
>
>e-publishing. In an ideal world I dislike them. The world isn't ideal. At
>least restricting e-submissions to .doc format has a legitimate purpose
>beyond filtering out the unwanted. Other word processors can present
>problems when it comes to formatting.
It sounds like what's wrong with other word processors is that they
aren't MS Word. Doesn't fly for me. The .doc format may be the most
common format, but I don't think it's good to force people to use one
word processor. Right now, we have a lot of different tools
(typewriters, any of a dozen or two word processors) that can be used
to produce the same standard paper manuscript format. This gives
us all the freedom to choose how we work.
I think it's safe to say that typewriters and computers are
sufficiently common that editors can refuse handwritten manuscripts,
but we haven't reach that point with electronic format yet. This
is partly because we don't have a good electronic standard yet.
One particular word processor's format is *not* a good electronic
standard format. A good format is one that all the modern word
processors can produce and read. Right now our best standard,
cross-platform formats are text and RTF. (And maybe pdf.)
Finally, even when we do get a good electronic format, editors are
well within their prerogative to request that submitted electronic
manuscripts have a specific look. It's not their job to make the
manuscript readable. And since it's so trivial for someone to format
the manuscript, then it's certainly a miniscule burden to ask writers
to submit their manuscripts properly formatted.
Lois Tilton
> "Plus, one of these days some editor will open an attachment that
> purports to be an MS. and it will be a virus."
Particularly if the ms in question is in MS Word.
--
LT
Richard Horton
On Thu, 22 Jun 2000 22:19:30 -0500, "Larry, the Other White Meat"
<globa...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>Five provided you know next to nothing about computer or a basic Word
>document. I think I can format your average file in 1 -2 minutes, not
>counting the time it takes to set up the headers (which an editor wouldn't
>be doing).
OK. Multiply 1 minute times 800 manuscripts/second. You've just
wasted 13+ hours!
--
Rich Horton | Stable Email: mailto://richard...@sff.net
Home Page: http://www.sff.net/people/richard.horton
Also visit SF Site (http://www.sfsite.com) and Tangent Online (http://www.sfsite.com/tangent)
Reverend Sean O'Hara
<WT Submission Guidelines>
> A story never surprises readers if all it does is
> reveal, as a ``surprise'' ending, that the protagonist is a
> vampire, or that he finally noticed he's been dead since page 2.
>
So, Weird Tales would've rejected "The Sixth Sense" as a story? Glad
to know I'm not the only one who thought the plot was cliched.
--
Reverend Sean O'Hara
You two can be an ordained minister: http://www.ulc.org/ulc
Staff Writer for EXPULSION: http://www.expulsion.org
"I am amazed that Time Warner with a huge cash flow and really
wonderful assets should swap 55 percent of them for 45 percent
of a 22 to 25 million-strong Internet service provider with only
significant presence in the United States. We are certainly not
frightened of that merger."
piranha
>e-publishing. In an ideal world I dislike them. The world isn't ideal. At
>least restricting e-submissions to .doc format
.doc format? you seem to harbour under the misapprehension
that this lovely 3 letter extension is exclusively associa-
ted with microsoft word. nevermind that there are several
different versions of microsoft word, which can't all read
each other's ".doc format" either.
>has a legitimate purpose
>beyond filtering out the unwanted. Other word processors can present
>problems when it comes to formatting.
oh. you are heavily invested in microsoft stock. i am so
sorry.
-piranha
Peter Knutsen
"Larry, the Other White Meat" wrote:
> I simply don't "get" the way the publishing industry is stuck in the mud of
> 19th Century technology. And the reason because too many people might
> submitt manuscripts doesn't cut it with me.
Then join http://www.critters.org - after a few weeks you'll
realize how hard it must be to be an editor.
> Not really. I think the Internet makes a good case for tearing down all
> filters, and letting people make their own decisions about what they do and
> do not view.
I used to belive that hype once, too. Then my brain started
working, and I realized what a blessing editors are, what a
wonderful job they do protecting the general public from
boring and trashy texts.
> Larry -
--
Peter Knutsen
Morgan E. Smith
On Thu, 22 Jun 2000, Larry, the Other White Meat wrote:
>
> >
> > Hello? Five minutes per manuscript is a time savings? Multiply that by
> 800
> > manuscript submissions per week.
> >
>
> Five provided you know next to nothing about computer or a basic Word
> document. I think I can format your average file in 1 -2 minutes, not
> counting the time it takes to set up the headers (which an editor wouldn't
> be doing).
(sigh) - Larry: manuscripts that arrive in formats that the editor
doesn't like are a GOOD thing. The editor can then chuck them, unread and
ignored, right into the "Return file" (or the circular file, depending on
the circumstances). If said editor gets 800 manuscripts, and 50% of them
are formatted incorrectly, this represents a substantial reduction in the
workload.
By all means, insist that publishers accept YOUR manuscripts in
theformat you choose to send them in: argue vociferously with assistant
editors or secretaries that they ought to take your work via email.
That means MY book actually might get read with some sympathy.
Morgan Smith
Steve Miller
"Larry, the Other White Meat" wrote:
> At
> least restricting e-submissions to .doc format has a legitimate purpose
> beyond filtering out the unwanted. Other word processors can present
> problems when it comes to formatting.
Wow -- the least reasonable way to differentiate I can think of.
I generally discourage people from sending me .doc files and
would rather get .rtf, but some good writers are technical klutzwizards
and should not be encouraged to add disharmony to the world by
changing their Word Star file to .doc.
When I started publishing BPLAN Virtuals ebooks in 1989 --
we published books on disk before it was popular nor profitable --
I took both electronic and paper submissions
and quickly discovered that electronic submissions tended to
require more editing than paper submissions. I suspect that's because
it is so easy to spell-check in a hurry. The wrong-word-syndrome was
endemic to electronic texts ( a symptom of spellcheckingitis) and
new writers were using the (then fairly new) grammar checkers to
turn what may have been readable prose into 8th grade
compostion.
By the way, you overlook the obvious -- and real -- requirements that many
publishers have today. They will look at a paper manuscript and if accepted
they
expect it in electronic format to edit from.
Steve
--
Steve Miller -- co-author of the Liaden Universe
Buy Partners in Necessity at fine sf shops
http://www.korval.com/liad.htm
Morgan E. Smith
On Thu, 22 Jun 2000, Larry, the Other White Meat wrote:
>
> Graydon <anga...@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
> news:slrn8l5iv5....@localhost.localdomain...
> > On Thu, 22 Jun 2000 20:35:59 -0500,
> > Larry, the Other White Meat <globa...@mindspring.com> scripsit:
> > >Why don't more magazine accept electronic submissions via email?
> >
> > It makes it too easy to submit.
> >
> > The existence of manuscript formats and the necessity to buy a stamp
> > acts a a filter on the submissions received, and it's perceived as a
> > necessary filter with a degree of unamiminity which makes me suspect
> > that is really _is_ a necessary filter.
>
> In other words you can only get into my club if you know the secret
> handshake (which involves a lot of kneeling and sucking and leaves a nasty
> taste in your mouth)?
Simce you are so computer-savvy: how secret is this? How much
ass-kissing is there? All one need do is point a search engine at the
publishers' web sites and read (READ - omigosh! there's an arcane and
humiliating act for you) the publishers' guidelines for submission.
Terribly secret. Earthshatteringly complicated. Yeah. Right.
>
> I guess that makes a decent amount of sense. Although I tend to dislike
> filters and dislike even more people that claim that there is a need for
> them. Akin to the librarians at Alexandria who wouldn't let the unwashed
> masses inside.
>
Go for it, Larry. Be a pain in the ass to every editor you can get at.
Make a pest of yourself.
Do you handle job interviews this way? Tell prospective employers they
should accept your resume in crayon on a nightclub napkin, since it would
only take a secretary five minutes or so to type it up into a more
professional-looking format for them? Arrive at an interview wearing
ripped-up jeans and a Guns 'n Roses t-shirt and tell them to imagine you
in a suit?
If you can't be bothered submitting your work in the format the
publisher asks for, why should they bother reading it?
Morgan Smith
Chuck Gee
> I was playing with Word 2000 and a recurring question popped into my head:
>
> Why don't more magazine accept electronic submissions via email?
>
> It strikes me as more efficient and less time consuming for everyone
> concerned. Perhaps even saving both parties some money as well.
>
> For the author e-submissions certainly saves money spent on postage (agreed
> Larry -
Larry: I think the best method for an author to use right
now is the following. (This is for the short story, magazine market.)
Go ahead and print out the manuscript, sending it (in sequence) to the
top half-dozen or so markets -- all of which do not accept email
submissions.
If not accepted by them, then go ahead and ignore the other markets that
accept only dead trees, and submit instead to those markets remaining that
take email submissions.
That way you've pretty much covered all the bases. If one of the top
markets bites, all the better. If not, then you'll not be wasting time
and money mailing out a manuscript to markets of little note.
I know we're talking relatively small sums of money here. But really,
with all the markets available, if you send out a manuscript via snail
mail to all of them, by the time it sells, you'll have spent more money in
postage than what you'll be paid. While it's nice to be published, can
you really consider yourself a "pro" if you're not showing a profit?
Chuck Gee
> In article <8iuevi$7n2$1...@nntp9.atl.mindspring.net>,
> Larry, the Other White Meat <globa...@mindspring.com> wrote:
> >Why don't more magazine accept electronic submissions via email?
>
> I was quoting bits of this thread to my husband, who remarked,
> "Plus, one of these days some editor will open an attachment that
> purports to be an MS. and it will be a virus."
> Dorothy J. Heydt
It's interesting to note that some of the markets that
accept email subs, state in their submission guidelines that they accept
subs only in the body of an email -- not attachments. You know that their
email server must be running Windows, and that somewhere along the line,
they've learned their lesson about the obvious dangers.
Chuck Gee
> Larry, the Other White Meat <globa...@mindspring.com> wrote:
> >first question out of their mouth was "Do you know MS Word?" (Or Office).
>
> EEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
>
> >submission. Although not by much since Word or Office comes with most
> >computers sold nowadays.
>
> GGGGGGGGGGGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!
> Joe
> (Works for Corel. In the Linux department.)
>
>
These people are akin to those who extol the handling virtues of front
wheel drive cars. You just have to grin, nodding knowingly as you take
another swig of your drink. They'll never get it. Best to move on to
another issue.
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
<mes...@calcna.ab.ca> wrote:
>Arrive at an interview wearing
>ripped-up jeans and a Guns 'n Roses t-shirt and tell them to imagine you
>in a suit?
Yes. :-)
vlatko
--
vlatko.ju...@zg.tel.hr
Dan Goodman
>
>
>concerned. Perhaps even saving both parties some money as well.
As several people have probably informed you, NO, IT DOESN'T. For
editors, it results in added cost and added hassles. It isn't less
time-consuming.
>For the author e-submissions certainly saves money spent on postage (agreed
>postage on most unsolicited manuscript doesn't amount to much, but over a
>while, especially if a story is not bought on the first submission, does
>amount to a healthy chunk of change), e-submissions saves some time better
>spent writing, and -- one would hope -- e-submissions would result in a
>quicker response time from the editor (or editorial staff) of a magazine.
>
>For the editor e-submissions saves a lot of time. He no longer has to sort
>through a "slush pile" of manuscripts not formatted to his liking. With 5
>minutes clicking and "mousing" he can reformat a manuscript's margins, font,
>size, line spacing, ect. Or just delete the damn thing with a single click
>if it's too much of a mess. An editor and magazine also saves time and money
>with mailing rejection slips or contracts to an author. He can just open up
>his email program and send his thoughts to the author post-haste.
>
>On just about every angle I could view this idea from electronic submissions
>seems like a giant improvement over the old paper manuscripts. But why don't
>more magazines do it? Is there something I'm missing? A economic issue that
>makes electronic submissions unworkable, or more work than paper
>manuscripts? Or is it just that peculiar form of Luddism that seems to
>pervade parts of the publishing industry, and infects certain editors?
>
>Btw, at the magazine I work at 99.9% of all manuscripts are submitted
>electronically. Either attached as TEXT, or Word files, or copy and pasted
>in the body of an email.
>
>Larry -
>
>--
>ICQ No. 77704089
>
>
--
Dan Goodman
dsg...@visi.com
http://www.visi.com/~dsgood/index.html
Whatever you wish for me, may you have twice as much.
Joe Mason
>On Sat, 24 Jun 2000 10:01:53 -0600, "Morgan E. Smith"
><mes...@calcna.ab.ca> wrote:
>
>>Arrive at an interview wearing
>>ripped-up jeans and a Guns 'n Roses t-shirt and tell them to imagine you
>>in a suit?
>
>Yes. :-)
Ah. You're a programmer. <grin>
Joe
Jo Walton
globa...@mindspring.com "Larry, the Other White Meat" writes:
> In a way you could see the type of word processor used become the new
> "e-publishing" filter. Much the same way now we expect writers the correct
> way to format a manuscript (something which I was never taught in EngComp,
> btw). Sure, you might exclude a handful of writer's who still use off-brand
> word processors, but you would also, theoretically, cut down on the slush
> submission. Although not by much since Word or Office comes with most
> computers sold nowadays.
As the only person here (and possibly the only person at all) who has
sold a first novel submitted electronically, this made me giggle.
I'm writing this, and write my novels, on a 286 running NWDOS, and
using a wordprocessor called Protext that I've been using since 1985.
So your "standard" would exclude me, for a start. And I suspect it would
exclude a lot of other working writers who _write_ and therefore tend to
use a wordprocessor a lot, rather than using the thing the way Word is
clearly intended, for memos. It's undoubtedly pretty good for memos, or
so many businesses wouldn't keep using it. But a whole lot of writers I
know are using something you'd call "off brand".
(I do have a puter on the other side of the room which has Word on it,
but I don't seem much difference in hassle between taking a file over
there and trying to convert it into Word garble and then bringing it
back over here as Word garble and sending it as an encoded document, or
printing it out and posting it.)
--
Jo - - I kissed a kif at Kefk - - J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk
http://www.bluejo.demon.co.uk - Interstichia; Poetry; RASFW FAQ; etc.
my fantasy novel :The King's Peace: coming from Tor in October
sample chapters on http://www.tor.com/sampleKingsPeace.html
Heather Anne Nicoll
> (I do have a puter on the other side of the room which has Word on it,
> but I don't seem much difference in hassle between taking a file over
> there and trying to convert it into Word garble and then bringing it
> back over here as Word garble and sending it as an encoded document, or
> printing it out and posting it.)
I actually do use Word.
It is, however, a version of Word so out of date by computer-programming
standards of 'out of date' it might as well be semaphore flags to the
newer versions.
And I refuse to upgrade the thing to obfuscate what I want to do with it
with 'features' I don't need. I just want to type.
--
Heather Nicoll - Darkhawk - http://aelfhame.net/~darkhawk/
It's alright, it's alright, it's alright:
We move through miracle days - U2, "Mysterious Ways"
Spirit moves in mysterious ways.
WooF
does apply when an editor has bought a story that was submitted
on paper and now wants a digital copy.
I have found that what works best for me, an editor at Weird
Tales, is what seems to be the simplest and most universal of all
formats: pure ascii -- that is, a pure text files -- with *N*O*
formatting beyond capitalizing and paragraphing: *N*O* font
information, and *N*O* "smart" quotes. As far as I can tell,
almost all word processors can output files in that format --
some with greater reluctance than others. (Gates's merry band all
think they know what you want, and aren't very helpful when you
disagree with them.)
Beyond that -- it would be nice to have some marker in the text
to show where italics start and stop, and there are a few that
are fairly common and are in pure ascii characters, like <MI> and
<D>. But unless one has a word processor that will convert its
arcne symbols to a clear-text marker, this is a fair bit of work.
Anything more complicated than that (bold face, small capitals,
long quotations set off in a different type face) is the editor's
choice, not the author's.
George Scithers of owls...@netaxs.com
Patricia C. Wrede
writes:
>But a whole lot of writers I
>know are using something you'd call "off brand".
I think I know one author who uses MS Word; everybody
else is either using some ancient or weird word processor
that's been around since the early 80s or hopping around
from weird cutting-edge word processor to weird cutting-edge
word processor in search of the perfect, ultimate writing tool.
I don't happen to like MS Word, myself. I can deal with it,
if I have to -- but I arrange things so that I have to as infrequently
as possible.
Patricia C. Wrede
Lucy Kemnitzer
wrote:
Okay, but what about when the story in question needs diacritical
marks? When I send my work in progress to my group (oh, how times
have changed), if I don't go through and remove all the accents
and tildes before ascii-izing it, funny things happen. In Word
Perfect, which I use, the vowels drop out and I forget what
happens to the n-tilde. Whatever Erin uses causes accented e to
turn into a Greek letter.
Fortunately for now, when I use diacritical marks, the words are
Spanish, and the marks are not entirely necessary for the sense of
the story . . . but it's more correct with the accents and tildes.
So what do we do? Is this solved by paper and electronics
together?
Lucy Kemnitzer
Lois Tilton
> *sigh* I want my Word Perfect 5.1 back. That was the last word
> processor I had for windows in which I felt that I could just type.
WP5.1 is one of the extremely rare DOS programs that you can still find
being sold in used computer/software stores.
Tho why anyone would want to use it in a Doze version, I cannot imagine.
--
LT
Lucy Kemnitzer
wrote:
>On Sat, 24 Jun 2000 20:42:47 GMT,
>Lucy Kemnitzer <rit...@cruzio.com> scripsit:
>>Fortunately for now, when I use diacritical marks, the words are
>>Spanish, and the marks are not entirely necessary for the sense of
>>the story . . . but it's more correct with the accents and tildes.
>>
>>So what do we do? Is this solved by paper and electronics
>>together?
>
>The easy way to solve that is to use a format which specifies what
>ISO character set to use, and using one which allows all the accents
>you need. (ISO Latin 1, 'western European languages', would
>presumably suffice for Spanish.)
>
>I have no clue how sensible most Windows apps are about this sort of
>thing; I would assume fairly, but ought not to speculate.
Word Perfect has a little scheme for the characters which I
thought from the look and feel of it was in fact ISO, but when I
turn it to ascii and then mail it, it comes out wrong.
Lucy Kemnitzer
John Kensmark
WooF <owls...@netaxs.com> wrote:
[...]
> I have found that what works best for me, an editor at Weird
> Tales, is what seems to be the simplest and most universal of all
> formats: pure ascii [....] As far as I can tell, almost all word
> processors can output files in that format -- some with greater
> reluctance than others. (Gates's merry band all think they know
> what you want, and aren't very helpful when you disagree with them.)
More than that, it seems to me, they think they know what's good for
you, and they think they know it better than you do. Many calls to MS
tech support over the years have firmly convinced me of this, as folks
there tried to convince me that not only was what I wanted to do
difficult, at best, but ill-advised.
I used to have a lovely set of macros I'd written which converted MS
Word files into plain text with markers for italics and underlining.
They were vaporized when I upgraded to a new version of Word. My
current version of Word won't record macros (it's supposed to; the
feature just doesn't work), and I can't program in the language now
require for Word macros. I have a workaround, but it's inelegant. Such
is progress.
John Kensmark
kensmark#hotmail.com
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
John Kensmark
rit...@cruzio.com (Lucy Kemnitzer) wrote:
[plain text]
> Okay, but what about when the story in question needs diacritical
> marks?
Most diacriticals have ASCII eidolons, er, representations. Characters,
anyway. These are often inobvious, but there are ways to put them into
documents. It seems to me there ought to be a way to do this, in Word,
with Insert Symbol and/or Character Map, but it'd be a pain.
You'd probably be better off writing a macro that automatically found
them and replaced them with the ASCII symbols. I would have been able
to do that with Word 6 or earlier, I think, but not with later versions.
Later versions have a mostly-pain-in-the-ass automatic Replace As You
Type feature that might do this, but I'm not going to mess with it,
personally.
Alternatively, there are plain text combination codes that some folks
use to represent characters not found on the standard English keyboard.
I don't know how standardized these are, but I've seen listings and
tables of them somewhere. They look like the key combinations some word
processors use when you want to insert the characters into the text.
Frex, an 'n' with a tilde might be [n~], or something. Unwieldy if
you're doing it by hand, and a tad distracting to read, but probably
workable--especially if you can get the software to put these notations
in automatically for you.
Kevin Russell
> Word Perfect has a little scheme for the characters which I
> thought from the look and feel of it was in fact ISO, but when I
> turn it to ascii and then mail it, it comes out wrong.
>
> Lucy Kemnitzer
When doing Save As, try telling it "ANSI text" instead of
"ASCII text".
-- Kevin
WooF
On Sun, 25 Jun 2000, John Kensmark wrote:
> In article <39551c56...@enews.newsguy.com>,
> rit...@cruzio.com (Lucy Kemnitzer) wrote:
>
> [plain text]
>
> > Okay, but what about when the story in question needs diacritical
> > marks?
(1) Find an extended ASCII table of the decimal numbers that
correspond to various diacritically-marked letters. "role" then
becomes "r<147>e"
or, better,
(2) dump Word and get a copy of XyWrite 3 or XyWrite 4 and use
that.
George Scithers of owls...@netaxs.com
Theresa Wojtasiewicz
>
> On Fri, 23 Jun 2000 00:31:39 -0500, "Larry, the Other White Meat"
> <globa...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>
> >> If your magazine can avoid these problems by forcing your authors
> >> to use *your* one favorite word processor, then you're essentially
> >> close to the Do Nothing end of the spectrum.
> >
> >Well, it's not as though computer were freshly minted and borne last month.
> >For a while now the standard word processor for businesses has been MS Word.
> >In fact, the few times I've thought about taking temp work, invariably the
> >first question out of their mouth was "Do you know MS Word?" (Or Office).
>
> see little or no reason why "the standard word processor for business"
> ought to become "the standard word processor for writers." Most
> businesses, after all, produce little more than one or two page
> letters, and maybe a ten-page memo or two. A word processor suitable
> for such a task may not work for a 100,000 word manuscript.
Which Word does not, unless you break it up into very small chunks. Not
only that but a feature that it used to have which it no longer does is
linking files, great for large documents and you could generate a table
of contents from the linked files. Alas, no more.
Meanwhile, I have a 50,000 word story typed in WordPerfect and it's
giving me no trouble at all.
And for typing stories, MS Works or ClarisWorks (or the current
incarnation, AppleWorks) works just fine, thank you.
Doug Wickstrom
excited the ether to say:
It's simpler just to install the appropriate foreign language
support. Remapping my keyboard to Swedish is just an
Alt+LeftShift away.
--
Doug Wickstrom
"Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge where
there is no river." --Nikita Krushchev
Lucy Kemnitzer
Thank you: I'll try it.
A related question: when I download Spanish material that was in
html as a text file, I get even worse funny bits. I can't do a
global search and replace in Word Perfect 9 for greek letters,
miscellaneous symbols, and box writing tools -- I've tried -- or
can I? Is there a secret way to get the find/replace dialog box
to accept these funky symbols as something to search for, and
accept the accented and tilded letters as something to replace?
Or is there a different way to download this stuff so the problem
never arises?
The thing I'm trying to read was written a long time ago and
there's accents all over the damned place. Spanish, unlike some
other languages I could mention, gets more rational over time.
Lucy Kemnitzer
David A Molnar
[on stamped mailed submissions as filters]
> In other words you can only get into my club if you know the secret
> handshake (which involves a lot of kneeling and sucking and leaves a nasty
> taste in your mouth)?
It's not secret. You'd have a better argument if you were discussing
a process which only took electronic submissions. Digital divide and all
that. Either that, or a process which required everything to be written in
something like LaTeX.
-dmolnar
Lucy Kemnitzer
wrote:
>On Sun, 25 Jun 2000 04:15:03 GMT,
>Kevin Russell <krus...@videon.home.com> scripsit:
>>Lucy Kemnitzer wrote:
>>> Word Perfect has a little scheme for the characters which I
>>> thought from the look and feel of it was in fact ISO, but when I
>>> turn it to ascii and then mail it, it comes out wrong.
>>
>>When doing Save As, try telling it "ANSI text" instead of
>>"ASCII text".
>
>Because ASCII will always come out wrong -- proper ASCII is 7 bit.
>The ISO character sets are 8 bit. Strip the 8th bit and the
>characters where it was a 1 instead of a 0 do indeed mutate in
>unpleasant ways.
>
Oh, I am so glad to know this. No wonder it doesn't work.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Phil Fraering
> So your "standard" would exclude me, for a start. And I suspect it would
> exclude a lot of other working writers who _write_ and therefore tend to
> use a wordprocessor a lot, rather than using the thing the way Word is
> clearly intended, for memos. It's undoubtedly pretty good for memos, or
> so many businesses wouldn't keep using it.
Don't bet on it.
It's that old "We're sorry, HAL, you're not IBM compatible" thing.
>
--
Phil Fraering "One day, Pinky, A MOUSE shall rule, and it is the
p...@globalreach.net humans who will be forced to endure these humiliating
/Will work for tape/ diversions!"
"You mean like Orlando, Brain?"
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
wrote:
>A related question: when I download Spanish material that was in
>html as a text file, I get even worse funny bits. I can't do a
>global search and replace in Word Perfect 9 for greek letters,
>miscellaneous symbols, and box writing tools -- I've tried -- or
>can I? Is there a secret way to get the find/replace dialog box
>to accept these funky symbols as something to search for, and
>accept the accented and tilded letters as something to replace?
Since you're using Windows, copy the character you need to replace,
paste into the find box, open up Character Map, find the appropriate
character in your default font and copy and paste it in the replace
box. Use "match case." That's what I do in Word. It doesn't matter
what you see in the boxes. Unless your system uses the character place
for another character. Then you're out of luck.
It also might just be the matter of using a different font. Check in
Character Map to see which one has the appropriate characters.
You can also try to insert the character directly into the text. All
of them have ALT+(number) value. FI, n-tilde is alt+0241. If you want,
I can mail you a 55kB pdf file which specifies the values for PC and
Mac.
IMPORTANT: But you won't be able to save the resulting file as txt,
anyway. Save as a Rich Text Format, rtf, file. It can be read by
practically all the text processors, AFAIK.
>Or is there a different way to download this stuff so the problem
>never arises?
Save the file as html. Your browser interprets the characters
properly.
vlatko
--
vlatko.ju...@zg.tel.hr
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
wrote:
No, I'm a journalist. :-)
vlatko
--
vlatko.ju...@zg.tel.hr
Lisa A Leutheuser
Theresa Wojtasiewicz <tw...@sympatico.ca> wrote:
>
>Which Word does not, unless you break it up into very small chunks. Not
>only that but a feature that it used to have which it no longer does is
>linking files, great for large documents and you could generate a table
>of contents from the linked files. Alas, no more.
Which version no longer has this feature? I thought the
"long document management" feature was present up through
Word97 (win) /Word 98 (mac), but that it was unreliable.
I don't know anything about Word 2000, and <fingers crossed>
I never will.
--
Lisa Leutheuser
eal (at) umich.edu
http://www.umich.edu/~eal
Kevin Russell
> >When doing Save As, try telling it "ANSI text" instead of
> >"ASCII text".
>
> Thank you: I'll try it.
>
> A related question: when I download Spanish material that was in
> html as a text file, I get even worse funny bits. I can't do a
> global search and replace in Word Perfect 9 for greek letters,
> miscellaneous symbols, and box writing tools -- I've tried -- or
> can I? Is there a secret way to get the find/replace dialog box
> to accept these funky symbols as something to search for, and
> accept the accented and tilded letters as something to replace?
>
> Or is there a different way to download this stuff so the problem
> never arises?
>
> The thing I'm trying to read was written a long time ago and
> there's accents all over the damned place. Spanish, unlike some
> other languages I could mention, gets more rational over time.
>
> Lucy Kemnitzer
Sounds like the same ANSI/ASCII mix-up.
The ASCII standard only defined the first 128 of the 256 possible
characters. It only included the basic 26 English letters (upper
and lower case) and the basic typewriter punctuation. Manufacturers
and software makers were free to do whatever they wanted with the
second 128 characters. When IBM was building its PCs, it decided
to use the second 128 characters for accented letters, box drawing
symbols, and a few mathematical symbols (including a handful of
Greek letters).
A few years later, ANSI and ISO decided on the One True Way of
using the second 128 characters. Except they gave out different
numbers. E.g, where IBM had a circumflex-a as #131, ANSI/ISO
made it #226 -- which in the IBM system was some math symbol.
The sorts of problems you describe usually come from trying to
read an ANSI/ISO document as if it were in the old IBM character
set. When WordPerfect says "ASCII", it really means the IBM
system.
So my first advice would be the same: Try answering "ANSI text"
instead of "ASCII text" when you're *opening* a file and WP9
asks you what type it is.
The other possibility I can think of involves the code-pages for
the fonts you're using. Fixing this gets messier, so let's
keep our fingers crossed.
-- Kevin
Jo Walton
anga...@sympatico.ca "Graydon" writes:
> There are a lot of journals which do just that -- 'forced to learn
> LaTeX by :Physics Review:' -- and in that context it seems to work
> pretty well, because the requirements are overt and explicit and come
> with a set of LaTeX macros they want you to use.
>
> I don't think it'd work as well for fiction, although the LaTeX markup
> required for manuscript format is trivial and could be easily canned,
> and otherwise, it's just straight ascii text. Since there are good
> LaTeX tools for every platform known to man, and TeX _is_ a full-up
> typesetting program, I can see it being a net win for a publisher to
> require submissions to include LaTeX source using their macros.
>
> Not expecting it, at all, but I can see something like that happening.
I've worked for game companies who do that with Ventura.
They give a list of the Ventura markup codes, and an explanation of
precisely how they want the thing formatted, and you sit there typing
<M></M> just like HTML, or you write a little macro to turn your codes
into their codes.
Nothing like as complicated as turning stuff into Word.
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
<krus...@videon.home.com> wrote:
>The other possibility I can think of involves the code-pages for
>the fonts you're using. Fixing this gets messier, so let's
>keep our fingers crossed.
Lucy uses Windows, as far as I can see, so it's codepage 1252:
Latin-1. ISO-8859-1, AFAIK. It's just the mess between the DOS and
ANSI characters. It's not like she's using Windows for Central and
Eastern Europe. :-)
vlatko
--
vlatko.ju...@zg.tel.hr
Sylvia Li
feature, but it doesn't work. It *seems* to work, until you try to print.
(Grumph.) The main thing I wanted it for was renumbering pages in a
many-chaptered book, but there's an obvious workaround for that, and it's
not like I really care about page numbers until I'm sending something out.
Has MS propagated this old Mac bug as a Feature in its Windows
implementations? I use Word on NT at work all the time (for detailed design
documents and such, which tend to run 30 to 150 pages per document -- much
more than a memo), but I've never had occasion to try linking files. OTOH,
the table-of-contents feature works quite well in a single document,
provided you have set up heading styles and used them consistently.
The systems engineers at my company, who do use multi-file linking
extensively, all use FrameMaker. I'd hate to have to use that for creative
writing, though.
--
Sylvia Li
Del Cotter
Jo Walton (Intellectual Berserkers for a Better Tomorrow) wrote:
>So your "standard" would exclude me, for a start. And I suspect it would
>exclude a lot of other working writers who _write_ and therefore tend to
>use a wordprocessor a lot, rather than using the thing the way Word is
>clearly intended, for memos. It's undoubtedly pretty good for memos, or
>so many businesses wouldn't keep using it.
It's so good that most people in my firm write memos in it, then send
them in email as attachments, instead of writing the damn memo in email
in the first place. gnnnn!
--
. . Del Cotter d...@branta.demon.co.uk . .
Thank you for listening
John C. Bunnell
Regards Word and getting it to combine documents so that you
can build multi-document Tables of Contents, etc. -- there
have been a couple of ways to do this straight through Word
versions right up to 2000.
One of them is "master documents", which you should Avoid
Like The Plague, because the "master document" features have
been spectacularly bug-infested ever since they were
introduced.
The other, which is severely under-documented, involves
working with a handful of field codes which are mostly not
explained except deep within the online documentation.
OTOH, this approach works reasonably well and actually isn't
difficult at all.
If all you need is a table of contents combining multiple
documents, that can be done with "referenced document"
fields, which look like this:
{RD "d:\\wordfiles\\mynovel\\chapter-1.doc"}
Notice the quote marks and double-slashes. Also be warned
that Word automagically makes RD fields hidden text, so that
it's helpful to click the "Show All" paragraph mark on your
toolbar when you're inserting them. Remember to turn it off
before generating the TOC, however, or Word will take all
the visible formatting, including now-visible hidden text,
when it figures pagination. Anyhow, simply inserting a
stack of RD fields pointing to the files you want to collate
will let you build a TOC easily. You may have to tinker
with page-numbering settings in the individual documents to
get the numbering to work as you'd like, but it *can* be
done.
Building a document out of other documents,
Frankenstein-fashion, can be done in almost exactly the same
way, except that it uses the INCLUDETEXT field (INCLUDE in
earlier versions of Word), so:
{INCLUDETEXT "d:\\novels\\Heroes-And-Goons\\chapter-1.doc"}
INCLUDETEXT fields are *not* normally formatted as hidden
text. One of the versions of my own current novel
manuscript is built with these. Depending on whether I've
got Word displaying field codes or results, it looks either
like twenty-odd lines of text with a field code on each
line, or like a fat novel-sized manuscript (admittedly with
the shading that identifies field-code results, because I've
got that setting turned on).
The great power (and danger) of INCLUDETEXT is that you can
edit the text *either* in the chapter files -- useful for
serious rewrites -- *or* in the combined document -- useful
for global search-and-replace, as for instance when I
changed a character's name two chapters short of the end of
the book. When you are working with the combined document,
<F9> automagically updates the combined document with the
latest versions of the individual chapter files -- but
<Ctrl>+<Shift>+<F7> updates in the other direction, copying
your edits of the combined document (like that global name
change) out into the component chapters.
Aside: the field code reference material in Word's online
Help is actually really useful and well-presented -- but
especially in newer versions of Word, it can be *very* hard
to find if you don't know it's there.
--
= John C. Bunnell
= JCBu...@sff.net
= http://www.sff.net/people/jcbunnell/
"There are strange things done in the midnight sun...."
-- Robert Service
Lucy Kemnitzer
<nims...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>On Sun, 25 Jun 2000 00:52:04 -0400, WooF <owls...@netaxs.com>
>excited the ether to say:
>
>>On Sun, 25 Jun 2000, John Kensmark wrote:
>>
>>> In article <39551c56...@enews.newsguy.com>,
>>> rit...@cruzio.com (Lucy Kemnitzer) wrote:
>>>
>>> [plain text]
>>>
>>> > Okay, but what about when the story in question needs diacritical
>>> > marks?
>>
>>(1) Find an extended ASCII table of the decimal numbers that
>>correspond to various diacritically-marked letters. "role" then
>>becomes "r<147>e"
>>
>>or, better,
>>
>>(2) dump Word and get a copy of XyWrite 3 or XyWrite 4 and use
>>that.
>
>It's simpler just to install the appropriate foreign language
>support. Remapping my keyboard to Swedish is just an
>Alt+LeftShift away.
>
! -- I don't use Word.
2 -- I have no trouble at all in _composing_ Spanish words: I have
my keyboard all set up for accents and tildes. Also eths and
thorns. In Word Perfect it takes a couple seconds to do it. I
don't even have to have an extra keyboard. I could, if I wanted:
but I just set up my plain ordinary keyboard so I could type all
the letters I happen to currently use with two or three fingers.
The only problems I have are going from WP to other things.
Question for George: if I write the numbers in the carets like
that, and send it ascii, what does the reader see?
If the reader sees numbers and carets, I think I'll stick to
stripping the marks from the text when I send it email, and
backing it up with paper copy to show where the accents and tildes
go.
If it ever comes up like that.
If I want to use a language where the marks are critical for
comprehension (quick, somebody think of a situation in Spanish
where the context would be ruined without the marks -- I can't),
I'll worry about it anew.
But I'm still working on that downloading problem: _El Periquillo
Sarniento_ is really unpleasant to read with all greek letters and
box drawing tools and stuff everywhere.
Lucy Kemnitzer
piranha
Del Cotter <d...@branta.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>On Sat, 24 Jun 2000, in rec.arts.sf.composition,
>Jo Walton (Intellectual Berserkers for a Better Tomorrow) wrote:
>
>>So your "standard" would exclude me, for a start. And I suspect it would
>>exclude a lot of other working writers who _write_ and therefore tend to
>>use a wordprocessor a lot, rather than using the thing the way Word is
>>clearly intended, for memos. It's undoubtedly pretty good for memos, or
>>so many businesses wouldn't keep using it.
i wouldn't be too sure of that. but it is indeed ok for
not only memos, but general business communications. it
does nice tables, and i do like the tracker (keeps track of
who made what changes, and you can easily accept or refuse
those changes).
but i am only using it because the client uses it, and be-
cause the client isn't particularly competent at dealing
with other formats. what i hate especially is that it's
got defaults set out of the box that i despise (no, i do
_not_ want my spelling and grammar "corrected" while typing!).
it has a pretty sophomoric grammar checker, too. i would
think that most writers want to turn it off.
>It's so good that most people in my firm write memos in it, then send
>them in email as attachments, instead of writing the damn memo in email
>in the first place. gnnnn!
it gets worse. it you use outlook, you can set word as the
standard editor to use for email. which is real handy for
people who just want to use one bloody editor for all their
writing, instead of one for memos and one for email and one
for usenet news. i appreciate that aspect of it, for those
people; i understand why that's attractive.
except that word doesn't handle quoted text well at all, and
it also runs newly added text into the previous paragraph
if one doesn't press CR twice before starting to write. it
will all look fine in word, but it'll come out as one horrid
mishmash when it arrives in my mail agent. sending mail
back and forth with it, trying to keep straight who said what
is a royal pain. and i still refuse to use word as my email
editor. no way, jose.
*yuck*.
-piranha
Joe Mason
> i wouldn't be too sure of that. but it is indeed ok for
> not only memos, but general business communications. it
> does nice tables, and i do like the tracker (keeps track of
> who made what changes, and you can easily accept or refuse
> those changes).
Careful with that tracker. If you ever delete part of your document, and you
have the change tracker on, it'll still be in there, just not displayed. As
you can imagine, this can have consequences if you send the doc out to
clients/competitors/the public/whatever.
See http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/20.83.html#subj12.1
A pretty scary example of a similar problem is in the news now. Check out
http://slashdot.org/articles/00/06/25/0320201.shtml
Joe
Doug Wickstrom
Kemnitzer) excited the ether to say:
>On Sun, 25 Jun 2000 00:39:49 -0500, Doug Wickstrom
><nims...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
>>On Sun, 25 Jun 2000 00:52:04 -0400, WooF <owls...@netaxs.com>
>>excited the ether to say:
>>
>>>On Sun, 25 Jun 2000, John Kensmark wrote:
>>>
>>>> In article <39551c56...@enews.newsguy.com>,
>>>> rit...@cruzio.com (Lucy Kemnitzer) wrote:
>>>>
>>>> [plain text]
>>>>
>>>> > Okay, but what about when the story in question needs diacritical
>>>> > marks?
>>>
>>>(1) Find an extended ASCII table of the decimal numbers that
>>>correspond to various diacritically-marked letters. "role" then
>>>becomes "r<147>e"
>>>
>>>or, better,
>>>
>>>(2) dump Word and get a copy of XyWrite 3 or XyWrite 4 and use
>>>that.
>>
>>It's simpler just to install the appropriate foreign language
>>support. Remapping my keyboard to Swedish is just an
>>Alt+LeftShift away.
>>
>
>! -- I don't use Word.
Doesn't matter. It's an operating system feature. You don't
really think this (佩匿嘱) was written in Word, do you?
--
Doug Wickstrom
"ISO 9000 is an attempt to turn everyone into bureaucrats. This works about
as well as attempts to turn bureaucrats into people." -- Samuel S. Paik
Phil Fraering
> On 25 Jun 2000 06:02:47 GMT,
> David A Molnar <dmo...@fas.harvard.edu> scripsit:
> There are a lot of journals which do just that -- 'forced to learn
> LaTeX by :Physics Review:' -- and in that context it seems to work
> pretty well, because the requirements are overt and explicit and come
> with a set of LaTeX macros they want you to use.
>
> I don't think it'd work as well for fiction, although the LaTeX markup
> required for manuscript format is trivial and could be easily canned,
> and otherwise, it's just straight ascii text.
I would suppose you could change LyX to create said standard LaTeX
format, I guess.
Joyce Reynolds-Ward
<JCBu...@sff.net> wrote:
> [WARNING!!!! Neep Zone Ahead!!!]
>
>Regards Word and getting it to combine documents so that you
>can build multi-document Tables of Contents, etc. -- there
>have been a couple of ways to do this straight through Word
>versions right up to 2000.
Bah humbug.
Word Perfect does it better, and without all the workarounds.
;->
(and you know my dedication to WP....)
jrw
Sylvia Li
>
> On Sun, 25 Jun 2000 18:27:20 GMT,
> Sylvia Li <meta...@escape.ca> scripsit:
> >The systems engineers at my company, who do use multi-file linking
> >extensively, all use FrameMaker. I'd hate to have to use that for creative
> >writing, though.
>
>
> I mean, yes, I know there are lots of people who think that way about
> Framemaker, but you can indeed just type with the thing, and the help
> is decently written and has a good alphabetical index.
>
Well, I can explain why *I* wouldn't like it. I did not say and did not
mean that nobody should like it, or that it was unusable for the purpose,
or anything like that.
If it happened to be the only tool around, or the only way to get something
printed, or I needed a common file that could be edited from three
different platforms, of course I'd use FrameMaker. There have been times
(ssh!) when I've snuck in some creative writing using the mainframe ISPF
editor and the XICS markup language. And I don't think FrameMaker is a bad
product, in the least.
It is, however, heavy-duty. You'll admit that...?
So, but why *I* wouldn't like it? Partly, the whole concept of frames is
oriented towards formatting. Sure, you can just type... you can just type
in PageMaker or Quark XPress, too, and in a pinch I have done so. But the
function of the software goes far beyond getting words on a page in
standard manuscript submission format. Moreover, unless I put in enough
effort to learn about all the features I don't want for the sole purpose of
not using them, I am liable to trip over those features by accident, which
is distracting. What I want to be thinking about in creative writing is
getting the *right* words on a page.
It may be just that I have used MS Word enough that I know how to turn off
the stuff I don't want. Indeed, I've used new copies of Word 97 enough
times now, I've almost got it down to a routine, although there's still
that stupid keyboard shortcut that if you don't turn it off is liable to
mysteriously remove items from your pulldown menus if you mistype a common
key combination. I can never remember what it is, and always end up
scrolling through all the commands before I find it. (Why MS thought
*anyone* would want a *keyboard shortcut* for *that* is entirely beyond me. Grump.)
Still, it seems to me FrameMaker has even more hazards in that respect.
That could be just my perspective. I've only used the product casually, and
to read documents other people have prepared. If I ever found myself using
it on a regular basis for work, I would have an incentive to learn its
quirks. After that, I might not mind using it for creative writing.
--
Sylvia Li
Steve Taylor
> Arrive at an interview wearing
> ripped-up jeans and a Guns 'n Roses t-shirt and tell them to imagine you
> in a suit?
I don't like Guns and Roses, but otherwise, yes. Except for the part
that implies I would wear a suit. Perhaps not the best example...
(I do, of course agree with you that manuscripts should be printed
rather than emailed)
> Morgan Smith
Steve
John Kensmark
> > Many writers choose to use a word processor other than MS Word, and
> > I see little or no reason why "the standard word processor for
> > business" ought to become "the standard word processor for writers."
I had a number of jobs, over a number of years, where I was forced to
use Word, and I had enough free time at the office so that I did some
writing while I was there. Before long, I started using Word at home,
too--not because it was better, but because it was simpler to always be
using the same program. This isn't an argument for why Word ought to be
used, naturally, but rather it may illustrate a propensity toward Word's
adoption outside the office.
> > Most businesses, after all, produce little more than one or two
> > page letters, and maybe a ten-page memo or two. A word processor
> > suitable for such a task may not work for a 100,000 word manuscript.
I had to use Word for all kinds of things, including long technical
documents. It was a major pain in the ass.
> Which Word does not, unless you break it up into very small chunks.
> Not only that but a feature that it used to have which it no longer
> does is linking files, great for large documents and you could
> generate a table of contents from the linked files. Alas, no more.
Wow. I've known lots of folks who used Word for long documents, and I
never knew anyone who got the Master Document (or other linked doc
features) to work consistently. Better luck was had with other
platforms.
On the other hand, much as I dislike Word, it handled my recently
finished 150k+ word book just fine. I was very pleasantly surprised.
Of course, this is about the eighth or ninth version of Word I've used,
and my machine is a brute, which helps. The real secret to working with
Word, natch is Turn off everything you don't need, Make back-ups, and
Save--manually--every three minutes.
I expect to jump to Linux soon, though, which will likely mean a
shareware word processor. The thought doesn't bother me.
John Kensmark
kensmark#hotmail.com
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
John C. Bunnell
>
> Word Perfect does it better, and without
> all the workarounds.
Sheesh. I change the subject heading, and stick a Neep
Warning up top, and I *still* get to be a victim of
religious persecution. You'd think a card-carrying member
of the Holy Order of WordPerfectionism wouldn't be
masochistic enough to read a whole post on how to do
something in Word....
(Yes, I saw the smiley. I am merely responding to same with
a large irony-laden anvil.)
Steve Taylor
>"Geez, not another punk rock novel about
> a young guy from a small town who starts a band, moves to a big city, and
> meets an attractive girl (always introduced tits-first, of course) who
> really blows his mind with her outrageous sexuality. Oh look, and he does
> some drugs, wanders the streets looking for God and cursing his father, gets
> picked up by the cops, sees a real live black person in the joint and learns
> something about The Power Of The Man."
Eeek! Obviously I've spent too much time in the SF ghetto. I thought all
stories were about two people shipwrecked on a distant planet, whose
names turn out to be Adam and Eve. You've just broadened my horizons,
though not in a nice way...
> Nick Mamatas
Steve
Steve Taylor
> In other words you can only get into my club if you know the secret
> handshake (which involves a lot of kneeling and sucking and leaves a nasty
> taste in your mouth)?
Sure does sound like you're being oppressed pretty heavily there. What
did the nasty people make you do? Print your story out single side,
double spaced, and with one inch margins, and put it in an envelope?
Bullies! What a a sick sad world this is...
> I guess that makes a decent amount of sense. Although I tend to dislike
> filters and dislike even more people that claim that there is a need for
> them.
Have you ever read slush? I haven't myself, but I was on Critters for
quite a while and learnt a lot about why editors might want to filter
out some of the laziest and most careless would-be writers.
> Larry -
Steve
Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho
> The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them.
> (I'd give credit to the author if I could remember who it was.)
"The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to
choose from." - Andrew Tanenbaum
For those of us here who don't know, Tanenbaum is a well-known
computer scientist, famous for his work on computer architecture,
operating systems and networks.
--
%%% Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho % ga...@iki.fi % http://www.iki.fi/gaia/ %%%
Pat James
(in message <U7w55.61256$7o1.1...@news2.rdc1.on.home.com>):
> piranha <pir...@gooroos.com> wrote:
>> i wouldn't be too sure of that. but it is indeed ok for
>> not only memos, but general business communications. it
>> does nice tables, and i do like the tracker (keeps track of
>> who made what changes, and you can easily accept or refuse
>> those changes).
>
> Careful with that tracker. If you ever delete part of your document, and you
> have the change tracker on, it'll still be in there, just not displayed. As
> you can imagine, this can have consequences if you send the doc out to
> clients/competitors/the public/whatever.
try turning it off, and saving the doc as a RTF file. Most of the strange
Word crap vanishes when you do that.
And, anyway I usually use Print2PDF to make an Acrobat file of anything I'm
sending into the outside world, anyway. All the fonts and so on are
preserved, none of the Word crap is, many (most?) microcomputer systems are
sold with Acrobat now and it's available for free from Adobe anyway, and
unless the receipiant has bought the full Acrobat package they can't bloody
change anything in it.
Of course, it helps that just about everybody I send stuff to has Acrobat
installed, and those who don't will take a plain text file.
>
> See http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/20.83.html#subj12.1
>
> A pretty scary example of a similar problem is in the news now. Check out
> http://slashdot.org/articles/00/06/25/0320201.shtml
>
> Joe
If you send plain text or Acrobat files you avoid all that.
--
Scientific creationism: a religious dogma combining massive ignorance with
incredible arrogance.
Creationist: (1) One who follows creationism. (2) A moron. (3) A person
incapable of doing math. (4) A liar. (5) A very gullible true believer.
Anna Mazzoldi
pwred...@aol.com (Patricia C. Wrede) wrote:
> In article <961869...@bluejo.demon.co.uk>, J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk (Jo Walton)
> writes:
>
> >But a whole lot of writers I
> >know are using something you'd call "off brand".
>
> I think I know one author who uses MS Word; everybody
> else is either using some ancient or weird word processor
> that's been around since the early 80s or hopping around
> from weird cutting-edge word processor to weird cutting-edge
> word processor in search of the perfect, ultimate writing tool.
>
> I don't happen to like MS Word, myself. I can deal with it,
> if I have to -- but I arrange things so that I have to as infrequently
> as possible.
Sometimes I wonder. Am I the *only* person in the whole wide
world who actually *likes* MS Word, or is it just that everybody
else is ashamed to admit it? Me, I'm so comfortable with it that
I tend to find all the bashing very puzzling.
(Oh, I do understand people having problems with the *compulsory*
use of Word -- I would still have to use it even if I didn't like
it, because that's what my clients require, and I can see how I'd
be peeved if I didn't actually like it. What puzzles me is the
strong objections to it as a word processor *per se*).
Ciao,
Anna
--
Anna Mazzoldi writing from Dublin, Ireland
http://www.iol.ie/~mazzoldi/ (Translation links and more)
Keith Morrison
> On the other hand, much as I dislike Word, it handled my recently
> finished 150k+ word book just fine. I was very pleasantly surprised.
> Of course, this is about the eighth or ninth version of Word I've used,
> and my machine is a brute, which helps. The real secret to working with
> Word, natch is Turn off everything you don't need, Make back-ups, and
> Save--manually--every three minutes.
The basic truth about Word is that MS produced a fairly acceptable
word processor. You just have to change every bloody default setting
on order to find it.
> I expect to jump to Linux soon, though, which will likely mean a
> shareware word processor. The thought doesn't bother me.
The WordPerfect Office 2000 suite is available in Linux.
--
Keith
jhmcmullen
>Sometimes I wonder. Am I the *only* person in the whole wide
Yes. :-)
I once had opportunity to speak with a documenter who had
worked on the Word manual. She was very pleased with Word.
Jim Gardner uses Word and likes it.
I have seen other positive reviews of Word.
I used to be able to take it or leave it. I found the DOS 6.0
version usable, but my publisher at the time wanted electronic
copy in Word 6.0 for windows format, and the conversion didn't
work right. So I got Word 6.0 for Windows.
Clearly it works for some people.
All I can say is that, having worked with Word nearly exclusively
at The New Job these last six months, I have come to truly loathe
it.
Further discussion is probably not really on-topic and probably
would prolong a religious discussion. If anyone wants to debate
this with me, they can e-mail me. :-)
John
Got questions? Get answers over the phone at Keen.com.
Up to 100 minutes free!
http://www.keen.com
jhmcmullen
months ago?
Beth Friedman
wrote:
>Sometimes I wonder. Am I the *only* person in the whole wide
>world who actually *likes* MS Word, or is it just that everybody
>else is ashamed to admit it? Me, I'm so comfortable with it that
>I tend to find all the bashing very puzzling.
Nope. I like Word, I use it, and I'm very good at it. I almost
posted a similar message to the neepery one about RD fields instead of
master documents, but I'm too tired to cope with all the "Word sucks"
messages right now.
--
Beth Friedman
b...@wavefront.com