Editorial Introduction
by David Bloomberg
When Eutychus originally proposed the idea for Teemings and I volunteered
to work on it with him, Ed Zotti made a comment about how much time editing
can take. Pshaw, thought I. I help edit a newsletter, and that comes out every
month. How bad could it be?
Well, I was wrong. One difference is that the newsletter only has a few articles
in each issue. Another is that most of the people who write for it need very
little editing. Unfortunately, that has not been the case for Teemings.
Don’t get me wrong - I’m not talking about all the submissions. There have
been some that have not needed a single red mark. But there are others that
made me want to wring the author’s neck. Lucky for them, I couldn’t, because
my hand was too tired from marking up the article.
In our submission guidelines, we note that we expect pretty good grammar
and spelling. However, as of yet we have not rejected any articles strictly
on this basis. This has to change.
I’m not trying to be nasty or mean, but I only have so much time. Even with
the addition of Chef Troy to help out, we simply cannot continue to spend hours
on end making 25 corrections on a single page of an article (alas, I am not
exaggerating for effect).
So, I’m going to make some suggestions to make my life - and the lives of
anybody submitting articles - easier:
- First of all, reread your work! There have been a couple people who
have obviously slapped something together and just sent it off without bothering
to check it over. A simple rereading on your part will clean up a lot of
mistakes. Also, it’s often best to wait a day or two after writing the piece
before looking at it again - you’ll catch more errors by coming in clean
that way. You may also notice that you could use better wording to get your
points across. It will make your piece better all around if you do this.
- Don’t just use your word processor’s spell check and assume everything
is OK. Many words can be misspelled as other “real” words. Four instant,
his sentience show know errs n spiel chuck. (For instance, this sentence
shows no errors in spell check.)
- When quoting, remember that commas and periods go inside the quotes
- question marks go inside if the quote, itself, is a question, and outside
if not. For example: David said, “You guys need to remember this.” Eutychus
replied, “Do you think so?” David responded, “Do you want me to continually
say, ‘This is wrong’?”
- Please use only one space between sentences. If you were like me and
took typing lessons in school, you were probably taught to put two spaces
after a period or colon. That no longer applies in these days of computers.
- Use commas properly. I don’t know of any easy way to explain this, because
there are so many possible situations. But I have seen articles (not only
for this ‘zine) in which the writer seems to sprinkle in commas with little
rhyme or reason. All I can ask is that you do your best to use them properly.
- This is a web publication, so we italicize titles rather than putting
them in quotes (unless, of course, you’re sending the article as plain text).
It helps me a lot if do all the necessary italicizing so I don’t have to
hunt through your article to find any instances of a title you might have
mentioned.
There are probably many other suggestions I could make, but can’t think of
right now. If you have any questions, please feel free to e-mail me and ask.
I’d rather answer a question ahead of time than have to re-edit something later.
Thanks for all the great submissions!