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The ongoing struggle...
Apr. 25th, 2008 05:47 pmIt's been a long day, and I haven't even put a dent in what I started out to do.
I haven't let the grass grow under my feet, though. I took care of the second rework this morning in fairly good order, except it took much longer than it should have because whoever revised it kept modifying text that should have been deleted into text that would have appeared later in the document (but for the fact that it had been deleted in the process of revision). I caught on to this the second time it happened, so I saved some time, but it still slowed me down.
Then there was an urgent request to do a 700 word job, which I agreed to do.
And then - and this is why I should not be allowed within a mile of a novel once work is in the hopper - I sat down and finished the last couple of hundred pages of Up Country. I read fiction pretty fast, so it was "only" an indulgence of a couple of hours, but still...
Anyway, I haven't gotten to the point of my post, which was to complain (and likely not for the first time) about would-be lexicographers who insist on capitalizing glossary entries (and to expand on the theme by taking to task an unnatural extension of such an approach).
What triggered my complaint this time was seeing the ultimate result of this ill-advised approach, which is an entry that reads "Fermi far east research marine institute" [sic]. I get the feeling, looking at this and other entries (e.g., Epa, meaning the Environmental Protection Agency), that someone actually went out of their way to make sure that only the initial letter of an entry was capitalized, whether it needed it or not, while following characters were forcibly lower-cased, also whether needed or not.
I'm speechless. Really, I am.
Because I can't see what doing something like that buys you, except maybe a uniform-looking page of terms, which - along with $4.39 - will buy you a latté at almost any Starbucks in Manhattan.
So many abbreviations are absolutely normal - and common - digrams and trigrams, that without being able to invoke case sensitivity, searching becomes slow torture. Farblegarg...
On the flip side, the tactic also sows the seeds of confusion, wherein "Plexiglass" offers a good example: Do I assume the editor wants me to actually capitalize all instances (if any) of references to the extruded acrylic product that goes by the trade name of Plexiglas®, or am I expected to refer to it as "plexiglass" (after appropriate de-capitalization)?
Or is my Translation supposed to look like a Bad Imitation of German?
But that's something of a rant against a straw man, as it's doubtful I'll ever encounter that word in a document from this client (which raises its own set of questions, which I shall not address at this time). The primary problem I have with capitalized entries on 16-point centers is that case-sensitive searches are often quite useful in getting to "yes!" more rapidly.
Ah, well... enough complaining. I'm going to eat an orange and get back to work.
Cheers...
I haven't let the grass grow under my feet, though. I took care of the second rework this morning in fairly good order, except it took much longer than it should have because whoever revised it kept modifying text that should have been deleted into text that would have appeared later in the document (but for the fact that it had been deleted in the process of revision). I caught on to this the second time it happened, so I saved some time, but it still slowed me down.
Then there was an urgent request to do a 700 word job, which I agreed to do.
And then - and this is why I should not be allowed within a mile of a novel once work is in the hopper - I sat down and finished the last couple of hundred pages of Up Country. I read fiction pretty fast, so it was "only" an indulgence of a couple of hours, but still...
Anyway, I haven't gotten to the point of my post, which was to complain (and likely not for the first time) about would-be lexicographers who insist on capitalizing glossary entries (and to expand on the theme by taking to task an unnatural extension of such an approach).
What triggered my complaint this time was seeing the ultimate result of this ill-advised approach, which is an entry that reads "Fermi far east research marine institute" [sic]. I get the feeling, looking at this and other entries (e.g., Epa, meaning the Environmental Protection Agency), that someone actually went out of their way to make sure that only the initial letter of an entry was capitalized, whether it needed it or not, while following characters were forcibly lower-cased, also whether needed or not.
I'm speechless. Really, I am.
Because I can't see what doing something like that buys you, except maybe a uniform-looking page of terms, which - along with $4.39 - will buy you a latté at almost any Starbucks in Manhattan.
So many abbreviations are absolutely normal - and common - digrams and trigrams, that without being able to invoke case sensitivity, searching becomes slow torture. Farblegarg...
On the flip side, the tactic also sows the seeds of confusion, wherein "Plexiglass" offers a good example: Do I assume the editor wants me to actually capitalize all instances (if any) of references to the extruded acrylic product that goes by the trade name of Plexiglas®, or am I expected to refer to it as "plexiglass" (after appropriate de-capitalization)?
Or is my Translation supposed to look like a Bad Imitation of German?
But that's something of a rant against a straw man, as it's doubtful I'll ever encounter that word in a document from this client (which raises its own set of questions, which I shall not address at this time). The primary problem I have with capitalized entries on 16-point centers is that case-sensitive searches are often quite useful in getting to "yes!" more rapidly.
Ah, well... enough complaining. I'm going to eat an orange and get back to work.
Cheers...
