Editing

Passive Voice and Passival Tense

by kt | 2 Comments

Happy Passive Voice Day!

Don’t go nuts trying to always avoid passive. Here is a useful illustration of other verb forms being confused for passive in student paper-grading, and links to Language Log posts on the passive voice.

Bonus links: Language Log on the now-archaic passival tense, replaced since ca. the mid-18th century by the progressive passive. Lexicon Valley podcast on passival.

Progressive: She put out the fire.
Passive: The fire was put out (by her).
Passival: The fire was putting out (by her).
Progressive+passive: The fire was being put out (by her).
Pennsylvania Dutch past perfect: She has outened the fire.

Pietsch on Editing Wallace

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We’d agreed early on that my role was to dfwshelfsubject every section of the book to the brutal question: Can the book possibly live without this?
Michael Pietsch on editing DFW’s Infinite Jest.
From Infinite Summer, a 2009 project in collaborative study and reading of IJ.
Bonus: a conversation in Slate between Pietsch and novelist Donna Tartt.

Maps in the Public Domain

by kt | 1 Comment

SF Bay 1847

Bosqui Print Co.’s Bird’s-eye map of San Francisco in 1847. Image from bigmapblog.

The very useful Public Domain Sherpa has both a post on how to tell if a map is in the public domain and a list of sources for public domain maps.

Wikipedia also maintains a list of public domain map resources. If you need to do a great deal of map data work, another good resource to consider is Natural Earth, whose maps include integrated vector and raster data.

And if you’re looking for spectacular antique map images, Geographicus Rare Antique Maps has donated 2,000 rare maps to the Wikimedia Commons (description and links at the Public Domain Review).

An Image Copyright Rabbit-Hole

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Image of pulsar waves from PSR B1919+21, Cambridge Encyclopedia of Astronomy, 1977.

This blog post discusses one person’s attempt to find the original creator of the white-on-black image of pulsar waves made iconic by its use on the cover of the 1979 Joy Division album Unknown Pleasures.

(h/t JuiceCake @Metafilter)

Thirty Tables of Contents

by kt | 1 Comment

smirkThirty Tables of Contents: A Flickr set from the Design Observer Group

Some quick-&-dirty ToC tips:

  • Title it “Contents,” not “Table of Contents.”
  • ToC should always begin on a recto page (usually page v of the front matter).
  • If every chapter begins with an introduction, you can safely leave the “Introduction” subheadings out of the ToC, as the Chapter page listing will serve the same purpose.