[Ipg-smz] [Ipg-l] Roll out the red carpet for... Mark Brownstein

[Dan Rosenbaum]

One of my favorite things to do in the print era -- no kidding, about this -- was trimming words to make copy fit. Where possible, I'd try to take an excess phrase or two out of grafs to close up hanging words and cut down on line count. Most people couldn't find the changes, but the copy would now magically fit. This was especially fun when I got to work on a layout-oriented copy flow system like some version of Quark that I can't remember the name of right now. All of Time Inc ran on it; they called it "greening" copy, because when the copy fit, the indicator went from red to green.

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On 10/2/19, 2:55 PM, "Ipg-smz on behalf of Stephen Satchell via Ipg-smz" <ipg-smz-bounces at netpress.org on behalf of ipg-smz at netpress.org> wrote:

    And the job of the copy editors was to take "words" and fit them into
    "lines", which relates to the column-inch mention by Lynn.
    
    In hot composition, mismatches between the story real estate and the
    news hole was made up by one or more tricks, such as the one- or
    two-line pithy quotes that would show up randomly at the bottom of a
    news story -- couldn't have an island of white on the page.
    
    Cold composition has a little more latitude, because you were pasting
    columns of text onto a backing board, so there were nice tricks you
    could do using a sharp Xacto knife.
    
    Electronic composition (full-page plate-making) let people jigger a
    story's text to come out "right".  That depended on your composition
    system being able to H&J in real time, as opposed to batch.
    
    (The "cost" of such capability paid for improvements in line
    orphan-widow control, as well as providing a tool to fight the "river of
    white" that would appear from time to time.)
    
    For one client, I always gave them about 103% of their requested word
    count so that they could cut to fit, and *not* call for more "filler".
    The stuff was paid by the piece, so no one thought I was trying for more
    money.
    
    On 10/2/19 11:25 AM, Christine Hall via Ipg-smz wrote:
    > Much tighter writing. 800 words meant 790-810 words, not 700-900 words.
    > 
    > Christine Hall
    > Publisher & Editor
    > FOSS Force: Keeping tech free
    > http://fossforce.com
    > 
    > On 10/2/19 11:10 AM, Lynn Greiner via Ipg-smz wrote:
    >> Word counts and column inches .... what fun! Led to some very creative
    >> editing (and often much tighter writing).
    
    
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