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

[Sharon Fisher]

I loved doing that.

On Wed, Oct 2, 2019, 1:09 PM Dan Rosenbaum via Ipg-smz <ipg-smz at netpress.org>
wrote:

> 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.
>
> d
>
> 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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