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

[Mark Brownstein]

I used to enjoy it, too. It was like solving a puzzle. Quark made it a 
lot easier than physically cutting words, or moving text around on the 
page to fit.

For a while, I had a word processing service bureau, and referred work 
to a photo-typesetter.

In 1986, I was writing books for Osborne-McGraw/Hill, and I proposed 
writing a book about Desktop Publishing. The editors had no idea what I 
was talking about.

I didn't get to write the book.


On 10/2/2019 12:08 PM, Dan Rosenbaum via Ipg-smz 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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