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

[Tom Henderson]

A typesetting/desktop publishing friend of mine from the print days says 
that an electronic thesaurus perhaps saved her sanity. Pull-quotes, 
margin/gutter finagling, 1pt type changes, and getting yelled at by the 
printer were her daily stresses. The next morning, she'd pray that no 
one changed the jump page references-- which when found, could launch 
full coffee mugs across the office with spectacular and colorful 
results. There were no reported injuries. She also noted that it was a 
very good thing that her window was nailed shut.

Tom


On 10/2/19 3:35 PM, Mark Brownstein via Ipg-smz wrote:
> 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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>>      Ipg-smz at netpress.org
>>      http://netpress.org/mailman/listinfo/ipg-smz_netpress.org
>>
>>
>>
>
-- 
Tom Henderson
ExtremeLabs, Inc.
+1 317 250 4646
Twitter: @extremelabs
Skype: extremelabsinc