One of my favorite tasks as a magazine editor was copyfitting. As an issue of the magazine came together, a printed copy of each page or multi-page article was circulated among the staff. The assigning editor checked her pages for errors and also usually had to cut or fill so that the text would fit properly on the page.
I woke up the other day thinking about how much I liked doing that (I must have been having a flashback dream). It’s like a good word game. While retaining the meaning and intent of a passage, you must add, subtract, or change just the right number of words to fill the space without causing a dreaded widow or orphan. Plus, at the time, we did this on paper. So we got to use cool proofreaders’ marks.
What can I say? I am a word nerd. I recently took over editing and publishing our school’s monthly newsletter. It’s in a two-column format, so I returned to my old widow- and orphan-hunting roots. And I put everything in the same font. This revolutionary change earned me more than one heartfelt appreciation from a fellow parent.
We word nerds know a fellow traveler when we see one.
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This sounds like a fun task to me too – though I am in health policy, I am the office’s designated editor because I actually enjoy it. Finding ways to fit something into a page limit is a great game, and one we need to do for grant applications and other documents with page limits.
I do that at work, too, but in designing for computer screens, not paper pages. I’m the web developer so I’m not technically supposed to comment on the phrasing, but some people are just exceedingly wordy and need my suggestions : )
I miss working with you, Word Nerd.
I love doing this! It’s so satisfying to have free reign to tighten wording for space reasons.
You will appreciate this story — I was writing an e-mail about teacher appreciation events for Rosie’s school, and with all the various and sundry things we wanted to cover, it was getting quite long. I sent it to some other parents with review, noting that I wanted to try and make it a bit more readable, and one of the other moms said all it needed was “some colored text and clip art” to break it up a bit. (groan!)
I woke up from a strange work dream too the other night. One minute I was feeling that familiar nose-to-the-grindstone adrenaline. Then the next I was being kicked in the head by a little interloper in my bed. It really made me miss working.
I’m glad you found an outlet for all your wordy nerdy.
Cool, word nerd!
The closest I’ve gotten to that kind of editing is putting together programs for concerts. How to get dance name, choreographer, music name, composer, performers, credits, thank yous, and graphics to fit and make sense on x panels? I always found it weirdly satisfying. Even better was figuring out the dance order in the first place – what was the best order for storyline, pacing, and costume changes?
I feel sad at least once a week that I don’t get to talk widows and orphans, leading, kerning…
I’ve never done this in any real capacity, but I’d like it too.
OMG. As a graphic designer, I on the other end of the proof reader marks, but I still love them Thanks for that lovely link. Added it to my reference bookmarks to send to anyone who needs them!
Word.
Nerd.
I am a word person, both from the word end and the design end. There is nothing more pleasing than a well-written, well-designed piece — and nothing more horrifying than some mishmash of misspellings, dozens of script fonts and pointless clip art.