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AUTHOR'S GUIDE to PREPARING TEXT

for

electronic typesetting

According to the Writers and Artists Yearbook, over 40% of professional writers now use electronic word-processing technology in preference to the older methods of producing hand-written or typescript texts.
(Farewell the quill. Farewell the trusty old Remington portable. Goodbye leaky fountain-pen.)

On the whole this is a good thing. It means the days when publishers' readers and editors had to decipher a badly-written manuscript, or a heavily overtyped and tippexed-out typescript, are now firmly fading into the past. (Their passing is not regretted - either by the writers themselves; the blue-pencil-wielding editors; or by any other reader of a well-presented text before it is accepted for publication and sent off to a typesetter.)

Another point in favour of the use of word-processors by professional writers is that the extremely time-consuming effort expended by the author in typing-in the text in the first place (not to speak of the agony of creating it) no longer has to be duplicated by the typesetter when re-keying in the text. The machine-readable form of the text produced on magnetic disk by its original author's word-processor can now be used as direct input for further processing by an electronic typesetting software package. The risks of introducing errors in the basic text during the re-keying process are thus eliminated. Writers can rest assured that (editors willing!) the words they originally put down are the same words which will be typeset.

But despite the obvious gains in time and efficiency, unless the text has been specifically prepared for typesetting from the outset, there is often a disadvantage for the typesetter in this approach. One so serious that it can often make the thought of completely re-typing in the text of a neatly hand-written manuscript from scratch seem far more attractive than the apparently more advantageous alternative.

The trouble with an author's original disk as produced by a word-processor is that the very thing that simplifies the reading of the printed version of the text for a publishing editor (nicely formatted layout, beautifully indented and justified lines of text) is also the very thing that the typesetter does NOT now want to see included with the text content.

(At least not in the form in which it appears on the author's disk.)

All that the typesetter really requires is the basic text - words, not electronic layout instructions as well. (Layout is, after all, an essential part of the typesetter's job.)

But all word-processed text contains layout instructions of one kind or another embedded within it (that is what word-processors do, and why they are used); and these instructions are unfortunately valid only for the print device used by the particular word-processor/printer mix used by the author who created the text in the first place.

Tragically, they are of no direct use to anything other than that particular setup.

Thus although the printout produced by the author's word-processor may provide an extremely useful visual guide for the typesetter, for all practical typesetting purposes the magnetic version of the same text will be cluttered with unwanted and redundant information.
The machine-readable formatting instructions which accompany it become only too horribly apparent in the digital version of the text which the electronic typesetter now has to use as basic source material.

The typesetter's task would be made much easier if these word-processor-specific instructions could be automatically translated in some way - that is, carried over to the typesetting software and used by it as they were by the word-processor.

But - typically - they can't.

There is inevitably no direct match, no one-to-one correspondence between the codes inserted by the word-processing software and those expected by the typesetting software.
Nor is there any simple way of automatically removing them from the text (other than by not putting them in to brgin with).
In brutal honesty, all of the hard work put in by the author to produce those beautifully indented and justified lines of text will now have to be just as carefully and meticulously undone by the typesetter - without in so doing adversely affecting the author's original text in any way.

This is no easy task.

(Why? Because the invisible electronic codes embedded within the text are not only unusable by the typesetter, they are also actively confusing to the typesetting device and display software - which inevitably use a different set of codes. They must therefore be carefully stripped out before the typesetter can even begin to work on setting the text. Their presence is nothing but a nuisance and a constant source of headaches, misprints and typesetting errors.)

In fact, from the typesetter's point of view, it would be much better if any text to be set from disk were presented by the author without any formatting codes contained within it at all - nothing more than good old plain words, one after the other. (Plaintext, not formatted text.)

The ideal of course would be if writers were to produce two versions of the same text - one, intended to produce a printout for presentation to editors and publishers; and another, purely electronic and not intended to produce printout, for the typesetter to work from.

But the real world is not an ideal place - writers are, naturally, concerned first and foremost with getting a text accepted for publication by an editor.
And - usually - they are not typesetters. (Nor should they be expected to be.)
Thus their texts will be laid out to the best of their ability, using the facilities provided by the word-processor they habitually use; and this will inevitably be reflected in the disks they provide the typesetter with. They may even feel that they are somehow helping the typesetter by doing this - particularly if they have spent several months learning how to implement arcane layout commands.
Unfortunately, this is not so.

The best that may be achieved is some form of compromise between the two.

The following list of DOs and DON'Ts is intended to provide some idea of how to achieve that compromise.

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DOs and DON'Ts This list may appear rather frightening at the first reading - but remember, it is intended only for those writers preparing text purely as input to a typesetting package. Further, it assumes that the writer/typist knows precisely how the word-processing package being used works; and what it produces in terms of text or character stream, not just what appears in the printed document.

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DOs

DO	turn justification OFF in your word-processor - it is the most irritating thing in the world to have to sit and take out odd numbers of blank spaces between words, introduced by the word-processing software purely to pad out short lines when justifying to accommodate a monospaced-font printer.
DO	turn automatic hyphenation OFF also - even if they don't show up in your printout, `soft' hyphens may otherwise be left in your text, and they will show up when the text is typeset.
DO	try to differentiate between the hyphen (-) and the dash (--); and if you are in the habit of using (---) to distinguish the em dash from the en dash, make sure you include a note to the typesetter explaining this.
DO	be consistent in your use of typographical conventions throughout the whole document. If you really can't get out of the habit of putting two blank spaces after a full point, at least be consistent. And if you're one of those ill-educated typists who never inserts a blank space after the comma, why not try changing your bad habits?
DO	spell check your document before delivery (and make sure you know the little quirks of your [predominantly US-originated] spelling checker as you do it). Consistency in spelling, hyphenation and capitalization will be indicated to the typesetter by the markup editor if it varies wildly throughout the text - and remember that the publisher's house style may override your own preferred spellings unless you specifically make other arrangements.
DO	provide the typesetter with a printout of your text. It helps.
DO	save your text as 7-bit ASCII plaintext. Using 8-bit ASCII (`extended ASCII') codes is fraught with danger - there is no agreed standard for characters above 127.
DO	make sure that if you have been obliged to use 8-bit ASCII codes anywhere in the text they will transfer correctly to the target layout software or typesetting application.
DO	give some indication somewhere of the WP software package used to create the text (including version No.) - this can often be of great help to the typesetter.
DO	try and find out what typesetting software your text will be fed into - this may help you to `embed' style tags or other information (in ASCII-format) within your document.
DO	try to give some idea of the structural hierarchy of your text if at all possible. (This is most commonly achieved by the use of paragraph or style tags, such as Chapter heading, Subheading 1, etc.)
DO	use paragraph or style tags if your WP software permits. (This mirrors the way most typesetting/layout software works - layout characteristics are removed from the character stream and included in separate paragraph format descriptions or `tags'.)
DO	use tab spacing rather than hitting the spacebar a given number of times - but only if you really must use TABs in any case. (In many instances the typesetter would actually prefer text which on the page is separated by tab spacing to be separated by hard carriage returns in the character stream.)
DO	separate paragraphs by hard carriage returns; or two even, if you know that your WP software will save the text with a hard return at the end of each line. (Which the typesetter will then have to laboriously delete.)

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DON'Ts

DON'T	use justification.
DON'T	use any form of automatic hyphenation.
DON'T	set any form of margin other than that used for the document overall.
DON'T	use underlining at all - it is a handwriting and typing convention that does NOT transfer very well to the typeset page - emphasis is better indicated in a typeset document by use of italic or bold styles.
DON'T	use hyphens or equals signs to underline any text.
DON'T	use inch marks to `lift' passages of text - use single opening and closing quote marks instead.
DON'T	put two blank spaces after a full point if you can avoid it.
DON'T	whatever you do, try to introduce any form of indenting or outdenting (unless it is safely buried within a separate paragraph format description).
DON'T	use blank spaces to indent text - if you must, use tab spacing characters, and ensure that when the document is saved they are saved with it as TAB characters, not converted to the equivalent number of blank spaces.
DON'T	bother centering any text at all.
DON'T	bother setting running heads or footers.
DON'T	use monospaced font characteristics of type to `draw' boxes or flow-charts - the justification of the typeset font used will make these unreadable. (It is also unwise to spend hours drawing these when they will not be used in the typeset version.)
DON'T	spend ages re-typing screen representations of data - use a screen-grabber, or give the typesetter an indication of the screen-shots to be included with your text.
DON'T	overuse CAPITAL letters for headings, highlighted text, etc. Remember, the typesetting software has far more sophisticated means of doing this.
DON'T	- at all costs - set up complex formatting of your text under the WP software and THEN save it as an ASCII file (`print to file' option) - this usually causes the typesetter hideous grief.
DON'T	bother to set forced page breaks, or give page numbering.
DON'T	bother making a list of contents with page numbers. (The list itself is fine, particularly where no indication of section headings is given elsewhere in the text - but the page numbering is obviously valid for only one specific printed form of the document.)
DON'T	use spacing to separate columns in tables - use tab spacing instead. (Or better still, employ `vertical' tabbing - i.e. separate each entry with a hard return.)

In fact, DON'T use any of the fancy layout capabilities of your WP software at all!
This may seem a dreadful waste - but that's the way it is for typesetting.

NOTE TO PONDER OVER:

The fewer deletions of unwanted formatting instructions the typesetter has to make from your word-processed document, the less likely it is that essential passages of basic text will inadvertently be deleted as well.

Information prepared and published by StarTEXT document engineering using Debian GNU / 
September 18th 1996.
(last modified November 8th 1997)

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