Editor's Corner

Let’s return today to the symbols of planets we covered while talking about capitalization. Since I covered Venus (♀)

last time, it seems only right to talk about her planetary mate, Mars. The symbol for Mars is also the alchemical symbol for iron, and the biological symbol for man:

As the symbol for Venus represented the mirror the goddess held, the symbol for Mars represents the Roman god’s shield and spear. Though both the Roman god Mars (and his Greek equivalent Ares) represent the god of war, the two cultures regarded the god of war differently. Mars was considered the father of the Roman people and was highly regarded and dignified in ancient religion as a “guardian diety.” The Greek myths don’t spend much time on Ares. While his sister, the goddess Athena represented strategy and wisdom in war, Ares represented raw strength, violence, carnage, and the untamed.

Ares (Mars) minus his spear

One of the most interesting aspects of Mars is the two moons: Deimos and Phobos. Indeed, these two moons (probably former asteroids that became stuck in Mars’ gravity) revolve around the planet Mars; however they are also part of mythology. In Greek mythology, Ares (Mars) and Aphrodite (Venus) “got together” and became the proud parents of two boys, Deimos (which means “terror” or “dread”) and Phobos (which means “fear,” as in “phobia”). Deimos and Phobos followed their father into battle, as the moons named after them follow the planet Mars in the solar system.

Ares (middle), Phobos, and Deimos

Kara Church

Senior Technical Editor

Good morning! Yesterday while ranting about using single quotes, I provided an example that brought on more questions. The question was about the titles of works (paintings, books, articles, etc.). How should titles be formatted? With an underline? With italics? In quotation marks?

The answer is: it depends. The following are rules we use from the Chicago Manual of Style.

Note: In publishing, plain text (not italicized, bold, or underlined) is referred to as “roman” or is said to be “set in roman.”

· Book titles: Title case, italicized

Many editors use The Chicago Manual of Style.

· Book series and editions: Title case, roman

the Loeb Classical Library

a Modern Library edition

the Crime and Justice series

· Movies: Title case, italicized.

Gone with the Wind

· Musical works:

Too specialized for the CMOS; additional references sited.

· Periodicals: Title case, italicized

Sports Illustrated magazine

· Plays: Italicized

Shaw’s Arms and the Man, in volume 2 of his Plays: Pleasant and Unpleasant

· Poems (short): Title case, roman, enclosed in quotation marks

Robert Frost’s poem “The Housekeeper” in his collection North of Boston

· Poems (long, book-length): Italicized

Dante’s Inferno

· TV and radio (series): Title case, italicized

PBS’s Sesame Street [KC – The network name and call letters are set in roman.]

· TV and radio (single episodes): Title case, roman, enclosed in quotation marks

“Casualties,” is an episode in The Fortunes of War television series.

· Websites and web page titles: Title case, roman
Websites with comparable printed versions: Title case, italicized
References to titled sections or special features on website: Enclose in quotation marks

The website for Apple Inc.; Apple.com

Google; Google Maps; the “Google Maps Help Center”

Wikipedia; Wikipedia’s “Let It Be” entry; Wikipedia’s entry on the Beatles’ album Let It Be

the Oxford English Dictionary Online; the OED Online; the online version of the Oxford English Dictionary

· Works of art (known artist): Italicized

Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and The Last Supper

North Dome, one of Ansel Adams’s photographs of Kings River Canyon

· Works of art (unknown artist): Roman

the Winged Victory

the Venus de Milo

Kara Church

Senior Technical Editor

619-542-6773 | Ext: 766773

www.symitar.com

Kara

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I’m almost afraid to breathe: the Symitar Education Conference begins today. The Education half of our department is worked into a frenzy of development, session practices, and rounding up presenters; the Technical Publications half of the department is also busy helping with presentations, room monitoring, and working in the Tech Expo demonstrating our wares to clients; and then there’s Editing, the third half of the department. 🙂 Okay, my math is better than that. We’re only about 14% of the department worker bees, but we do all of the editing and then buzz in during the rest of the week to help anywhere else we can.

That said, I’ll do my best to stay true to all of you with a little bit of Editor’s Corner each day.

Today I’m here to tell you about a trend I noticed in some of the SEC submissions: the single quote (Ꞌ). In the English language, as practiced here in the USA, there are three primary reasons to use single quote marks. Since, as you will read, these circumstances are rarely seen here at JHA, stick with double quotes (") to be safe!

Reason 1: The Associated Press (AP Style) uses single quote marks for quotations in headlines. Unless you are writing news stories for AP, your best bet is double quotes.

Reason 2: Some disciplines (e.g., philosophy, theology) use single quotes to call attention to words that have a special meaning. Since our world of finance doesn’t fit under either of those topics and more people use double quotes or italics to perform that same job, again, I’d stick with double quotes.

Reason 3: Quotes within quotes. This is the one time when you might see single quotes used in an acceptable manner here at work. It is not often we have the opportunity to use quotes or dialog in our client-facing documentation, but if the need arises you can use single quotes. What do I mean by quotes within quotes? Here are a few examples from the Chicago Manual of Style:

“Don’t be absurd!” said Henry. “To say that ‘I mean what I say’ is the same as ‘I say what I mean’ is to be as confused as Alice at the Mad Hatter’s tea party. You remember what the Hatter said to her: ‘Not the same thing a bit! Why you might just as well say that “I see what I eat” is the same thing as “I eat what I see”!’ ”

“Admit it,” she said. “You haven’t read ‘The Simple Art of Murder.’ ”

Note: It is common for the typesetter or printer to add a half-space between the single quote and double quote when they are used together.

Kara Church

Senior Technical Editor

619-542-6773 | Ext: 766773

www.symitar.com

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Happy Friday, everyone! Today I have a sampling of phrases for you, from a blog titled 25 Common Phrases That You’re Saying Wrong. Thanks to Rob Stewart for these new additions to an old theme. For the full article, by Dominique Jackson, click here.

The phrases on the left are incorrect; the phrases on the right are correct.

Extract revenge vs. Exact revenge

When you extract something, you’re taking it out of something else. When you exact onto something, you’re dishing it out. Therefore, extracting revenge on someone would mean you’re taking out that person’s revenge. Exacting revenge onto them means that you’re taking your revenge out on them.

Conversating vs. Conversing

Drop the “on” and add an “ng” and you have yourself a new verb right? Wrong. Conversating is an unofficial word that a lot of people use in place of the correct term, conversing.

I made a complete 360 degree change in my life vs. I made a complete 180 degree change in my life

People say they’ve made a complete 360 degree change in their life to imply that they’ve completely changed from the way they used to be. However, going 360 degrees means that you’ve returned to the exact same place you started. Which would mean you didn’t change at all. A 180 degree change would mean that you are the complete opposite which is what most people are trying to say.

Nip it in the butt vs. Nip it in the bud

Nipping something in the bud means that you’re putting an end to it before it has a chance to grow or start. Nipping something in the butt means you’re biting its behind.

Curl up in the feeble position vs. Curl up in the fetal position

Feeble means weak and frail. So in a way, curling up in a feeble position isn’t too far off. However, the actual fetal position that people are referring to is the curled up position that fetuses use while in the womb.

I hope you enjoy the weekend!

Kara Church

Senior Technical Editor

619-542-6773 | Ext: 766773

www.symitar.com

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Note: This is a lengthier article than usual, but Editor’s Corner may be a little sporadic over the next few days. Read it slowly to make it last. 🙂

When it comes to language, there is no such thing as a short answer. Today I picked a question out of my mailbox that seemed like an easy one…but once I got started on research I found myself down another rabbit hole of information. Today’s topic is “case.” I’m just sharing tidbits of information, but for a longer article on the topic see Letter Case.

Most languages based on Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, Armenian, and Coptic alphabets use upper and lower cases to clarify writing. Scripts with both upper and lower cases are called bicameral scripts. Hebrew and Arabic, when written, only use one case and are called unicase scripts.

Before the terms uppercase and lowercase were coined, the term for capital letters was majuscule and the term for lowercase letters was minuscule. The terms for case were developed during the time of the printing press. Typesetters kept shallow wooden or metal drawers (called cases) with the letters in them. The majuscule letters were in the top (upper) case; the miniscule letters in the bottom (lower) case.

Typesetter’s Case

That gives us uppercase and lowercase, but what about all these other cases we hear about? Sentence case? Camel case? Title case? Well, here’s a brief explanation.

Sentence case and title case are the two standard “cases” you will find defined in style guides. The others are more recent inventions of the computer age, designed as part of file naming conventions.

· Sentence case: The case used for prose. The first letter of the sentence begins with a capital letter and uses lowercase letters for the rest of the sentence (unless you run into a proper noun). The sentence ends with some sort of terminal punctuation (e.g., period, question mark).

Example: The little dog found an old hamburger in the gutter.

· Title case: The case used for titles of books, TV shows, works of art, music, etc. Capitalization depends on the style guide used, but generally includes rules such as:

· first and last word capitalized

· nouns capitalized

· adjectives capitalized

· prepositions lowercased

· conjunctions lowercased

· etc.

Example: Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator

· Toggle case: An option in Microsoft® Word that allows you to flip the case of words you’ve typed. For example, if you have turned on Caps Lock by mistake and end up typing “tHE mAN OF lA mANCHA,” you can select the text, click Toggle Case, and it will change it to “The Man of La Mancha.”

· Camel case: I’ve only seen this as a file naming convention. Named camel case because of the humps created by having capital letters in the middle of a string of lowercase letters. Camel case requires that you capitalize the first letter of each new word, and cram the words altogether.

Example: A Word document called Backing Up Your Data would be saved in camel case as: BackingUpYourData.

· Snake case: According to Wikipedia, this case can be used for variable names, file names, and function names. The “case” involves removing punctuation and spaces and replacing them with underscores. The words can be all lowercase, all uppercase, or mixed case.

Examples:

007_UNDERCOVER_FILE

007_undercover_file

007_Undercover_file

· Spinal case: Similar to “snake case,” only the underscore marks are replaced by hyphens.

Examples:

THE-SECRET-OF-THE-HOLY-GRAIL

the-secret-of-the-holy-grail

The-secret-of-the-holy-grail

Kara Church

Senior Technical Editor

Good morning! I hope you enjoyed the three-day weekend wherever you were and whatever you were doing. Today I have a little something for you about another one of the planetary symbols—from a few weeks ago. The symbol for the planet Venus is a circle with a cross underneath it, as follows:

This symbol is from the shape of the handheld mirror Aphrodite (Venus) uses to admire her beauty. Aphrodite, with her symbolic mirror, is shown in both the mosaic and photo of a painted krater, below.

Aphrodite Mosaic

Aphrodite on Krater

Not only does the symbol of the mirror (♀) represent the planet Venus, it represents females (the goddesses of love and beauty, incarnate), and the alchemical symbol for copper (the material used to make mirrors, in antiquity).

Now, for some vocabulary connections (rated M for Mature):

· krater: (Greek) Large vase in which wine and water were mixed

Minoan Dolphin Krater

· venereal: (from Roman Venus: when the goddess of love and beauty goes bad) Of or related to sexual pleasure or indulgence; of or related to disease contracted by sexual contact [KC – This term is antiquated and considered politically incorrect since the root of this word indicates it comes from females only.]

· aphrodisiac: (from Greek Aphrodite) An agent (as a food or drug) that arouses or is held to arouse sexual desire

Kara Church

Senior Technical Editor

619-542-6773 | Ext: 766773

www.symitar.com

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I hope you all have a great Labor Day weekend!

I was just reviewing the Chicago Manual of Style, trying to select which aspect of capitalization we should focus on today. Then I realized this: there are almost 200 topics on capitalization alone. This is just a random selection of the other topics with specific capitalization rules:

· Titles of nobility: Usually lowercase unless referring to the nobles by their titles and names.
Examples: the duke; the duchess; the Duke and Duchess of Windsor

· Generation: Lowercase the word “generation.”
Examples:

o generation X

o the MTV generation

· Government entities: Generally capitalized.
Example: That is a City of Chicago ordinance.

· Judicial bodies: Specific bodies are capitalized, general terms are not.
Examples:

o The United States (or US) Supreme Court

o the Supreme Court

o the court

· Sporting events: Capitalize terms that are part of the event name (e.g., NBA Finals); lowercase terms that are used generally (e.g., the finals of the Olympic Games).
More examples:

o the Olympics

o the Winter Olympics

· Lecture names: Use title case for the name of a lecture series. Use quote marks and title case for the title of a specific lecture.
Example:
This year’s Robinson Memorial Lectures were devoted to the nursing profession. The first lecture, “How Nightingale Got Her Way,” was a sellout.

· Services and rites: This one looks like a free-for-all.
Examples:

o baptism

o bar mitzvah

o the Eucharist

o High Mass

· Wars and revolutions: Specific wars are capitalized, the word “war” by itself is not.
Examples:

o Korean War

o the war

· Genes: Human gene names are in all caps (e.g., BRCA1, GPC3); mouse gene names have an initial capital letter but the rest of the abbreviation is lowercase (e.g., Cmv1, Fgf12).

And the list goes on. If you don’t want to memorize two hundred sets of rules and exceptions, my best advice is to check the dictionary when you aren’t sure whether a word is capitalized. We use the unabridged online version of Merriam-Webster, but the Merriam-Webster abridged version is free and will be able to answer most of your questions.

Kara Church

Senior Technical Editor

619-542-6773 | Ext: 766773

www.symitar.com

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A couple weeks ago I mentioned that the names of planets are capitalized. I also included a graphic of planetary symbols that several of you asked about. Instead of talking about capital letters today, I’d like to go back to those symbols—in particular, Mercury.

The following symbol is traditionally used for the planet Mercury and as the medieval alchemical sign for the element mercury (Hg). Hg is the abbreviation for Greek hydrargyros (hydr- + argyros) which would be roughly translated as “watery silver.”

Why does this symbol represent the planet Mercury? Mercury (in Greek, Hermes) was the messenger god, flying around with winged feet and winged helmet. The crescent at the top of the symbol represents Mercury’s winged helmet.

Mercury (Hermes) the Messenger
& His Winged Helmet & Feet

Below the “wings” is the symbol for Venus (woman). My guess at the connection is the strong relationship between Mercury (Greek: Hermes) and Venus (Greek: Aphrodite) in mythology. In Greek mythology, Hermes and Aphrodite conceive a child together: Hermaphrodite. From their child’s name, we get the word hermaphrodite, the term for a person born with both male and female “private parts.”

Talk about a tangent! But I think these stories about our language, symbols, vocabulary, and all the details are fascinating.

A little more vocabulary for you, related to our friend the messenger: as you can see in the sculpture above, Mercury is carrying an odd looking staff. This staff, carried by heralds and messengers, is called a caduceus. It is winged at the top, and has two snakes intertwining their way up from the bottom. The caduceus represents commerce, though many people misuse it to represent medicine. There is actually a different symbol that should be used for medicine: the Staff of Asclepius. Asclepius was the ancient Greek god of medicine and healing.

A caduceus:

The Staff of Asclepius:

I hope you’ve found this interesting because I have information for the other symbols, too!

Kara Church

Senior Technical Editor

Hello friends and associates! Today we have a few more mini-lessons about capital letters. Before I get to those, though, I must tell you about one of the cruelest acronyms I’ve ever run across. Yesterday, during the wee hours of the morning, I drove my mom to the hospital for knee replacement surgery. As we wandered around looking for the correct building, Mom told me that we were supposed to show up at the “spa.” The “hostess” found us and led us on our way. I thought, “Gee, a hostess taking Mom to the spa? That doesn’t sound half bad.” As we approached the spa, the truth was revealed: the spa was actually the Surgical Procedure Area. The relaxation would come after visiting with more types of nurses than you ever knew existed and getting anesthesia in the spine. Nice “spa.”

Now, on to capitalizing different measurements of time:

· Seasons: The names of the seasons are lowercase unless they are part of a proper name or title.

Examples:

o 2013 Autumn Semester

o 2014 Winter Olympics

· Months: The names of months are capitalized.

Examples:

o Few people look forward to San Diego’s May gray or June gloom.

o April showers bring May flowers.

· Days: The days of the week are capitalized.

Examples:

o Taco Tuesdays are very popular fund raising events.

o You can see her Wednesday or Friday afternoons at the Fan-Tan Follies.

· Hours: There are several different ways to abbreviate ante meridiem and post meridiem. The least confusing seems to be the British method, which is with lowercase letters separated by periods. This is the method we use in editing, too, unless we are writing about something in the system where small caps or no punctuation is used.

Examples:

o 10:00 a.m.

o 4:30 p.m.

Note: Use the en-dash to indicate a range of time, such as 9:00 a.m.–11:30 a.m.

Kara Church

Senior Technical Editor

619-542-6773 | Ext: 766773

www.symitar.com

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Okay, no chicken dinners today, but I do have two winners to announce for the Editor’s Corner contest that ended last week. I would like to thank Steve Hooper, Senior VP of Payment Strategy at iPay Solutions, for signing up as a new subscriber to Editor’s Corner and writing a lovely letter that encouraged ten other people to sign up. In addition to my undying appreciation, Steve gets a $25 Amazon gift certificate!

Our other winner is Casey Hughes, the QA Manager of Teller and Voice. Casey had the Mad Lib that got the most laughs and she wins a $25 Amazon gift certificate for her creativity. As promised, Casey’s Mad Lib is here:

How to Cross a Piranha-Infested River

If you are traveling in Zimbabwe and find yourself having to cross a piranha-filled river, here’s how to do it swiftly:

· Piranhas are more hideous during the day, so cross the river at night.

· Avoid areas with netted hippo traps—piranhas may be dancing there looking to twerk them!

· When shopping in the river, swim promptly. You don’t want to wake them up and make them gorgeous!

· Whatever you do, if you have an open wound, try to find another way to get back to the the office. Piranhas are attracted to fresh Kool-Aid and will most likely take a bite out of your big toe if you are strutting in the water!

Thank you to everyone who participated and everyone who recently signed up! I hope you enjoy our daily tips and language tidbits!

Kara

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