Bulletin editor craft

By Lloyd Davis of Oceanside: PROBE, G&S JUDGE, BULLETIN EXCHANGE LIST

Predominant Errors

In February and March, I judged two districts' bulletins in the grammar and style category. Two of the most predominant errors were excessive capitalization and the writing of dates. I offer these suggestions to other bulletin editors who may need help in these areas:

Excessive Capitalization Of Words

Capitalize common nouns only when they are used as part of the name of a person or unit. If a comma separates them, do not capitalize the title:
      the fall show
      the music team
      the music director
      the board of directors
      our guest night
      a baritone
      the chorus (but the San Diego Chorus)
      the district (but the Mid-Atlantic District)
      the chapter (but the Santa Fe Springs Chapter)
      the president (but President Jim Smith)

Writing Dates

When a month and date are used, abbreviate the month (except March, April, May, June and July). When a month, date and year are used, place a comma after the date and another after the year (except at the end of a sentence). When a month and year are written, spell out the month and do not use a comma between them. Do not use suffixes with dates: Jan. 3, not Jan. 3rd.

Other Things

Bulletins Should Show Editors' E-mail Addresses

I sometimes find it inconvenient when an editor does not include his e-mail address in his bulletin. If you have one, please use it. If you don't have one, ask a member if you may show his in your bulletin so you may be contacted through him.

White Spaces

White spaces are space gaps in lines of print, usually caused by refusing to hyphenate words from one line to the next, especially when using justified margins. Such hyphenating should be kept to a minimum, but occasionally using the device to avoid white spaces can result in an overall better-looking product. Words should not be hyphenated, however, on more than two successive lines.

Ellipses are usually for the birds

In judging bulletins, I run across ellipses (...) quite often. Close to 90 percent of the time, they are incorrectly used. An ellipsis consists of a space, three dots, and another space (four dots at the end of a sentence. Most of the errors occur in using an incorrect number of dots and in deleting one or both spaces.

When an editor gets carried away using numerous ellipses as an alleged stylish device, it causes copy to look messy and it's distracting to the reader.

A legitimate use of this troublesome punctuation mark is to indicate the deletion of a portion of quoted material. Otherwise, I suggest that it not be used.

The two kinds of dashes

In the old days, when typewriters were used to produce bulletins, a dash was formed by using two hyphens (--). Now, even my Macintosh can print dashes--both kinds. Most editors don't realize that there are "em dashes" and "en dashes." An "m" is generally wider than an "n." Likewise, the "em dash" is generally wider than the "en dash." See the difference: - and --. Both are wider than a hyphen (-).
[Note, there actually IS a difference in the print version of this article. Unfortunately, html standards have not reached the level of sophistication of word processors, and I'm unable to duplicate them here. Webmaster]

What the heck's the difference, you ask? The wider ("em") one is the more-frequently used. It's used in this kind of sentence:
He was a high tenor--very high.

The "en" one is used to separate:
There were 50-55 members present.
Bill Smith (1935-2000) passed away.

You may have to check your computer manual to make these dashes. On a Macintosh, the wider one is made by holding down "shift" and "option" while pressing the hyphen key. To produce the other, I hold down "option" while pressing the hyphen key.

index