.M:1 .L:99 ..Printing Methods 21 .. Coin-operated copiers 21 .. Copy shops 21 .. Borrowed office equipment 21 .. Job printers 21 ..dh:--------------- ..dm:1 ..pb ..xl:4 ..xr:18 ..X:12 ..XB:7 ..L:66 .IF:Index3.man .KF:Content3.MAN .N:21 L---P----1----+----2----+----3----+@10-4----T-#V-5----R----r----r----7--T-+--r 87cL---+----1----+----2----+----3----+@10-4----+----5----+----6----+----7----+----8----+-C--9----+ ---L--P-----1----+----2----T----3----+@10-4-C c/c V---L--P-----1----+----2----T----3----+@10-4-C V-- ---L--P-----1----+----2----T----3----+@10-4-C c/r V---L--P-----1----+----2----T----3----+@10-4-R V-- ---L--P-----1----+----2----T----3----+@10-4-R r/c V---L--P-----1----+----2----T----3----+@10-4-C V-- ---L--P-----1----+----2----T----3----+@10-4-R r/r V---L--P-----1----+----2----T----3----+@10-4-R V-- 87rL---+----1----+----2----+----3----+@10-4----+----5----+----6----+----7----+----8----+-R--9----+ ..$$Z:MI$$, $$Day$$, , $$D Mon Year$$ 87rL---+----1----+----2----+----3----+@10-4----+----5----+----6----+----7----+----8----+-R--9----+ .HL:How to Edit Your Club's Newsletter...page $$$ .HL:________________________________________________________________________________________________________ .HR:Printing Methods...page $$$ .HR:________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 87cL---+----1----+----2----+----3----+@10-4----+----5----+----6----+----7----+----8----+-C--9----+ ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿPrinting Methods ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ .K:Printing Methods R ---L--P-----1----+----2----T----3----+@10-4-R Once upon a time, this would have been a very easy chapter to write. I could have said, "for up to twelve copies, use manifold paper and extra-thin, premium carbon paper, for thirteen or more, use a spirit duplicator"; then I could have told you exactly when mimeo became more economical than spirit, when offset became more economical than mimeo, and when it would become worth the expense to have your 'zine set on a linotype machine and printed letterpress. If I had said "photocopy," you would have thought I meant "photostat": an expensive process that made a blurry negative of the document fed into the machine. Then folks invented ways to set type without melting metal, which gave offset printers a chunk of the letterpress business, and other folks invented cheap little offset presses that used paper plates and took a chunk out of the mimeo business, and Xerox brought out the first photocopier and took a chunk out of everybody's business. I can no longer assume that you can borrow a duplicating machine some weekend _ though for a while, there was a good chance somebody would give you one. There are no more hard-and-fast rules. You'll have to look around and see what's available in your neighborhood. If you don't happen upon some obsolete or artistic equipment, what's most likely to be available is borrowed office equipment, a coin-operated copier, a copy shop, or a job printer: Borrowed office equipment will be the cheapest, .K:-Borrowed office equipment because offering it to you is usually an act of charity; some benefactors will even supply the paper _ but don't hint for it; bring your own. Since you operate the equipment yourself, it's the most flexible; there is no fuss about running sheets through twice, mixing paper colors, and the like. Borrowed equipment may be available only at erratic times, and it is likely to vanish without notice. The equipment you borrow may be unable to reproduce at the ratio you need, and some photocopiers reproduce every paste-up line with startling fidelity. You can solve either problem by having two copies (one for use, one for peace of mind) made by the best method you can find. Touch up one copy (see "White Paint" in the chapter "How to Paste Up"), then copy the touched-up copy by your cheaper method. Every copy of a copy loses something and you ought to keep as close to the original as you can, but sometimes there is something in the copy that you want to lose. If I had a very poor image that I just had to use, I might have it blown up, touch up the enlargement, then have it shrunk to the desired size. I haven't been that desperate yet, but I have several times used a touched-up first- or second-generation copy in place of a newsprint original. (Note: let everyone know early on that you don't do newsprint. Be unreasonable. Get hysterical. Refuse to attempt perfectly feasible salvage operations. Trust me: it saves trouble in the long run.) Another thing that you may want to lose is rubber cement. Rubber cement holds only long enough to get the repros to the printshop and under the camera, and old cement leaves brown stains on the paper. If you want to use paste-ups again months later, or file them away for some other reason, store high-grade copies instead. (If you find your work really historic, have it copied onto acid-free paper _ and inquire into the keeping qualities of the toner that your machine uses. Many inks attack paper and I imagine that the same is true of toners.) Coin-operated copiers are available whenever the .K:-Coin-operated copiers store, library, or whatever is open, and are convenient for small numbers of copies. Since you don't get any quantity discount, they are very expensive if you want more than forty copies. Coin-op machines are often in poor adjustment because they are operated by every Tom, Dick, and Harry, and because the owner of the machine thinks of copies as a courtesy, rather than as a product; he is likely to regard copies as acceptable as long as they are legible. When comparing coin ops to other machines, notice whether ledger paper costs more than letter paper, and whether two-sided copies cost more than one-sided copies. A machine that's expensive for one-sided letter-size copies might be incredibly cheap for two- sided ledger copies. The automatic feed of coin-op machines can be rough on your repros when you make two-sided copies, so be sure you have a back-up set -- or make one set on manual feed and copy those for the production run. Copy shops are convenient if you want copies only .K:-Copy shops between nine and five on weekdays. Since copies are the only product, the shop will keep its machines adjusted. On the other hand, if the copies aren't up to snuff, they won't sell them. If they have to wait for a mechanic, you have to wait for your copies. They make the copies while you wait, and give substantial discounts on large orders. The quantity discount is so steep that eighty copies might cost more than a hundred. Calculate the price of the smallest number that will earn you the next lower rate, then calculate how many copies you could get for that amount at the rate you are paying. For example, the Writers' Exchange Bulletin always requires more than fifty copies and fewer than ninety- nine. At my shop, copies in this range are 8› each. 100 copies, at 6› each, cost $6.00. At 8›/page, $6.00 will buy 75 copies. If I have a mailing list of sixty or seventy names and want extra copies to give to new members, it pays to take an even hundred copies and be sure of having enough. Job printers also close at five and aren't open on .K:-Job printers weekends. If you don't have an "in-house" printshop to talk about, you will refer to job printers as "printshops". Some small newspapers (and other businesses that need more printing equipment than they can keep busy) do printing jobs on the side. Many copy shops also do job printing; they are descended from "instant print" and "quick print" houses and are likely to specialize in serving people who are in a hurry; they may charge more than a printer who tells you to come back in a week. (A job printer is likely to keep a photocopier to save its customers from having to make a separate trip when they need a few copies. If you need a file copy of your originals, ask whether your printer also does copying.) While a copy shop prints only what you bring it, a job printer can touch up your copy, patch two or more pieces together, calculate reproduction ratios, and perform other services. Some extra services are charged by the hour; ask before ordering. Printshops usually have a typist or can recommend one, and it is becoming more and more likely that typesetting can be done on the premises. Printers do not mess with your copy unless you state clearly, unequivocally, and precisely what is to be done. Your instructions will be followed no matter how irrational they are; they have had crazier instructions from people who meant it. You can't look through the window of a printshop and read the price list. You have to walk in, tell the clerk what you want, and have him look it up in a book they keep under the counter. If you want to design your newsletter to be printed as cheaply as possible, you may be in for a prolonged consultation.  22 Job printers are not identical. If your job is too small for the first printer you ask, ask another. If you intend to print another issue every month for a year, take bids on the full year at every printshop in town. Some printers love annual contracts, some don't want to be bothered with them. Some presses are just right for your job and some have to be laboriously adapted to it. Prices will vary wildly. A good original can get you a lower price if you want them to black out pinholes and other flaws. (I find it curious that red paint is used for "blacking out" _ it allows the stripper to see what he is doing.) Most job printers use offset presses. Offset is short for "offset photo-lithography." .i:offset printing Originally done on stones, lithography is a method in which a greasy image repels water and a wet background repels ink. Artists used it for small runs for a long time before it was discovered that offsetting the ink onto a rubber "blanket" would allow paper to be fed mechanically. Lithography still could not have displaced letterpress were it not for photographic methods of making water-repellent images on aluminum plates. Your original is photographed, then a very bright light "burns" the negative onto a printing plate. Note: the printer owns the aluminum plates. You own the originals (which is why the printer gives them back whether you want them or not), you own the copyright, and the printer owns the plates. Unless plates are mentioned in your contract, both of you must consent if the plates are to be used a second time. You may buy the plates if you intend to have a different printer do the second printing; it is more common to ask the printshop to keep them on file. It is also safer: what do you know about keeping plates in good condition? If you want to edit before reprinting, you should also have the negatives preserved; some copy can be scraped off a finished plate, but nothing can be added. Negatives can be cut and spliced _ though not necessarily more cheaply than shooting a new negative. Historical note: when printing was introduced, the best printing was that which most closely resembled the work done by scribes. Only well after printing became the normal way to produce a book did anyone design a typeface without imitating handwriting. Nowadays, the best offset printing is that which most closely resembles letterpress. For this reason, work to be printed offset is sometimes set in cold type. Typesetting is not an essential step in offset, as it was in letterpress, but strictly a way of achieving a "printed" appearance. An offset printer can make you a thousand copies of anything on paper. (But images that aren't black on white cost extra.) Your special needs or the luck of what's available may lead you to choose less-common methods: Carbon paper still has its uses, and comes in many .K:-Carbon paper new forms. Premium-priced extra-thin carbon paper to be alternated with sheets of onionskin or manifold may still be available, but I recommend carbonsets: tissue paper tipped to one-use carbon paper. It's thinner, more convenient, and much cheaper than separate paper and carbon. If you do use reusable carbon paper, put a new sheet at the bottom of the stack each time you create a new bundle, and throw away the oldest sheet, which has worked its way to the top. Lifting the ribbon guide uses a great deal of a key's energy; for the maximum number of copies, set the typewriter for "stencil" and put a sheet of carbon on the top of the stack. Taking the direct impact of the keys does ruin the top carbon, but this is the sheet you were about to throw out anyway. Contrariwise, setting a typewriter to use the bottom half of the ribbon may stop it from punching holes. If you really are typing a stencil, you can take out the ribbon. Keep the second sheet from the top for your file copy. It's down far enough not to have too many holes punched in it, and it will be dark enough that you can photocopy it if you need to. Computer paper comes in up to four parts, either carbonless or with carbon paper interleaved. For newsletter work, I recommend the carbon-paper variety, if you can find it. The ink stays with carbonless paper and might undergo further changes; with carbon paper, the unused ink comes out with the carbon paper. In addition, the odor of carbon paper is faint, and much less offensive than the odor of carbonless paper. Carbon paper also makes a darker mark, which is easier to read than carbonless paper. You do have to separate the strips of carbon paper from the strips of copy paper, which is more trouble than separating carbons from sheet-fed paper _ at least you notice it more without the trouble of feeding sheets to distract you. If you are borrowing office equipment, look around for a machine that separates multipart paper and rolls the carbon up on a bobbin. We have wandered off the subject of carbon paper and onto: Continuous forms. A friend coined the lovely .K:-Continuousúforms .i:paper term "perfilage" for the strips of paper with holes that you tear off the edges of continuous paper; alas, he didn't tell me how to spell it. As pronounced, it seems to be derived from "perforations" and "edge'; so it ought to be "perfolage" or "perfoledge" but neither of those is right. You may prefer to refer to this substance as "linehole stubs" until it has been separated from the documents and the cats have gotten at it. To get the perfolij off your paper, restore the paper to a neatly-folded stack, if it didn't automatically assume that form when coming out of your printer. Put it on a table with a straight edge, with the holes hanging out over the edge. Press down on the top of the stack with your off hand and break off the block of perfilege with your favored hand. Work your way from the far edge toward yourself. The motion is hard to describe, but if you take hold of the edge of the paper at the corner, with your thumb on top and your fingers underneath, it will come to you. Several perforated sheets are much easier to break than a single sheet, and the separations are neater. If breaking the perforations takes enough force to distort the paper, tear the top half of the corner, press it back into place, then try again. Tearing is much easier to continue than to start. (Hence, "a stitch in time saves nine.") If you've got a thick stack, start by breaking a quarter- inch layer off the bottom, then decide whether to take more or fewer sheets in the second pass. For some reason, the operation of separating fanfold paper into individual sheets is called "bursting". Put the stack on a chair or another table to the same side of the working table as your favored hand. Lead one end off the stack to lie flat on your working table, then "tent" and pull each crease as you were taught in kindergarten. If you try to separate sheets without the aid of a table, I guarantee that you are going to tear the paper where you don't want it torn. Have the printed side up, so you can check page numbers and look for gross errors as you go. If you burst from the tail toward the beginning, the natural way to put the paper down leaves it right side up and in proper order. If you work from the beginning, you will have to think about the way you put it down. It should not take long before you can make smooth tears in rapid succession. If you have a terrible time making neat tears, practice first on a more-expensive grade of paper; if that isn't practical, console yourself that if you manage to master feeble paper with inadequate perforations, you are going to be very smooth when you go to work on paper that you would hate to spoil. I used to separate multiple-part fanfold by unfolding the entire stack on the living-room floor, then leading the end of each strip to a table. But dragging long strips of paper around tends to rumple them, especially if you have a cat. I have found that if you pull a single sheet out of a stack on the floor, then keep pulling straight up, it just naturally tends to flip the stack over, two sheets at a time, until the whole stack (minus the strip you pulled out) is upside down -- or right-side-up, rather, since I start it out upside down in order to burst from the end toward the beginning. Then I can flip the stack as a unit and burst the next copy.  23 Gelatin duplicator: also called .K:-Gelatin duplicator Hectograph, after a brand name. Think of it as an offset spirit duplicator in which the volatile fluid is water. It was particularly good for grammar schools, as even the smallest child can use and understand it. A direct master image is pressed upon a sheet of very stiff gelatin, then lint- free paper is pressed onto the reversed gelatin image to pick up a re-reversed image. A hectograph master can be re-used several times, but tends to blur in long storage. If washed after use, the gelatin can be used again on the following day even though the previous image is still visible. With care, up to a hundred copies can be made, hence "hectograph". (I never pulled much more than thirty.) Since it is the water in the gelatin, rather than the amount of ink, that limits a run, a run can be extended by spraying the surface of the gelatin, then blotting it with waste paper. The first copies should be pulled quickly, then each successive copy should be left on the gelatin a little longer. To protect the gelatin, you may put strips of paper around the image; this also makes it easier to pick up the paper. Some hectographs have an aluminum guide which aids in placing the paper and keeps the top margin off the gelatin to facilitate removal. The gelatine must be gently washed with clear water after use, and a protective cover put on to keep it from drying up in storage. In the first half of the twentieth century, you could get hectograph pencils, hectograph ink, and hectograph typewriter ribbon in addition to the carbon paper which may still be available. Children were allowed to use pencils under close supervision, but not ink. If you get hectograph pigment on your hands, it will get on everything you touch and on everything touched by someone who has touched where you have touched. (Spirit pigment is the same stuff, but except at the cut edge, you have to work at getting it off the master carbon.) Some old books have recipes for making your own hectograph gelatine; now that offices don't use gelatine duplicators any more, these recipes may again be needed. Spirit duplicator: also called Ditto, .K:-Spirit duplicator after a brand name. Special carbon paper makes a reverse image on the back of what you type or draw. When slightly dampened with a volatile fluid called spirit (it's usually alcohol), the ink comes off on another paper pressed against the "master". Master carbon came in many colors, but only the characteristic purple would give you a reasonably long press run. Ditto copies fade when exposed to light; in direct sunlight they may disappear in only a few hours. The ink is exactly the same shade of purple as a dressmaker's disappearing marker; I suspect there may be a connection. Mimeo: a printing method in which ink is forced .K:-Mimeograph through a stencil. The stencil is a sheet of tissue paper waterproofed with wax; a typewriter or a stylus pushes enough wax aside to allow ink to pass through. If you happen to find one of these machines somewhere, and if you can still buy stencils and ink for them, you can print your newsletter for very little money. You have to hand-type the stencils (unless you also find an electro-stencil machine in that dusty warehouse) and the fuzziness of the image keeps you from using extreme reduction even if you do find an electro-stencil machine, but it will print on the cheapest paper you can get your hands on (coarse, not thin) and cost you little more than ink, paper, and labor. Stencilúandúmasterúhints: stencils tend to tear .K:-Stencilúandúmasterúhints along repeated underline characters. Use the period, hyphen or other character to make a broken line, or type guide marks to be used later for ruling a line with a stylus. You can buy stencils with two columns already marked on them; if you're stuck with some you have to use up, find a felt-tip pen that will mark on a stencil without dissolving the wax, and draw your own guidelines. Mark the margin half an inch above the bottom line to tell you when only three lines are left. A pin printer will cut a good stencil; daisy wheels may be less successful. Anything that will make a clear carbon can make a spirit master, if it accepts hand-fed sheets. When I was in high school, the second-year typing class was responsible for the school newspaper as a way of getting familiar with office equipment. We made fancy layouts on ditto masters by the simple- but-tedious technique of typing everything on plain paper, with each line filled out by slash marks so that we would know how many extra spaces to sneak in to make the right margin come out straight _ straight right margins were wonderfully "professional" in those pre-computer days. (To center a heading, type spaces and digits alternately to fill out the line. The last number typed will be half the number of leftover spaces.) This "dummy type" was cut up and re- arranged until we got it the way we wanted it, then we copied the taped-together sheets onto masters. Variations on this technique are still useful; for example, people who have their newsletters set in cold type will photocopy the priceless typeset sheets and arrange the copies before cutting the originals. But if you are going to use mimeo, let it all hang out and be mimeo; use the simplest layout and limit your fanciness to drawing a few headlines with a stylus and stencil, or having your nameplate printed on several month's supply of paper. It's more blessed to look like a good job of mimeo than to look like a bad job of offset. Stencil correction fluid (sometimes termed "corflu") is stencil wax dissolved in a volatile solvent. It may be easier to get a good repair if you flatten the mistake with a stylus first. Re-inkproof the erroneous character and let it dry thoroughly before re-cutting. It may be necessary to hit the correction more than once to cut through the thickened layer of wax. Don't expect un-detectable results. It's almost impossible to re-align a stencil, so proofread before you pull the stencil out of the machine. Ditto masters can be repaired by scraping off the mistake with a pocket knife and cleaning up the residue with a pencil-type typewriter eraser (blow, don't brush, the crumbs away). Slip a bit of unused carbon from the margin behind the mistake before re- typing. Now that hectograph ink and ribbon are unavailable and your only choice is to type on the carbon side of a ditto master, the easiest way to repair a mistake on a hectograph master is to cut it out with a scalpel, retype on a slip of paper (use the margin of the master carbon), and assemble the image directly on the gelatin. A hectograph master can be used several times, but the lines tend to widen while it's in storage. A spirit master can be put back into the machine if you didn't use up all the ink the first time. A mimeo stencil is theoretically reusable, but extremely fragile. Large areas of black show up defects in the best printing methods; with ditto and hectograph, black areas are tedious to create and the "pinholes" look more like birdshot holes. With mimeo, large areas of black are flat-out impossible. If you try, you will only put holes in the stencil. Symbolize black areas by cross-hatching or by closely-spaced parallel lines. Here is one time you may find a use for the slanted side of your triangle _ see "Pasting Up." Draw a line near the edge of the area to be covered, shift the triangle a bit, then draw another, repeat. If you can't eyeball spacing neatly enough to suit you, mark  24 points on a line outside the image area and move the triangle from point to point. The angle of this guide line doesn't matter much as long as you remember that if the line isn't at right angles to the side of the triangle, the hatching lines will be closer together than the points. There used to be a gadget called a "shading plate"; it was a piece of hard plastic with an embossed design that you could transfer to a stencil or master by putting the master over the plate and rubbing with a blunt stylus. Test any flat, hard object with a rough or embossed surface that you find lying about. Letterpress: a machine that presses paper against .K:-Lr by putting the master over the plate and inked plates that bear the reverse of the image in relief. (Rubber stamps may be viewed as rudimentary letterpresses.) In my youth, letterpress was used only for very long runs because of the expense of creating the metal type. There used to be monsters that ate huge rolls of paper, with the aid of linotype machines that could cast hot type quickly enough to print several editions of a thick newspaper in one day. I'd be surprised to learn that any large metal-plate letterpresses survive, but the principle is not extinct. Rubber-plate presses print, emboss, cut out, and fold fancy table napkins. Numbered tickets are printed letterpress because the number can be changed after each impression. Small letterpresses are prized by artists. You can tell how work was printed by holding it slantwise to the light. Letterpress type is indented, offset type and photocopies are flat, and engraved printing is raised. (Real engraving is subtler than raised printing; the bills in your wallet are engraved.) Impact printers such as typewriters also indent the paper, but small characters indent more deeply than large ones. If you want to distinguish a typewritten paper from its photocopy, look on the back for the bumps left by periods. Photocopier and laser toner is shinier than ink, because it's bits of melted plastic. The work of a good 24-pin printer can be hard to tell from letterpress. The embossing on the back will be more dome-like than letterpress, without a sharp, creased edge. A strong magnifier will show stair- stepped edges on the diagonal lines of pin-printer characters; letterpress characters will have fuzzy edges where liquid ink has run into the fibers of the paper. Small letterpress characters will be as well-defined as big ones; small pin-printer characters have fewer dots to work with. Engravings, Woodcuts, block prints, serigraphs,  .K:-Engravings, serigraphs, etc. etc.: If a small-circulation newsletter is devoted to art, any printmaking method can be incorporated. (Monoprints imply a very small circulation.) Include an article about the technique. Even if you are not devoted to art, you may find occasion to use a potato-printed cover.  25 87rL---+----1----+----2----+----3----+@10-4----+----5----+----6----+----7----+----8----+-R--9----+ .HL:page $$$...How to Edit Your Club's Newsletter: Scaling .HL:________________________________________________________________________________________________________ .HR:How to Edit Your Club's Newsletter: Scaling...page $$$ .HR:________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 87cL---+----1----+----2----+----3----+@10-4----+----5----+----6----+----7----+----8----+-C--9----+ ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿScaling ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ .K:Scaling ---L--P-----1----+----2----T----3----+@10-4-R When a newsletter editor says "scale", he is using the second definition of the first verb in Webster's Third: "To make or lay out so as to be of exact ...  dimensions." Scaling is figuring out how big to make something that will be reproduced at a certain ratio, or what ratio will make something a certain size. The reproduction ratio of any copying process is the length of the copy divided by the length of the original, usually expressed as a percent. Notice that I underlined "length"; if you want to copy a sheet of paper onto half a sheet of paper and set the machine for 50%, you are going to get a surprise: the copy will be half as tall and also half as wide; it will fit neatly on a quarter sheet of paper. To put it another way, if you draw a line ten inches long and copy it at 69%, the line in the copy will be 6.9 inches long. If you copy it at 125%, the copy will be 12.5 inches long. If a reproduction ratio is less than 100%, we call it a "reduction ratio"; if it is larger than 100%, we call it an "enlargement ratio". In either case, the math is the same. To express the relationship among copy, original, and ratio in algebra: L---P----1----+----2----+----3----+@20-4----T-#V-5----r----r----r----7--T-+----8----+----9----+----0----+----R--r r/r--L---1----+----2----+----3----+@20-4----T-#V-5----r----r----r----7--T-+----8----+--R--9----+----0----+----R--rV------L-----P--+---------1---------+---------2---------T---------3---------+---------4----R V-- r/r--L---1----+----2----+----3----+@20-4----T-#V-5----r----r----r----7--T-+----8----+--R--9----+----0----+----R--rV------L-----P--+---------1---------+---------2---------T---------3---------+---------4----R V-- ---L--P-----1----+----2----T----3----+@10-4-R r/r V---L--P-----1----+----2----T----3----+@10-4-R V-- ---L--P-----1----+----2----T----3----+@10-4-R reproduction ratio = ___what_you_get___ x 100% what you start with  Notice that 100% is equal to 1; multiplying by it has no effect except to convert the answer into percent. The fraction would do as well, were we not accustomed to seeing ratios in percent. Those who have had algebra will immediately see that this equation implies: what you get = reproduction ratio x what you start with and what you ought to start with = what_you_want_to_get  reproduction ratio  Toúillustrate the three equations:  Let us begin with the second equation, since it is the easiest to understand. You have a picture which is three inches tall and four inches wide. The copying machine offers fixed ratios of 71% and 92%. What sizes of this illustration are available to you? If you multiply three and four by 71%, you get 2.13 and 2.84; 92% of the same numbers is 2.76 and 3.68. You have your choice of three by four, two and a tenth by two and eight tenths, or two and three- fourths by three and two thirds. Now, let's go back to the first equation. Suppose you have a border intended to span a page, and want to reduce it to fit over a column. The border is 7« inches long and your columns are 3« inches wide. After a glance at the first equation, you grab your handy-dandy calculator and divide 3.5 by 7.5; you get 0.4666666. This is, for all practical purposes, 47%. That's too simple, so let's throw you a curve: your copyshop's smallest ratio is 64%. Recovering quickly, you hit the square root key on the calculator, which is still displaying 0.4666666. 0.68313 pops up: if you make a copy with the machine set at 68%, then copy the copy at 68%, it should come out right. To check, you (having mastered the second equation) punch in 7.5 and multiply by .68 twice: 3.469; about .03 inches short: close enough. At this point, you reflect that you are going to have a number of other things copied at 72%. You would like to copy the border along with these other things, and then copy it again to reach the desired size. By what can you multiply .72 to get .47? But of course, by .47/.72, which is 0.652777, which is about 65% and within the range of possible ratios. Checking, you multiply 7.5 first by 72% and then by 65%: 3.51: practically on the button. This kind of math works equally well for multiple blow-ups, but the size of the final copy isn't all you have to consider. Copying is not a perfect process and when blow-ups are repeated, the imperfections increase rapidly; it may not take more than two passes to render type completely illegible. Simple designs can be blown up with comparative confidence, because you can touch them up with black ink and white paint. To illustrate the third equation, suppose you want to reduce your originals at 83%, which brings your pica type (ten to the inch, or .1" wide) to the size of elite type (12 to the inch, or .083333" wide). You want to leave half-inch margins on a standard sheet of letter paper. How wide and how long should be the area covered by typing on your original? If you leave half-inch margins on 8« x 11 paper, the type will cover an area 7.5 inches wide and 10 inches long. Divide 7.5 inches by .83: 9.0361445 inches. Divide 10 inches by .83: 12.048192 inches. Since there are ten characters in an inch, you want to make your 9-inch lines 90 characters long. You want to leave three characters between columns, which will reduce to pretty close to a quarter inch. Since you want the columns to be the same width, subtract four characters instead of three, and throw away the extra character; each side margin will be only 83% of .05 inches too wide. That leaves 86 characters, or 43 characters per column: surprise: just what you would have got if you had made these calculations for a line of elite type to fit 7.5 inches. (In practice, I make columns 4.2 inches wide when I intend to reduce them to 83% of their original size; I like generous side margins.) Now calculate the number of lines: There are six lines to the inch, and the original should be 12 inches long, so you will want to type 72 lines of pica type on each page. This is twelve lines more than you would have gotten by using an elite typewriter to begin with: elite type has more space between the lines than pica because it is a smaller type on the same spacing. What if only fixed ratios are available? Then be grateful that you didn't take up editing until calculators got so cheap that you might find one in the junk mail; with your handy pocket calculator you can try out various combinations of the available ratios until you find one that you can live with. Got a reliably-available duplicator that reduces, but doesn't tell you what ratios? Copy a ruler (one that measures in both your character widths and your line heights, usually tenths and sixths of an inch) at letter-to-invoice and legal-to-letter, or whatever that 26 particular machine does. Calculate the ratios by measuring the copies with the original ruler. Since you divide the length you measure with the real ruler by the length shown on the paper ruler and then multiply by 100%, the length in characters of the image of a hundred characters will be the ratio in percent. Write both the setting of the machine and your calculated ratio on each copy and file them away carefully. (The cardboard envelope marked "stuff to copy next trip" is a good place to keep information about copiers.) Sometimes you can use the copies of your ruler to short-cut calculations: if you know the finished size you want and which ratio you plan to use, measure that size with the shrunken ruler to see what you should start with. Another short cut: it would be easy to measure a photograph and calculate how many lines and spaces I should skip to leave a hole of the right size and shape for the printer to insert the photograph after he shrinks the line copy -- but I lay the picture on a copy of last month's issue and count the lines and characters that it covers, then leave a pica all around for clearance. Always check your calculations by calculating the effect of your proposed reduction or enlargement. Calculating with drafting tools: If you superpose the corner of a rectangle upon the corner of a similar rectangle, the diagonals running from that corner will coincide: if the two rectangles are the same shape, then the triangles into which their diagonals divide them must be the same shape, therefore the diagonals of similar rectangles must meet their bases at the same angle. In the days before calculators, this simple fact was often used to avoid calculations, and even today it is sometimes more convenient to draw a ratio than to calculate it. First draw a vertical line at the left of your paper and a horizontal line at the bottom; these two lines form one corner of the rectangle you want. Mark the height and width of the pattern rectangle on the vertical and horizontal lines. Draw a second horizontal and a second vertical line through the two new corners of the pattern rectangle; this locates the fourth corner. Draw the diagonal of the pattern rectangle, extending it if the object rectangle is larger than the pattern rectangle. Mark the desired height of the object triangle on the vertical line (or mark the desired width on the horizontal line). Draw a horizontal (or vertical) line through this mark to establish the third side of the object rectangle; the fourth corner will be where this side intersects the diagonal, so a vertical (or horizontal) line through this point is the fourth side. This method is also useful for double-checking your calculations. When your hard copy comes out of the printer, hold a photograph against the hole left for it: if your calculations are correct, when one corner of the photograph lies on a diagonal of the hole, the opposite corner will also lie on that ..insert a diagram of enlarging and reducing with a T-square diagonal. (The diagonal of a hole does not coincide with the diagonal of the clearance border around the hole unless the hole is square, but the distance between the two lines is usually small enough to ignore when judging by eye. If the clearance is the same width all around, the two diagonals will be parallel.)  27 87rL---+----1----+----2----+----3----+@10-4----+----5----+----6----+----7----+----8----+-R--9----+ .HL:How to Edit Your Club's Newsletter...page $$$ .HL:________________________________________________________________________________________________________ .HR:Style, Spelling, and Grammar ...$$$ .HR:________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 87cL---+----1----+----2----+----3----+@10-4----+----5----+----6----+----7----+----8----+-C--9----+ ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿStyle, Spelling, and Grammar ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿor ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿNobody's Perfect ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ .K:Style, Spelling, and Grammar ---L--P-----1----+----2----T----3----+@10-4-R Getting all the mistakes out of a newsletter is a thankless task, and quite impossible, but it is important that you try. The English language cannot withstand infinite amounts of abuse; a word used improperly won't last any longer than a fine track bike that is bounced over rocky forest trails, stored outside in the rain, and denied grease and maintenance. Nor will a word used incorrectly serve you any better than a sturdy, knobby-tired mountain bike would serve a velodrome racer. People who delight in abusing the language will tell you that it's a living thing and always changing, so you have no right to object to their innovations; and people who delight in abusing children will tell you that a good beating toughens a kid. Every time you allow a word to be used to hint at a meaning that's directly opposite to its own, or perhaps only slaunchwise related, you attack the first- amendment rights of every English-speaking being in the universe. How can I speak my mind if every word I use can have any of half a dozen meanings? If you mistake "comprise" for a highbrow spelling of "compose", if you use a plural pronoun to refer to a singular antecedent, if you say that a road is "impacted" when you don't mean that there is so much traffic on it that nothing is moving, and if you then wail, "but you knew what I meant" when someone complains that what you said makes no sense -- that's not writing, it's attempted ESP. Read the "Elements of Style" to soak up the correct attitude toward your mother tongue, and collect a few references to help you settle irksome questions. References are not authorities: what they say has to make sense. In the "McGraw-Hill Style Manual", for example, Longyear defends the misuse of "hopefully" in a way which clearly shows that she has mistaken it for "hopeably". Since "hopeably" is an awkward, unpronounceable, and unusable word, we shall have to resign ourselves to confessing that it is we who hope. And let us take off our hats for a moment of respectful silence to lament the passing of "God willing" and "if the cricks don't rise". .K:-Style Style  In writing, "style" is used in two different ways: "Literary style" refers to those aspects of writing that enable us to distinguish one author's writing from that of another. To an editor, "style" means all the rules that aren't quite a matter of being correct or incorrect, but which are adopted for the sake of consistency. There are a great many instances in English in which two or more perfectly-correct alternatives are mutually exclusive. For example, "catalog" and "catalogue" are both correctly spelled, but it is a mistake to use both spellings in the same document. Another example: any size of type that's bigger than your body type and small enough to fit on your paper will do for headlines, but if two headlines are in different sizes of type, your readers will think that they differ in importance. Once you have chosen a type size for a given class of headlines, other sizes become incorrect. Your editorial style is the sum of the decisions you make when more than one way is correct. When only one editor is working on a publication, consistency of style comes more-or-less automatically, but a style book is a great help when you are undecided, and many also warn you of the most-common ways to be flatly wrong. Since style books abound, I will address only one matter of style: serial commas. It is frequently accepted as correct to delete the last comma in a series if it comes just before an "and", and a great many people defend the practice by saying that one ought not to include unnecessary parts and the last comma is not needed. Such persons say that when someone reads "The jersies came in red, black, yellow and blue," he will know that there are four colors of jersies available, rather than two solid colors and one two-color pattern, because he encountered a period without coming across another "and". This strikes me as like saying that you don't need to put a Dan Henry mark before a T-road, because a person who takes the wrong branch will notice that there is no mark after the turn and go back. A reader has enough work to do when you mark the route as plainly as you can; don't throw unnecessary confusion in his way. You can't always stop him from mistaking a compound term for the end of the series, but you can and should stop him from mistaking the end of the series for a compound term. And be a nice guy: so many people do leave out the last comma that you really ought not to put a compound term last: if the jersies come in black and white, red, blue, and yellow, don't say they come in red, blue, yellow, and black and white. You might go so far as to hyphenate "black-and-white", or change it to "white with a black design". Though I dislike abbreviations on general principles, "&" is one way to distinguish compound terms in a series, for example: "the photographs are black & white, duotone, and full color." A few common errors  .K:-A few common errors Never create a word without making a reasonable effort to find out whether a suitable word already exists, unless you are writing humor or fantasy -- and even there, made-up words should be used with discretion and for specific effect. "Gender" is a property of words. "Sex" is a property of living things. Words come in "masculine," "feminine," and "neuter". Mammals come in "male" and "female." Other creatures come in a fascinating array of sexes _ certain algae come in "+" and "-," for example, and Physarum polycephalum appears to have thirteen sexes _ but this in not an essay on biology. Sex is in no way related to gender. Speakers of other languages in which inflection is less degenerate have a head start on understanding this point: a German who communicates the idea that the girl put her purse on the table by saying "It put her on him." is not likely to confuse gender with sex. In English, the former habit of referring to a ship as "she" was about the last gasp of purely grammatical gender; even when bitten by a dog, we want to determine its sex in order to know what gender of pronouns to use while cursing it. What inflection remains to us can be hard to see because imports have replaced some of our native words; the third-person singular nominative feminine "he," for example, was displaced by "she," but "her" and "hers" remain. And, to the consternation of the uneducated, the third-person singular non-committal "he" also remains.  28 ---L--P-----1----+----2----T----3----+@10-4-R Just to confuse the issue, "Gender" can also refer to a property of non-living things such as electrical connectors and snap fasteners. An object of the "male" gender has a protruding part which fits into a socket in the corresponding "female" object. How this symbolism survived the Victorian era is beyond me. Persons new to the idea that both sexes are human often believe that "non-sexist" writing must be as awkward and ungrammatical as possible in order that no-one may miss their change of heart. If a sentence is truly non-sexist, the reader will never suspect that the writer gave the matter a moment's thought, even though all discriminating readers know that an effortless style is evidence of hard work. One way to call attention to the anti-sexist-ness of your writing is to slap "their" in for "his" wherever it may occur, and to slap in plenty of extra his's to give yourself scope. A typical example is "Every boy should bring their pencil to class tomorrow." This sentence implies that there is some "their" whose pencil should be brought; perhaps the teacher has just recommended a specific pencil company and wants each boy to bring one of their pencils with him; perhaps the pencil belongs to a group and is so large that it will take every boy in the class to carry it. Yet the confusion is far from necessary. Not even the most rabid anti-sexist could object to using "his" to refer to "boy". What's worse, the teacher doesn't care whose pencil each boy brings as long as he has one, and surely does not want to imply that each boy has only one pencil to his name. The proper way to express this idea is "Every boy should bring a pencil to class tomorrow." Now let us consider a sentence with genuine difficulties: "There is to be no more trading: I want every student to eat his or her own lunch." "His or her" isn't something you can say to a roomful of six- year-olds intent upon evading their prescribed diets. A change of person, rather than a change of number, is appropriate here: "There is to be no more trading. I want each of you to eat the lunch you brought to school." Considering the probable context, the best way might be: "No trading! Eat your own lunch!" The oft-recommended "change of number" is legitimate as long as you remember that the antecedent of "their" must also be changed to plural, and that you must frisk the sentence for other words which must be changed to match. For example, "Every student must bring his penmanship book to class tomorrow" would, by a change of number, become "All the students must bring their penmanship books to class tomorrow." There is no rule that you can blindly apply to every situation. "-ly" is a wonderful suffix; attach it to any adjective and voila! _ an adverb. It's so lovely that many gleefully attach it to the first word that comes to mind, thereby creating an awkward and unidiomatic phrase; many create adverbs where the original adjective was wanted; some will attach it to words that are already adverbs. Think twice when you find yourself using "-ly"; sometimes the entire word proves to be unnecessary. I know of five uses for quotation marks: to indicate that you are reproducing the exact words of a person being quoted, to show that a word is being talked about rather than used, to distinguish a minor title, to indicate that a word is being given a non- standard meaning, and to indicate that you are lying. When you use quote marks to indicate non- standard meaning, or to indicate that you are lying, the word is quoted only on the first reference. The quotes are a shorthand way of saying "The technical term is ____" or "I'm going to call it ____ even though it's something else." It may be necessary to quote throughout if a specialized word is also used in its standard meaning, or if a lying word is also used sincerely --- as in "While John exercised in the gym, I 'exercised' in the hot tub." A great many people seem to think that quotation marks can be used to emphasize words. If you are tempted to this folly, compare "John brought his wife  with him" to "John brought his 'wife' with him." Some people are so benighted as to use quote marks to apologize for slangy (or otherwise offensive) terms. This is lower than farting loudly and then looking about in puzzlement to see who did it. If you can't stand behind a word, don't use it. "Mrs." means "the wife of" and is, therefore, never used with a woman's own name. There used to be an exception to this rule to deal with the awkward case of a divorced mother, but "Ms." has obviated this difficulty. John Smith's wife is "Mrs. Smith" even if her name is Mary Doe. A woman's title can be touchy. If you call Mary Doe "Miss Doe," you are calling her a high-school girl or an old maid. If you call her "Mrs. Doe," you are calling her "the wife of Mr. Doe," which may be irrelevant to the situation, and it's as likely as not that she's the wife of somebody else. It used to be that calling her "Ms. Doe" meant that you had got her name off a mailing list; nowadays it has lost that meaning, but has gained an implication that she espouses a set of views which she may well despise. If she has a PhD, you can get around all these difficulties, but "Dr." can be as patronizing as "saleslady" if you "Mr." the male PhDs of your acquaintance. It's best to avoid using any title at all whenever you can get away with it. In particular you should never use a title with a full name unless the title is an important part of the identification. If the name is part of a list and everybody else on the list has a relevant title, you should include the "Mr." or whatever so that people won't think the lack of a title was a typo. If you feel good, you are happy. If you feel well, you are healthy. If you feel bad, you are unhappy. If you feel badly, you are wearing mittens. The whole comprises the parts. The parts constitute the whole. ..end of this section; continued in edit4.man