anEditor’s Blog

The American Library Association (ALA) has announced its annual award winners and runners-up for 2007. The anticipated announcements came on January 22 at the association’s mid-winter conference. Winner of this year’s John Newbery Medal (for outstanding writing in children’s literature) is The Higher Power of Lucky, which was written by Susan Patron and illustrated by Matt Phelan. Newbery Honor Books are Hattie Big Sky by Kirby Larson; Penny from Heaven by Jennifer L. Holm; and Rules by Cynthia Lord. The Randolph Caldecott Winner (for best picture book) this year is Flotsam by David Wiesner. Two other books received Caldecott Honor status: Gone Wild: An Endangered Animal Alphabet by David McLimans and Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom. Winners of additional awards are listed here, at kidsread.com, along with a brief synopsis of each title, or at the ALA Web site.

An article in the February-March 2007 issue of Copy Editor newsletter discusses some of the rapidly evolving computer words, terms we use to discuss technology that are either not in dictionaries, yet, or for which spellings and usage rules continue to be debated. As examples, he mentions

title bar, menu bar, status bar, address bar
   (no capitalization or special attributes)
close button, maximize button
   (no boldface or special attributes)
scroll box, scroll bar, scroll arrow
screen window
dialog box
pop-up (as a noun or adjective)
online (one word, in all uses)
on-screen (still hyphenated, in all uses)
printout (as a noun); but, print out (as a verb)
log-in (as a noun); log in as a verb
sign in (as a verb; no noun form is
   currently recognized)
sign out (as a verb); sign-out (as a noun or adjective)

Of course, you probably care more about those two more hotly debated terms, e-mail versus email and Web site versus website. Well, in the article, author Charles M. Levine reveals why certain audiences prefer one over the other while introducing a few of the considerations in the debate between the spellings. Rest assured, though, e-mail and Web site are still the official spellings!

In a semi-relevant tangent, Levine discusses how style variances can be used to distinguish computer- and technology-related terms so that words and directions stand out from the surrounding running text. For example,

To cut text, highlight the text you wish to remove with the cursor.
Next, hold down the Ctrl key while selecting the X key (Ctrl+X) . . .

To cut text, highlight the text you wish to remove with the cursor.
Then, from the Edit menu, select Cut and . . .

Levine recommends the Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications for justifying such decisions.

As an author, editor, educator, and personal historian, I couldn’t not mention the passing of Art Buchwald over the past weekend. I encourage you to venture to this page of NPR’s Web site and read about his life and how he faced his death. You can even listen to interviews from the past. A whole slew of information is listed on this index of the site, as well.

In this week’s (January 22, 2007) Newsweek, “The Last Word” columnist Anna Quindlen discusses some underlying themes of the new movie Freedom Writers and wonders how society lost a therapy that “[made] pain tolerable, confusion clearer and the self stronger.” She doesn’t go so far as to call letter writing an art (though I would), but she does suggest that the beginning of the end of writing and “everyday prose” might be traced to the end of the era of letter writing. The rest of her column provides a glimpse into the importance of writing our individual stories, our memories and experiences, our personal histories: “Think of all those people inside the World Trade Center saying goodbye by phone. If only, in the blizzard of paper that followed the collapse of the buildings, a letter had fallen from the sky for every family member and friend, something to hold on to, something to read and reread. Something real.” Yes, if only . . .

From today’s (January 18) Nashville Tennessean comes this article about a new English “dialect”—so new, in fact, that it still doesn’t have a proper, technical name. The author of the article, staff writer Jaime Sarrio, calls it “text speak” or “Web slanguage” or “teen texting”; I’ve heard it called “I-M-ing” (for “instant messaging”), too. Regardless, it’s use is without a doubt gaining in popularity. See what Sarrio has to say about it. And, while you’re close, jump over to “If Shakespeare had a cell phone” in which high school teacher Lindsey Martin tells some results of a class assignment that had her students translate four short quotes from the bard into . . . that . . . language! By the way, back on the main article page, be sure to look over the “Text Message Glossary” (furnished courtesy of AIM.com), and start showing off on your own IMs. BCNU!

Tell us what types of magazines and/or Web-based resources you subscribe to or read regularly. Include print magazines, viewable-only Web sites, and interactive Listserv bulletin boards. Thanks!