Editing for Fit

12/5/2016

Village blacksmiths and steamboat captains are no longer in high demand. Technology calls for new job skills and renders others obsolete. My first freelance editing contract applied a skill that’s fast going the way of long division: editing for fit.

Once upon a time, not so terribly long ago, physical multi-volume encyclopedias were typeset without benefit of computer. The cost of revision went up with each page that needed to be re-set. When a noteworthy event necessitated updating a page, editors tried to leave the surrounding pages untouched to limit cost. Any change on page 197 had to be offset by other adjustments for the text to flow smoothly between the existing pages 196 and 198.

A sheet of clear plastic, marked off in lines and columns, lay over the galley proof of the page under revision. Did a column run too long? What about widows and orphans, those pesky solitary lines at the top or bottom of a column, cut off from the rest of the paragraph? Did the closing sentence break at the same place as before? Fitting each page was a puzzle to solve by such tricks as substituting synonyms or shifting paragraph breaks.

Apart from physical newspapers and magazines, there’s not much call for this editing skill any more. But it holds an analogy with daily life. How can I schedule to begin and end my day at the desired time and place, with the right amount of activity between? Can I combine errands or split up social events, or swap activities of different length between one day and the next? Each 24-hour day is like a printed column with a fixed number of lines, a puzzle to edit for fit.

13 Comments

Lisa

12/5/2016 10:06:48 am

My life is still all about copy fitting (not the editing of the words, but the positioning of the words). Printers don't keep the old films or plates any more, and the cost of a reprint includes new ones, so repagination rarely matters. Design and printing has undergone a true revolution since I began doing this work 25 years ago.

Sarah link

12/5/2016 11:45:37 am

Lisa, copy fitting sounds very related and complementary to editing for fit. When I did the historical society newsletter, I mostly fit by edits but occasionally changed fonts or the spacing between paragraphs to even out the columns.

I am curious how the nature of your graphic design work has changed due to the revolution in design and printing technology.

12/5/2016 12:47:50 pm

Well, Sarah, that answer could be extensive. I'll name a few.

1. Since printers no longer save negatives or plates, I can nudge things around for each revision of a catalog because every time we're starting over with new plates, although I do and always have used the previous digital file of the document to maintain content.

2. The quality of a digital photo taken today with a decent phone can exceed the quality of a print I would have received from a client 20 years ago, and had to scan on my very expensive but relatively (to today's offerings) low quality desktop scanner, or paid a separation house to drum scan for me. Let alone what a professional photographer using a digital camera can provide.

3. Four color is now totally affordable and accessible, with the availability of digital printing. The quality from the copier, or press, offered by one of my printers borders on photographic. (You should see this year's Rotary Botanical Gardens [Janesville] 2017 calendar.) Even taking a simple job to Office Max still amazes me with the quality for the price.

4. In terms of workflow, 20 years ago our mutual client and I spent a tense day and a half emailing, faxing, editing on the phone. Then I DROVE a floppy disk out to a separation house and then drove BACK the next day to review films, which I then DROVE to the printer. Today, with another client, I receive in DropBox an already somewhat formatted digital file of articles from them, which I then place and arrange in InDesign, and fit and add more but generally minor formatting. I then place in DropBox a digital file which they can open and edit themselves to fit, although they can't rearrange where I've placed things. If I thought PDFs were revolutionary to my work, this new Adobe InCopy workflow is nothing but astonishing. There's still some pleasant back and forth between me and the delightful women at that publication, but for me it is MUCH less stressful, and for them as well I'm sure. Partly because we don't need to be both hydrated and nourished and ready to work together for two hours straight, at the same time.

5. Am I up to 5? I no longer have to approve film. I can upload a 150-page catalog file to a printer in LaCrosse or Stevens Point or a smaller job to South Fish Hatchery for different clients and by the next day, they will have a digital proof for me to review online. And the technology is good enough that I am safe approving the digital file from home, if I know what to check for, which are the same things I'd have checked for in the film or paper copy 20 years ago.

All this leaves me more time to be organized and creative, I can provide a better product in less time, and actually have a leisurely lunch with a client now and then.

12/5/2016 12:52:17 pm

So, to bring this back to your post and stay on topic, ...

"How can I schedule to begin and end my day at the desired time and place, with the right amount of activity between? Can I combine errands or split up social events, or swap activities of different length between one day and the next?"

As you might be able to tell from my final para above, I'm sure it's not my generally increased wisdom after doing this for 25 years which lends the possibility that I more often DO begin and end my day at the desired time and place. :)

Rhonda Peterson

12/5/2016 11:44:59 pm

A form of editing for fit that still happens is with the client who says, "I want a public information piece that makes the following 10 detailed points . . . and oh, by he way, it has to fit on one page and have some photos or graphics to make it interesting."
Ideally, of course, that's when I engage them in a conversation about purpose, audience, and the one thing they most want the reader to know, think, feel or do after seeing the piece. But some clients don't want to take the time for that!

12/5/2016 11:47:50 pm

On your main point, I'm not sure I have a "desired" point to start and end my day. Those points seem more a matter of what's required of me than what I desire -- at least, s=during the work week!

12/6/2016 08:53:09 am

"LIKE" and "LIKE"

12/6/2016 08:55:54 pm

Semi-retirement helps. My "desire" is to wake with no alarm clock, fit in some white space (nap? walk? puzzle?) along the way, wind down ahead of bedtime, and go to bed when my eyelids droop.

12/6/2016 08:51:54 pm

Clients not wanting to take the time makes for a challenge! I find the experience of editing for fit strengthens my writing by limiting the freedom to ramble. It takes more time (for me anyway) to write concisely than just to let ideas pour forth.

12/7/2016 09:06:22 am

Sarah, IMHO, as a reader, the concept of "rambling" in a book-length piece vs an article are two very different things. Do consider the topics you didn't ramble on about. The reader may wish you had rambled a bit more, here and there — perhaps even at the expense of one of the other nine topics that "had" to be covered. Rambling has a rhythm of its own. Signed, your careful reader friend.

12/7/2016 09:33:48 am

Lisa, point well made about rambling. There are not only different kinds of writing, there are different kinds of rambling. A leisurely ramble through a meadow can be delightful when it allows for noticing the purple wildflowers, the bird calls, the grasses waving in the breeze. Not so much when it's a matter of excess verbiage and repetition without fresh content.

12/7/2016 09:57:57 am

And yet, the writer can sometimes be so close to the material that what they perceive as "rambling," the reader may need. I'm constantly amazed at what my readers/listeners don't know ... "naturalization," "steerage"... And I am always grateful when the writer has provided JUST the right amount of information... to the careful — meaning "interested" or "engrossed" — reader. Just read a book for book discussion, where there was not a SINGLE extra word. Nor was there a word missing. Such a joy to keep turning the pages. You never know what's going to be just beyond the next black-eyed Susan, and perhaps it's just another black-eyed Susan but this time next to a sedum instead of a native grass, and maybe that one will blink in the reader's/viewer's brain as that bit of insight they needed to "get it," whatever "it" is to them.

OTOH, my 8th-grade English teacher used to give us a writing assignment, then say as we were going out the door, "And be pithy!" It stuck with at least two of us, who remember that now and then with a smile.

12/9/2016 08:09:58 am

Finding the sweet spot between pithy and rambling is always a challenge, especially since not all readers have the same preference.

Editing for Fit

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