 Today’s crime: All caps.
Are you guilty or innocent?
This is the first in a series. Watch this blog for more installments in this continuing feature.
Readers want it easy. Specifically, they want your bulletin or newsletter to be easy on their eyes. Whenever you, as the editor, make your publication more difficult to read, you risk that your readers will just stop reading.
ALL CAPS, AS YOU MAY KNOW, IS LIKE SHOUTING AT YOUR READERS. DO YOU LIKE TO BE YELLED AT? NEITHER DO YOUR READERS. LOOK AT THIS TEXT. IT IS PRETTY ANNOYING TO READ, ISN’T IT? YOU MAY FIND YOURSELF READING MORE SLOWLY THAN YOU USUALLY WOULD. YOU NEED MORE CONCENTRATION. AND THE LONGER IT GOES ON, THE HARDER IT IS TO READ.
Okay, I’m back now. I’m sorry I had to do that to you. Did you find that you actually skipped reading the above paragraph? I don’t blame you.
When we read, we rely on the shapes of words to help us recognize whole words without having to read every letter. Certain letters like l, t, f, b, and d stretch up above the height of the rest of the letters. Other letters like g, p, q, and j go below the baseline. The letters that stretch above have ascenders. The letters that drop below have decenders.
Words in all caps have no ascenders or decenders so the words all have the same shape—rectangles. Because you can’t use the shapes of the words as a guide, you are reduced to reading each word letter-by-letter. This makes your eyes and your brain work harder to read. And whenever you make a reader work harder to get the meaning, you risk that the reader will just give up and stop reading.
A few words in all caps, such as a headline, are fine. This is especially true if the headline is in 12 point size or larger. Making the font bigger does make it a bit easier to read. But avoid using all caps to create emphasis in large stretches of the body of your articles—use bold or italics instead.
Next crime: Underlining
The earth is the LORD’S and all it holds. Psalm 24:1
How can we take better care of God’s creation at home and at work? Here are some simple ways you can save natural resources, energy, and money. Good stewardship is easier than you may think!
Electronics
Save energy while using your computer. Rather than using a screen saver, use the sleep mode instead. If you have an ENERGY STAR computer, be sure to activate your power management settings, too.
Power off and unplug computers, office equipment, small appliances, and battery chargers when they’re not in use. Make it easy on yourself by using a surge protecting power strip to unplug several components at once. (The surge protector should still work, even when you turn the switch off.)
If it’s time to buy anything new for your home or office, switch to ENERGY STAR computers, equipment and appliances. Be sure to ask your retailer about recycling your old electronics, too.
Lighting
Open up the blinds and turn down the lights. Turn off lights when you leave a room.
When it’s time to change a light bulb, switch to ENERGY STAR compact fluorescent light bulbs. Many hardware retailers and local municipalities offer free recycling, too.
You may qualify for rebate programs, to get bulbs at lower prices. For more information, visit http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=cfls.pr_cfls.
Recycling Batteries
Button batteries (used in hearing aids and watches) and rechargeable batteries (like the ones in cameras, cell phones, laptops) should be recycled. To recycle rechargeable batteries, ask your electronics retailer, or visit http://www.call2recycle.org. Type in your zip code to find the closest drop-off location.
Single use alkaline batteries from major producers (Rayovac, Energizer, and Duracell) are OK to throw away in most areas, but you can recycle them. To recycle single use batteries visit http://earth911.com/hazardous/single-use-batteries/ to find a recycling location near you.
Printed Communications
Make recycle bins clearly visible and easily accessible. Then invite your members to recycle their old bulletins, newsletters, and directories. LPi practices good stewardship by using paper and ink that is safe to recycle and friendly to the environment.
Consider reducing your bulletin quantity in the summer, and increasing it again in the fall, to meet the needs of your readership and cut down on waste. Labor Day and Memorial Day are great times to make the switch.
Before printing anything on paper (especially all those e-mails!), think about printing communications to a PDF instead. You can save a PDF to a folder on your computer, and access it whenever you need it, without using paper.
Have you seen the elusive pilcrow? It’s not a rare tropical bird or exotic flower. The pilcrow is a typographical character commonly used to indicate the end of a paragraph. It looks like this ¶ (the actual size and shape depend on the typeface you’re using).
If you don’t see pilcrows at the ends of the paragraphs in your document, you may need to turn on the display of special characters (also called formatting marks).
To turn on the display of special characters in Microsoft Publisher, do the following:
- Click “View” on the menu.
- Pull down and click on “Special Characters.”
To turn on the display of formatting marks in Microsoft Word, do the following:
- Click “Tools” on the menu bar.
- Pull down and click on “Options.”
- Click the “View” tab.
- Check the box next to “Paragraph marks.”
- Click the OK button.
In Word 2007, click the “Show/Hide ¶” button in the Paragraph group on the Home tab.
To hide the pilcrows, just reverse the directions above.
When you turn on the display of special characters or formatting marks, you may also see other strange characters or marks. A chart listing the most common appears below.
Why would you want to view the pilcrow and its cousins? Viewing special characters or formatting marks can help you troubleshoot documents with problems. As Suzanne Barnhill and Dave Rado, two Microsoft MVPs, recommend, it’s a good policy to proofread your document twice: once, with special characters or formatting marks hidden, for content; and the second time with special characters or formatting marks displayed so that you can check for extra spaces, tabs, etc.
For more information about the pilcrow and other formatting marks, click here.
I awlyas thgouht slpeling was ipmorantt. Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch sudty at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae.
…but when readers encounter spelling errors, they take facts and ideas less seriously.
The last questions you should ask yourself before sending LPi your publication are…
Did you PROOFREAD your document?
1. Did you check your spelling?
2. Did you check your grammar?
3. Did you check your punctuation?
Sometimes we can omit, add, or transpose letters, leave out an apostrophe, or forget the s in a possessive form. By printing a final hard copy of your publication, you can usually catch these typographical errors when proofreading.
Sometimes we have errors because of words sounding or looking alike, e.g., using “their” when you intend “there” or “they’re;” using “too” for “to;” confusing “principal” with “principle,” or “stationary” with “stationery.” (NOTE: This kind of error will not be caught by a spell checker!)
To help avoid spelling errors look up a word anytime you are in doubt and these days, most desktop publishing programs have a dictionary, a thesaurus and spell checkers built into the programs. The first thing you should do when you type anything into a computer is spell check it. Just remember, spell checkers are not totally accurate. You may need a dictionary. When all of the words in a sentence are spelled correctly, use a grammar checker. Grammar checkers are not as good as spell checkers but still use them.
You should check for accuracy and correctness because it makes it easier for someone to understand you. When you use correct grammar, you make it easier for people to understand your ideas.
Now that you have thoroughly checked the spelling, grammar and punctuation of each and every sentence of your bulletin, printed and proof-read the entire document, you can now submit your bulletin with complete confidence.
I have heard more and more people call me and say that their computers have crashed and now they have to start their bulletin from scratch or they don’t have a copy of their template. Is this an avoidable problem?
With the amount of computer viruses going around now, it is always wise to occasionally backup your Publisher file to a CD or flash drive. This way if something happens and your computer crashes you will have a backup to get you started again.
You can also check with your computer technician to see if your computer is automatically backed up on a weekly or daily basis. Remember two things about a backup. 1.) You may want to keep your back off-site or in a safe. 2.) Test your backup periodically to make sure you can retrieve your file.
If you’ve ever labored over a full color page in your publication, only to see a blue sky appear stormy purple, well…we feel your pain. Color is something we work on every day, and we want to see your vision realized in print.
There is nothing more frustrating than finding out the effort you put in didn’t get the result you wanted–and understanding color a little better is one of the best ways to make sure YOUR blue STAYS blue.
The computer screen you view your publication on is based on one color model–RGB. However, the paper and ink professional printers print with are based on different color model–CMYK.
Why is this, and what does it mean to you?
Here are some great visual examples from wikipedia:
Note how the two images differ…
Do you see the how the center of the “RGB” image
is “white”? This is because RGB,(which stands
for: Red Green Blue) is an addative color model.
Various portions of light wavelengths (the ROY-G- BIV acronym) combine to form visible white light.
Now when you look at the CMYK (Cyan, magenta, yellow, and Black–the “key” color or “K”) chart, you see that it is a “subtractive” color.
As you use portions of Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow ink, the colors block visible light from being reflected off of white paper–creating various shades of color. As a result of blocking reflected light, a murky brown color is created if too much Cyan, Magenta / Yellow ink is used.
To help correct for this, black ink is added so that crisp dark colors can be generated.
But what does that all mean?
What it means to a publication editor is this:
Knowing which colorspace your text and graphics are in can tell you how their going to come out in print. Here is an example from wikipedia:
As you can see–the colors you generate with light are “brighter” than the corresponding colors generated by blocking light.
Does this mean all your images will look bad?
Certainly not! You can improve the quality of images by making sure that you start in, or convert to to a CMYK color model. You can do this a number of different ways (and you can call your tech support representative for details).
To begin with, LPi’s Art and Media Portal has several thousand images that are ready to go, formatted for CMYK. All you need to do is select the images of your choice, and insert them into the document! When working in CMYK, you’ll have a MUCH better idea of what your final product will look like.
A few tips to working in CMYK:
#1 use the smallest CMYK values you can to generate a given color.
CMYK values range from 0-100 for each of the four colors. a cyan: 40 means 40% of the paper is covered in Cyan (light blue) ink.
However, once the ink hits the page, it gets even more interesting…
Much like water soaks into a sponge, ink soaks into the paper–and while doing so, it expands. This is called “dot gain”, as the ink “dots” get larger in size.
Since CMYK works by subtracting from the light that gets to your eye, the more ink you use, the less light you see…and as a result, less image.
#2 Don’t use less than 10% of a value.
When your colors go from your electronic file to our press, they are first sent to “plate” ( a flexible material which carries the ink information, and is placed in the press). These plates register the ink “density” (11-100%). Ink densities of less than 10% are unlikely to transfer visibly to the final copy.
#3 Use your color chart!
Your rep will know what format you print in (offset or digital), what colors you print in, and what pages have color. The color choices we show on the Color Chart are optimized for our process–if you want a green, for instance, the numbers for “Green 356″ on your chart are a great starting point!
And questions? Please ask your application support/tech support rep–speaking as one of them–we’d love to help out!
#4 Understand that “your mileage may vary”, and build your numbers to compensate.
The way your colors look on your screen (RGB) will look different than they do from the press (CMYK)–because of the color differences described above. Thus, what looks blue on your screen might really BE purple in print, and if you change the numbers (with your new knowledge of CMYK, plus the help of your tech) you can compensate so you can make your blue sky “bluer”.
Your knowledge of color, plus the help of LPi’s technicians, will make small, key differences in the color values you decide on. Those choices can make a huge difference in the final product–and make sure your blue sky stays blue.
What’s another word for… ?
 If you are like many bulletin and newsletter editors, you sometimes have to write your own articles. Sometimes, inspiration is lacking. Have your ever used the same word too many times in a paragraph?
In the old days, you could go to the thesaurus and look up a word. The thesaurus would give you a nice list of words that mean about the same thing. And if you didn’t know what those other words meant, you could look them up in a dictionary. Now that you have a computer on your desk, you probably don’t keep a dictionary or thesaurus handy.
Here is how to make Microsoft Office, serve as your reference:
Type a word into either Microsoft Word or Publisher. Hold down the Alt key while you click one time on the word in question. The “Research” Task Pane will open on the left edge of your screen.
In this Task Pane, you will see:
dictionary, including pronunciation, and where to divide the word for hyphenation
thesaurus, listing of words with similar meanings
translation, a quick translation of a word into Spanish, Polish, Greek, or several other languages (for instance, I just found out that the Spanish word for “dictionary” is “diccionario”. )
Of course, if you have any problems, you could look that up, too.
As the publication editor, you may want a sneak peak at your publication that you just send Liturgical Publications Inc (LPi) for printing. You now can preview it within hours of sending it over to LPi.
If you take ownership of your congregation’s listing page on Seek And Find , we’ll automatically send you an email within hours that your publication is available on Seek And Find. To take ownership, find your congregation on Seek And Find and follow the directions in the “Take Ownership of This Page” box.
Once ownership of the page has been granted to you, an email alert goes out to you when your new publication is posted online.
If you enjoy the Snickers and Giggles magazine in Bright Ideas, you may wish to take a look at this presentation on slideshare.net, http://www.slideshare.net/majordomoers/dear-god-with-music. There’s a few there that are quite humourous.
Holiday Greetings!
A very inspiring, dear friend once sent me a Thanksgiving message that really made me thankful for EVERYONE I know and have met in my life. It was a simple but heartfelt message that I share with you this special time of year and I paraphrase it here…
Friends and family are a very important part of the holiday season. Whether you’ve known someone for just a few months–or your paths have crossed for decades–be grateful for the part they have played in your life. Who you are is made of what you have learned from all the people whom you have met. This time of year is the perfect time to express your heartfelt thanks to all the people who have befriended, mentored, supported and encouraged you along the road of life.
Please take a moment and follow this link, http://www.portal.4lpi.com and make a beautiful holiday card to email or send to all.
Enjoy the card below created with art from Liturgical Publications Inc. Art & Media Portal.
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Snickers and Giggles Out of the Mouths of Babes...
A woman invited some people to dinner. At the table, she turned to her six-year-old daughter and said, "Would you like to say the blessing?"
"I wouldn't know what to say," the girl replied.
"Just say what you hear Mommy say," the wife answered.
The daughter bowed her head and said, "Lord, why on earth did I invite all these people to dinner?"
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