EDITOR'S TIPS

Proofread
Proofreading is more than just running spell check on your text. Spell checkers are great; they just don't catch things like its and it's. Both words are spelled correctly, but its implies possession, while it's is a contraction meaning "it is". You should actually read your text; in fact, you will most likely catch more spelling errors if you read your text backwards. And don't forget the headlines!

Easy Reading
What is the ‘correct’ capitalisation for headings?
Whichever choice is made, capitalisation should be consistent.

Down-style headlines (those where only the first word and any proper nouns have an initial capital) are considered easier to read and this style is gaining popularity.

The theory is that we have been taught to recognise a capital as indicating the beginning of a sentence, a point at which we momentarily halt to take a breath. Whether your headline is in a report, advertisement or newsletter, the objective is to have the reader quickly grasp your message and hopefully move on into the body text. A reader who halts at every word is more likely to lose interest.

Up-Style Headlines are those that capitalise the first letter of each word.

‘En’ dashes, ‘em’ dashes – what are they and when are they used?
An ‘en’ dash is a dash the width of the letter ‘N’ and similarly, an ‘em’ dash is the width of the letter ‘M’.

An ‘en’ dash conveys a range, for example , 2005-2006 or pages 3-5, whereas the ‘em’ dash separates groups of words, sometimes to clarify – sometimes to emphasize.

Relying on defaults
Programs come set with default fonts, font sizes, line spacing, and more. You can change defaults; in fact, you usually want to. In PageMaker, for instance, one of the defaults is to have imported graphics at low resolution. Many people look at the fuzzy on-screen graphics and just assume that that's how they'll look when printed. Space before and after paragraphs is often set to zero, and so on.