[This is for Jerry, faithful reader--perhaps the only one--of Editorland. In a way, as you'll see, he is responsible for it.]
For years, I remembered her first name, but it’s disappeared now, into the oubliette of the past.
She was a copyeditor somewhere, and was the one person who responded when I asked Jerry Miller to put out an urgent appeal to his editing listserv for information about Stephanos numbers. I had seen a reference to them, and was lying awake nights, wondering what they were.
Stephanos numbers, she explained, were an unusual line-numbering system used in all editions of the works of Plato. Whereas most classics use a straightforward system of numbering lines for reference, she said, scholars of Plato have always followed the system devised by a printer of the 1500s named Stephanos.
That satisfied me for a number of years, until Google arrived with its promise of unlimited information about everything. And sure enough, it explained Stephanos (or Stephanus) numbers in exquisite detail. They were first employed for an edition of Plato’s complete works published in Geneva in 1578 by the printer Henri Estienne (1528-1598), better known under his Latin name of Stephanus.
His edition was not actually the first. That honor belongs to the celebrated Aldus Manutius of Venice, who also devised italic type.
My Internet source reproduces several pages of early editions with Stephanos numbers (letters actually) in the space between columns. It also explains just how they worked, an explanation I will not inflict in full on anyone who may be reading this. But it’s worth quoting a bit of it, if only because of its impenetrability:
“One may notice on each page, between the column with the Greek text and that with the Latin translation, letters A, B, C, D, and E located at regular intervals, every tenth line or so of the Greek text (intervals between lines of the Greek text are not the same as those between lines of the Latin translation, the latter being more compact), starting with A on the first line of the page and dividing the page into five sections of about ten lines of Greek text each; but it can be seen that the letters don’t always fall exactly in front of a line of the Greek text, and so, for instance, the E on page 515 falls between two lines of the Greek text, section D of that page includes 11 lines and section E only eight.”
Parse that if you can. What amazes me is that nameless copyeditor somewhere in cyberspace, before Google made finding such things easy. She answered as soon as she got the inquiry. She didn’t have to look it up—she knew.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Is it e-mail or email?
Is there anything Google doesn’t know?
I’ve been having a discussion with an author in the U.K. about whether the style should be “e-mail” or “email.” While the style guide of the book we’re working on calls for “e-mail,” he has referred me to “one of my favourite (though least well known) Google products:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=email,+e-mail&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0
“Note that if you drill down to the United States, email is still far more popular. Intriguingly it seems that in Russia e-mail is still the preferred way to go.”
Note also, the “u” in “favourite.” I happen to like the British “u,” although I don’t use it, except in one instance. This is “glamour,” which I’m convinced looks more glamourous that the Americanized “glamor.” (I also sometimes use the British “plough” because the word’s orthography looks more like uneven ploughed ground that the American “plow.”)
But what about e-mail vs. email? Now that Google has compiled its statistics on usage worldwide, are we editors obliged to drop the hyphen? Of course not. It depends on the publisher’s preferred style, and to some extent on dictionaries and stylebooks. Just because Stephen King has persuaded half the world that “cemetary” is the correct spelling, that doesn’t make it right. As long as the Chicago Manual of Style prefers e-mail, that usage remains perfectly respectable.
Still, the long drift of usage tends inexorably toward elimination of the superfluous and the fanciful. "Esquimeaux" becomes "Eskimos." The second “i” in “pimiento” is going fast. And who (except a copyeditor) knows that Fels-Naptha soap is misspelled? I have no doubt that a few years from now “email” will be the generally accepted style. But for now, give me my hyphen, please.
It is curious, though, that Russia—alone of all nations—favors the hyphen in general use. I wonder if a Cyrillic hyphen looks any different from an English one? Google could probably could tell me, if I wanted to pursue it.
Meanwhile, I’ve replied to my British friend: “Comrade! I’ve never told you about my background. It was early days on the Internet, of course, but in the NKVD, we always used a hyphen when we wrote ‘e-mail.’”
I’ve been having a discussion with an author in the U.K. about whether the style should be “e-mail” or “email.” While the style guide of the book we’re working on calls for “e-mail,” he has referred me to “one of my favourite (though least well known) Google products:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=email,+e-mail&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0
“Note that if you drill down to the United States, email is still far more popular. Intriguingly it seems that in Russia e-mail is still the preferred way to go.”
Note also, the “u” in “favourite.” I happen to like the British “u,” although I don’t use it, except in one instance. This is “glamour,” which I’m convinced looks more glamourous that the Americanized “glamor.” (I also sometimes use the British “plough” because the word’s orthography looks more like uneven ploughed ground that the American “plow.”)
But what about e-mail vs. email? Now that Google has compiled its statistics on usage worldwide, are we editors obliged to drop the hyphen? Of course not. It depends on the publisher’s preferred style, and to some extent on dictionaries and stylebooks. Just because Stephen King has persuaded half the world that “cemetary” is the correct spelling, that doesn’t make it right. As long as the Chicago Manual of Style prefers e-mail, that usage remains perfectly respectable.
Still, the long drift of usage tends inexorably toward elimination of the superfluous and the fanciful. "Esquimeaux" becomes "Eskimos." The second “i” in “pimiento” is going fast. And who (except a copyeditor) knows that Fels-Naptha soap is misspelled? I have no doubt that a few years from now “email” will be the generally accepted style. But for now, give me my hyphen, please.
It is curious, though, that Russia—alone of all nations—favors the hyphen in general use. I wonder if a Cyrillic hyphen looks any different from an English one? Google could probably could tell me, if I wanted to pursue it.
Meanwhile, I’ve replied to my British friend: “Comrade! I’ve never told you about my background. It was early days on the Internet, of course, but in the NKVD, we always used a hyphen when we wrote ‘e-mail.’”
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