Swet Columns

Literary Translation: Interpretation and Permutation

Reviewed by Edward Lipsett

I don’t read French, and to be honest if I ever knew who Apollinaire was, I’ve forgotten. When I read a review of this book in the summer 2009 issue of the BCLT1 journal In Other Words though, it sounded like something that I would really enjoy reading, for the same reason that I read and thoroughly... more

Self-Help for Editors

Reviewed by Ginny Tapley Takemori

The Subversive Copy Editor: Advice from Chicago (or, How to Negotiate Good Relationships with Your Writers, Your Colleagues, and Yourself). By Carol Fisher Saller. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009. ISBN-13: 978-0-226-73425-5, ISBN-10: 226-73425-0, $13.00.

The Subversive Copy Editor—what a great title! That alone was enough to make me pick up a copy right... more

Keene, Seidensticker et al.: Products of War, Commodities of Peace

Reviewed by William Wetherall

Focusing on recently published biographical works by the late Edward G. Seidensticker and Columbia University professor Donald Keene, William Wetherall evokes the personalities and the times of two great promoters of Japanese literature in the postwar era.

Wetherall’s articles on a variety of subjects are posted on the gateway to his websites.

Intrigued... more

Subtleties of Scientific Style

Reviewed by Richard Weisburd Review of Matthew Stevens; Thornleigh, NSW, Australia: ScienceScape Editing, 2007. 103 pages. Softcover ISBN0-9578877-2-8. Available online. Softcover US12.00/A$15.00 + postage.

Substantive editing of research papers is a difficult task. The content is complex, technical, and original. The authors are intimately familiar with their own work, but not always aware of the difficulty that readers may have extracting... more

The First Five Pages

by Ginny Tapley The First Five Pages: A Writer’s Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pile by Noah Lukeman. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999[K1]. 207 pages.  Hardcover. ISBN-13: 978-0-7432-9093-7; softcover ISBN-10: 978-0-7432-9090-3.[K2] $13.95.

Noah Lukeman’s The First Five Pages is, as the subtitle suggests, aimed at writers trying to get their work published. With the advent... more

Effective Onscreen Editing: New tools for an old profession

Reviewed by Kay Vreeland

Effective onscreen editing: New tools for an old profession, by Geoff Hart. Pointe-Claire, Quebec: Diaskeuasis Publishing, 2007. 723 pages. Ebook. ISBN 978-0-9783227-0-0. US$20 outside Canada.

Do you use MS Word or other applications to edit documents onscreen and think you know exactly how to do it? After using Geoff Hart’s eBook, based on his column... more