Swet Columns

Effective Onscreen Editing: New tools for an old profession, 2nd edition

Reviewed by Kay Vreeland

Effective onscreen editing: new tools for an old profession. 2nd edition. 2010. By Geoff Hart. Diaskeuasis Publishing, Pointe-Claire, Quebec. Printed version: 507 p. US$34 + shipping from Lulu ISBN 978-0-9783227-4-8; PDF version: 723 p. US$20 outside Canada ISBN 978-0-9783227-5-5

Originally reviewed for the SWET Newsletter at publication of the 1st edition... more

Our Story in Print: The SWET Newsletter 1 to 130

by Lynne E. Riggs

To mark the publication of the 130th issue of the SWET Newsletter, the last printed issue in its current format, and the transition to new means of information sharing in SWET, members of the Editorial Team contributed to a Q&A about how the Newsletter was made. This exchange adds to the record of an era... more

The Wordsmith’s Craft

by Lynne E. Riggs

Some may have seen the New Year’s TV program showing the tsuikidoki craftsman who takes a flat sheet of copper and over three days to a week beats it into a gracefully shaped teapot, complete with spout, using only a hammer, a high-piled rack of toriguchi forming tools, and the accumulated experience of two or three decades... more

From the Steerage • The Future of the SWET Newsletter

by Lynne E. Riggs

The SWET Newsletter is going to change. As announced in No. 128, the present Newsletter will continue through No. 130, to come probably in February or March. After that, the new incarnation of the Newsletter will appear sometime in 2012, as part of our redesigned website (details on which see below).

Preparations for these changes... more

Tidbits among the Triumphalism

Globish: How the English Language Became the World’s Language, by Robert McCrum. (New York: Penguin Books, 2010). ISBN 978-0-141-02710-4.

Reviewed by Charles De Wolf

Globish: How the English Language Became the World’s Language

Back in the early 1980s, when the weekly magazines here in Japan were publishing stories on the often acrimonious debate concerning the origins of the Japanese language,... more

Thinking Forward: SWET Starts Its Fourth Decade

by Lynne E. Riggs

Only a few blocks away from the apartment building in Aoyama where, in November 1980, 100 writers, editors, translators, and others of their kind had gathered and founded SWET, 33 SWETers—young, not-so-young, and 30 years older—gathered at the Wesley Center on November 3, 2010 to celebrate the beginning of SWET’s fourth decade. Remarks by James Baxter, Janine... more