Author: the detail eye

Helping writers polish their text and clarify their ideas since 2010.

Inserting PDFs into Word

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There are any number of reasons you might need to insert a PDF into a Word document, and my recent experience with doing this in Word 365 is: a PDF icon appears, not the document.

My workaround, in case it will be useful for you as well, was to convert each page of a three-page PDF into a jpg file and then insert each jpg into a separate Word page by clicking on Insert and then selecting Pictures from the drop down menu.

First step: save each page of the PDF individually.

Second step: convert each PDF page to a jpg file (I did this using PDF24)

Third step: on a PC press ctrl + enter to create a page break for the first jpg you need to enter.

Fourth step: insert the jpg version of your first PDF page by clicking on Insert, then Picture, select the device where your jpg is stored, go to the folder where it’s saved, and click on the jpg you want to insert

Fifth step: press ctrl + enter to create another page break and insert the next jpg

Hope that’s helpful!

Common Word Mix-ups

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COMPRISE AND COMPOSE

Comprise is widely misused, so it’s easy to pick up those incorrect uses and adopt them in your own writing. Here are two correct uses of comprise and compose:
The EU is composed of 27 member countries.
The EU comprises 27 member countries.

To quote Grammar Girl: “The parts compose the whole, but the whole comprises the parts.” You can read her in-depth discussion here.

One easy trick to remember is: don’t use comprised of.

FLOUT AND FLAUNT
From a recent news story: “…it’s not worth your time to get angry or confrontational if someone else seems to be flaunting the rules.”

Flaunt means show off or make an ostentatious display, often in the context of wealth or an abundance of something. Flout means disregard, usually with contempt.

So, you flout rules, and you flaunt your 7-digit income.
You can read an in-depth discussion here. 

TENOR AND TENURE
Tenure refers to the length of time someone has held a position, particularly in academia. But you can also refer to someone’s tenure in Congress or as an author’s agent.

Tenor, when not describing a type of singing voice, refers to the length of a bank loan or insurance contract or to the tone of a culture or discussion. There are helpful examples of the latter on Merriam-Webster’s site. 

Dissertations and verb tenses

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If your department requires adherence to the APA style guide, there is a quick primer on the verb tense to use in each section of your paper here.

Essentially, most sections should be written in past tense, because when the dissertation is complete and published the research described will no longer be a future event. 

For a quick rundown on verb tenses, there is a useful breakdown on this Purdue Online Writing Lab page. It’s always good to have the basics laid out clearly for easy reference, so you can focus on the deeper issues you’re researching.

Go Deeper

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Here’s a writing exercise everyone can benefit from, no matter what we’re working on.

Step 1. Write out the point you want to make or the scene you want to describe.

Step 2. Come up with another way to make that point or describe the scene.

Step 3. In a third version, make what you just wrote more precise and get closer to what it is you want to say or describe.

Usually the first thing we come up with is the easiest and most generic version, and it uses a lot of terms and phrases currently floating through the culture. It’s the first vocabulary set that comes to us.

At least two rounds of thinking about another way to make our point gets us closer to our own thoughts and our own expression of those thoughts. It takes us closer to writing something others will get value from.

You can do this with any piece of writing. Make it yours. Use language that carries what you want to say. Reach for what’s just beyond, beneath, or inside that first version.

Fact-checking

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“Fact checking” is a euphemism for editorializing which is a form of censorship. And that’s a fact. — Cameron Winklevoss May 28, 2020

From the follow-on replies to this tweet, it’s clear I wasn’t alone in thinking this was a concept that needed immediate challenging. It might be momentarily intriguing but, like fireworks or a shooting star, it’s not a foundation for anything of any lasting soundness.

Part of what I do is fact-checking, primarily in nonfiction work but also in fiction. Did those floods happen in Thailand or Taiwan? What are the names of banking regulatory entities in France? When did 911 numbers roll out in the United States? All the details in any document are part of the logic of the writing. They’re like the stitches that allow a garment to be worn or the mounts and bolts that hold a vehicle engine in place.

Would we drive a car if everything that held it together was loose or didn’t fit right? Would we even want to be anywhere on the street near one? It isn’t much different from reading something that hasn’t been checked for accuracy.  

For me, everything to do with editing is focused on ensuring a reader’s obstacle-free passage through the worlds created by writers. The order of information, structure of sentences, and use of punctuation, in addition to the accuracy of real-world references, are all important. We correct or recommend revisions to these elements because they are the pavement and road signs a reader follows through the text.

I also write and know how startling it can be when an editor points out that something I was certain about actually isn’t accurate or that something I thought was clearly written had, in fact, left the editor completely lost.

When someone corrects or challenges the way we hold, or write, the world around us, it’s like having a street in our neighborhood moved. It makes us feel a little disoriented, perhaps even angry. We might wonder if anything else isn’t what or where we thought it was, and most of us aren’t fond of uncertainty. But if that street was moved because a sinkhole lurked beneath it, it’s safer to reconstruct it on solid ground.

And that’s not editorializing!

If you can translate

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Take a second to check the list of languages that Hesperian Health Guides has had its COVID-19 Fact Sheet translated into, and if you or someone you know can speak a language that’s not listed, consider volunteering to help out with translating.

If you aren’t familiar with this organization, they do incredible work to make sure people without ready access to health care have information about everything from environmental health to childbirth and dental care. Here’s a link to their list of books and online resources.

Stay healthy and keep helping where you can!

Travel options from your desk or favorite chair

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We’re all still sheltering in place here on the U.S. West Coast and elsewhere, so here’s a new list of ways to get out and explore without leaving home.

Listen to music from around the world

World Music Network/Riverboat Records covers world, jazz, blues, folk, and undiscovered sounds.

Start on their music guides page, scroll through their pages of graphics with links, click on a part of the world whose music you’d like to hear, and you’ll be taken to a page of information with embedded videos you can watch and listen to. As an example, the first page includes links to sounds as different as Mugham music from Azerbaijan and English folk roots. They also sell MP3s, CDs, and Vinyl.

If you have young children at home the Music Teachers National Association has put together a lengthy page of listening options.

Read translated work from other countries

Words Without Borders translates work from around the world into English. You can visit their site or sign up for their newsletter. They’ve begun a Decameron via their newsletter, described below in their own words:

“Voices from the Pandemic. We are commissioning new work from our contributors based all over the world to offer humanistic perspectives on and literary responses to the COVID-19 crisis, beyond what the twenty-four-hour news cycle conveys. The first dispatch is from Italian screenwriter Silvia Ranfagni.”

Take a virtual vacation

No passport or airport check-in required. The website SmarterTravel has put together a list of 21 sites, with links, that let you visit museums around the world, a zoo in Australia, the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California, a park conservatory in Seattle, the Berlin Philharmonic and the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Sistine Chapel, as well as sites like 360Cities that allow you to visit rainforests or cities via panoramic photographs and videos.

Thanks for visiting, enjoy your virtual travel, and stay healthy!

Shelter-in-place time

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Many of us are staying at home but possibly not completely occupied by working from home, so here are some ideas for anyone with more hours than projects.

Free reading resources

  1. As of March 18, 2020 Scribd began offering free access to all of its ebooks, audiobooks, and other digital content for 30 days.
  2. Some bookstores have their own sites where you can order books and gift cards directly. Moe’s books is one of those. Orders will go out after the store opens again. Gift cards purchased while they’re closed will earn a 10% discount when redeemed.
  3. Kindle is offering two months free at Kindle Unlimited where every page read means payments for authors and publishers. So you enjoy a good read and help out an author at the same time.
  4. For anyone with children at home, Scholastic is offering day-by-day projects free of charge.
  5. Elsevier is providing free access to health and medical research on Covd-19 so you can read about the current state of that research.

Stay Healthy!

Resources for authors: three good sites

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Jane Friedman

On her resources page Friedman includes information on editing and coaching, copyediting and proofreading, book design and production, marketing and publicity, photo editing, agent and publisher research—you name it, she’s found it.

She also periodically puts out a useful newsletter called Electric Speed. I’ve found that every issue has relevant links, products and other information related to writing and to the continually evolving state of publishing. This link includes an archive and a sign-up option at the bottom if you’d like to receive the newsletter.

Independent Book Publishers Association

The IBPA has created several resources for independent publishers and self-published authors, including their standards checklist. They created this to help level the playing field for independent publishers and for self-published authors “by offering a structured means by which to ensure that books be judged on merit and quality rather than on the business model used to produce them or the size of the publisher.”

Their industry standards checklist page also has links to downloadable examples and other resources related to book covers, interior spreads, and copyright pages.

California Lawyers for the Arts

If you’re in California, this organization has extremely helpful information, including several topics they’ve uploaded on YouTube and workshops across the state that you can attend. Topics include copyright issues and contracts. If you aren’t in California, the information may still be applicable, but you’ll need to check with your local American Bar Association office or Arts organizations.

Where do those commas go?

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We all have pet peeves and opinions about punctuation and language usage. However, when we’re writing for publication, we have to let go of all of that.

The website, magazine, newspaper, or company we’re writing for will have selected a style guide, and some publications and companies create their own. We have to follow their style guide and make sure our work matches their requirements.

Another thing to consider is the country you hope to or have contracted to publish in, because there are different usage and style guides for Canada, the U.K. and Australia, just as examples.

The following are U.S. style guides.

For journalism the standard is the AP Associated Press Stylebook but some publications have their own unique style and guides.

In book publishing the bible is the Chicago Manual of Style, and the current edition is the 16th.

The ModernLanguage Association (MLA) maintains a style guide for students.

Individual specialties and fields have associations that create specific style guides, for example the AMA, APA, and APSA (American Political Science Association).

For legal texts, the guide is The Blue Book: A Uniform System of Citation and the current edition is the 20th.

Just remember, every piece of writing that’s published has to conform to a style guide, and it’s important to know which guide your work is expected to follow.