{"id":272,"date":"2013-06-28T23:16:13","date_gmt":"2013-06-28T23:16:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/editorium.com\/archive\/?p=272"},"modified":"2013-10-26T00:06:11","modified_gmt":"2013-10-26T00:06:11","slug":"the-little-man-who-wasnt-there","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/editorium.com\/archive\/the-little-man-who-wasnt-there\/","title":{"rendered":"The Little Man Who Wasn’t There"},"content":{"rendered":"
Last night I saw upon the stair<\/address>\n
A little man who wasn\u2019t there.<\/address>\n
He wasn\u2019t there again today;<\/address>\n
Oh, how I wish he\u2019d go away!<\/address>\n
\u2014Hughes Mearns<\/address>\n
\u00a0<\/address>\n

In a post on his blog \u201cAn American Editor,\u201d Rich Adin posits that eBooks may be sounding the death knell for authorial greatness:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/americaneditor.wordpress.com\/2013\/02\/18\/are-ebooks-the-death-knell-of-authorial-greatness\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Why? Because unlike printed books sitting on a shelf, eBooks are not immediately visible to our view; we have to go find them on our eReader, or search for them online. \u201cOut of sight, out of mind,\u201d as the saying goes.<\/p>\n

I won\u2019t repeat Rich\u2019s arguments here; you should go read them for yourself. But I do believe that Rich is onto something important, and his post made me think about other things that are becoming invisible in this modern age.<\/p>\n

Note References<\/h2>\n

A recent trend in book publishing is the use of \u201cblind\u201d notes\u2014that is, notes that exist in the back of a book but have no indication in the text that they exist. The only way to see if a particular passage has an associated note is to turn to the back of the book and check. \u201cFascinating paragraph,\u201d you think. \u201cI wonder if there\u2019s a note about this.\u201d You turn back to the notes and look. \u201cNope.\u201d<\/p>\n

What if your cell phone worked that way? Suppose your phone gave no indication\u2014no ringtone, no flashing light\u2014that a call was coming in. The only way to know would be to pick up your phone periodically and listen. Does that seem like a good system?<\/p>\n

Is an author\u2019s text really so elegant that it should not be besmirched with superscript note references? Give readers a break; if there\u2019s a note, give them some indication.<\/p>\n

Well-Written Indexes<\/h2>\n

Professional indexers and seasoned readers know that a good index is an essential part of a good nonfiction book. Not only does it allow you to find particular passages, but it also gives you an overview of a book\u2019s contents. Does the latest tome on Microsoft Word have anything new to say about macros? Check the index.<\/p>\n

But some authors and publishers think that an index can be generated by a computer\u2014just feed the computer a list of important terms, and it will mark those terms as index entries in the text. Generate the index, and off\u00a0 you go! (Microsoft Word actually includes a feature that will do this; I don\u2019t recommend it.)<\/p>\n

Similarly, those who publish in electronic form often think that a program\u2019s \u201csearch\u201d feature is all that\u2019s needed for readers to find what they\u2019re looking for. But consider the old saying \u201cThe hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.\u201d It refers to motherhood, of course, but if you look for \u201cmotherhood\u201d in a computer-generated index or with an electronic search, \u201cThe hand that rocks the cradle\u201d won\u2019t show up. A good index is a form of writing; it requires the application of a human mind, which can see meanings where a computer sees only words. (This, by the way, is why grammar checkers don\u2019t work.)<\/p>\n

Functional User Interfaces<\/h2>\n

Some web designers think that how a web page looks is much more important than how it works. They\u2019re wrong about that. Imagine a web page so \u201cartfully\u201d done, so minimal in its design, that it offers no indication of how users should navigate the site. You would actually have to move your cursor around the screen to see what areas might be \u201cclickable.\u201d That\u2019s the extreme, of course, but there are sites that offer little more than that. Google \u201cminimalist web page\u201d and you\u2019ll find some.<\/p>\n

Several years ago I attended the product launch for a specialized search engine. The interface had an elaborately designed logo with the word \u201cSearch.\u201d Below that was a box where users could enter the text they wanted to find. Wanting to demonstrate the simplicity of the new search engine, the CEO invited his wife to step onto the platform and search for something, implying that if she could use the program, anyone could. (Unfortunately, this also demonstrated his own stupidity and callousness, but that\u2019s another story.) \u00a0His wife entered some text but then couldn\u2019t find where to click to activate the search. There was no button, no menu, nothing. Finally the CEO grabbed the mouse and clicked on the logo to activate the search. After all, it did say \u201cSearch.\u201d The problem was, it didn\u2019t look like something to click; it looked like a logo. Further, it was above<\/em> the text box; but things should always appear in the order of use: First enter your text, then click \u201cSearch\u201d\u2014which means that the Search button should have come below<\/em> the text box, not above it.<\/p>\n

Form should always follow function; how something looks<\/em> should always be subordinate to how it works. A button should look<\/em> like a button.<\/p>\n

Not that there\u2019s anything wrong with simplicity. As Albert Einstein once said, \u201cEverything should be as simple as possible, but never simpler.<\/em>\u201d Those who are involved in any kind of communication\u2014which means all of us\u2014need to keep that in mind.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last night I saw upon the stair A little man who wasn\u2019t there. He wasn\u2019t there again today; Oh, how I wish he\u2019d go away! \u2014Hughes Mearns \u00a0 In a post on his blog \u201cAn American Editor,\u201d Rich Adin posits that eBooks may be sounding the death knell for authorial greatness: http:\/\/americaneditor.wordpress.com\/2013\/02\/18\/are-ebooks-the-death-knell-of-authorial-greatness\/ Why? Because unlike […]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-272","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3gfno-4o","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/editorium.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/editorium.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/editorium.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/editorium.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/editorium.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/editorium.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":848,"href":"https:\/\/editorium.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272\/revisions\/848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/editorium.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/editorium.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/editorium.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}