Hi Thomas Thomas Wolmer wrote:
2008/10/17 Simon Osborne <outspaced@xxxxxxxxxxxx>:Hi I apologise for the hugeness of this list. My only excuse is that as a global issue that affects 12 separate books, it is best to post them all to get an overview and a consistent decision on them. I appreciate it will probably take some considerable time to respond to this, so I won't be posting any more Errors posts until this one has been fully dealt with. This one has bugged and confused me for some time: when is a city gate or a district named? Although the first problem occurs in Book 8, the confusion really starts in Book 9: The Cauldron of Fear. For completeness, I have also listed below a handful of issues that were originally rejected from 18dotd.My opinion: Quarters and gates are proper nouns when there are according to local conventions, not otherwise. Joe decides what is a local convention and what is not. Therefore, only change when something is inconsistent within a certain book and city, not otherwise.
Thanks for the feedback. It's really appreciated.I can certainly understand where you're coming from, and if that is the final decision from On High I'll abide by it. ;-)
The problem I have with it is that we don't actually know what Joe's convention was, because this could well have been affected by the editors and/or proofreaders. We know this happens because the published Book 23 uses metric measurements and distances throughout, but the original text files we received from Joe used imperial measurements. To say that what was published was Joe's explicit decision/convention may not, therefore, be entirely accurate. Of course, that does lead us into the realm of second-guessing . . .
It's a problem that is guaranteed to occur when twenty-eight books are published over a fourteen-year period, by two different publishing companies with potentially differing Style Manuals, having been edited and proofread by multiple persons. I'm not actually blaming Sparrow/Beaver/Red Fox for this--it's just one of those things. But a consistent style for use in the PA editions would be nice.
Basically, I want to know if there are any conventions that could be held to or implemented here for consistency; does the use of a term in a particular way require or negate the need for capitalisation, for example? If not, what is the best line for consistency?
In short: I'm not just looking for trouble or making work purely for the sake of it! :-) -- Simon Osborne Project Aon ~~~~~~ Manage your subscription at http://www.freelists.org/list/projectaon