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A cold engine warming up a little
Oct. 26th, 2001 01:17 pmI'm starting slowly to remember how to put words on paper (or electronic medium ultimately to lead to hardcopy) in circumstances that do not involve game-geeking. The last time I had to write a paper was 1995. The problem is going to be restraint and topicality: this is only supposed to be about 6 pages long, short enough to present in all of 15 minutes. My advisor wanted to meet today to discuss the paper. I was supposed to have an introduction, a brief discussion of recent scholarship, and an outline for the rest of the paper. I have the first of those and something that's not quite as developed as the third. Unfortunately, the introduction is about twice as long as it should be.
On the plus side, my advisor has just left to do some research at Widener Library, not remembering our lunch meeting. Which is fine. On Monday I'll be more prepared.
Now I have to deal with someone else's writing. The article was accepted for the journal before the boss (also the above-mentioned advisor) noticed many lurking mines of wrong-ness throughout. Much toner has been applied to paper on this matter as we have pointed out the problems in what now amounts to many more pages of correspondence than the article has itself. Today is finally (I hope) the last round. Responding to our last letter, the author warns us that it is "VERY dangerous" to adopt a policy of capitalizing letters in the citation of the title of a book the way they are capitalized in the book itself, rather than to adjust them arbitrarily for the sake of consistency with other citations. I was previously unaware of this danger. These are perilous times, of course, and we must be cautious of all of the numerous risks that face us, so I can only feel gratitude here.
Apparently however this author has no problem at all with getting the same basic fact right on one page and utterly wrong on another, so consistency is not applied consistently.
Now to dig through the author's reply, which sadly is in the form of an e-mail formatted in such a way that our letter and the reply are not immediately to be distinguished.
On the plus side, my advisor has just left to do some research at Widener Library, not remembering our lunch meeting. Which is fine. On Monday I'll be more prepared.
Now I have to deal with someone else's writing. The article was accepted for the journal before the boss (also the above-mentioned advisor) noticed many lurking mines of wrong-ness throughout. Much toner has been applied to paper on this matter as we have pointed out the problems in what now amounts to many more pages of correspondence than the article has itself. Today is finally (I hope) the last round. Responding to our last letter, the author warns us that it is "VERY dangerous" to adopt a policy of capitalizing letters in the citation of the title of a book the way they are capitalized in the book itself, rather than to adjust them arbitrarily for the sake of consistency with other citations. I was previously unaware of this danger. These are perilous times, of course, and we must be cautious of all of the numerous risks that face us, so I can only feel gratitude here.
Apparently however this author has no problem at all with getting the same basic fact right on one page and utterly wrong on another, so consistency is not applied consistently.
Now to dig through the author's reply, which sadly is in the form of an e-mail formatted in such a way that our letter and the reply are not immediately to be distinguished.
