Re: off-topic: curly brackets

[Judith Davidsen jdavidsen@xxxxxxxx]

Sorry--this needs clarification.

I am reading page proofs because I am the author.

The layout artist is putting topic names inside curly
brackets, as though curly brackets were decorative devices,
but it seems to me that they have *meaning*, that they are
directions about how to approach the material between them.

I managed to get the curly brackets taken off this afternoon
by saying I felt they turned the topic names into asides. I
won, but was I correct?

After Leslie goaded me, I came up with some better terms to
narrow my google search and found a few entries dealing with
math, formatting documents for editing, foreign languages
and...I forget what the fourth one was. But nothing about
what curly brackets mean when they enclose words in a mass
publication.

I've been seeing a lot of heads, subheads and call outs in
curly brackets in "hi-design" magazines, so I think I'm
going to be seeing more of them in my own work, too.
I'm looking for an argument based on standards or
conventions in order to (a> convince layout artists to stop
using them or [b} convince myself that I'm wrong.

{Thanks}(now doesn't that sound like the merest whisper?)
Judith Davidsen

Emery Snyder wrote:
>
> The other possibility is that your author was using LaTeX and some
> conversions got messed up: the syntax there for headings would be
> something like
>
>      \heading{heading name}
>
> ---------------------------
> Wednesday, 19 March 2003, 3:10:30 PM, Leslie wrote:
>
> > Judith Davidsen wrote:
>
> >> What do curly brackets mean?
> >>
> >> I'm proofing pages right now and find some subheads in curly
> >> brackets. I've seen this in other publications and always
> >> found it unnerving, as though the material within the curls
> >> were asides rather than something the reader is being asked
> >> to zero in on.
> >>
>
> > Assuming the pages you're proofing do not deal with some exotic
> > discipline (i.e., these are not the proofs for the Spring issue of the
> > Journal of Tantric Alchemy), or the work is not a translation from early
> > Icelandic, which as we all know did not employ subheads and so the
> > translators are merely trying to show these heads are _theirs_ and not
> > in the original, I think it is fair to say that the author of the work
> > in question has some sort of {fetish} and that they may be safely
> > eliminated.
>
> >>
> >> Is this just my quirky interpretation or is there a
> >> standard? Should I ask the layout artist to get rid of them?
> >>
>
> > Therefore my answer would be {quite probably}.
>
> >>
> >> Thanks for any info. I've tried googling, but the 11,000
> >> results all seem to be about programming.
> >>
>
> > Excuse me, but I believe your search needs some narrowing down here,
> > yes?
>
> > ;-)
>
> >>
> >> Judith Davidsen
>
> > --
> > Leslie Bialler, Columbia University Press
> > lb136@xxxxxxxx
> > 61 W. 62 St, NYC 10023
> > 212-459-0600 X7109 (phone) 212-459-3677 (fax)
> >> http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cup