Corrections or additions?
Between the LInes
You can bet that no one is reading this week’s cover
story more closely than the bosses of the people like us who put out
all the newspapers, magazines, and books that you in the Princeton
area seem to devour. The premise of the story, you will see by turning
to page 18, is that many operations in the publishing industry are
labor-intensive and inefficient, and that computerization can lead
to more books at a lower cost.
But, we hasten to point out, not even the digerati of the publishing
world have figured out how to replace an editor with a computer. Editing
remains a high-pressure, low-tech operation. Spell checkers (which
we use) and grammar software packages (which we don’t use) may help,
but they still do not replace the traditional method: To read copy
carefully and thoughtfully, and even out loud. Primitive though that
may sound, it’s still the best.
How carefully do people read U.S. 1? Consider this: The other day
we got a hand-addressed envelope containing the upper left hand portion
of page 1 from the April 22 issue. In the blurb promoting the free
singles ads a word was highlighted in the sentence indicating that
you can "place your ad for free in U.S. 1." The circled word
was "for" and the note said that "`for free’ is wrong.
Just `free’ will do."
Well, maybe. In the very next sentence our blurb writer proclaimed
that you can "respond for just $1." And the grammar police
person did not circle the "for" in that sentence. We think
our blurb writer deserves credit for maintaining a parallel construction
in the two sentences. And besides, if we were criticizing the offer,
we would argue that nothing is really free — or for free, for
that matter. You singles still have to pay with your valuable time.
So write an ad for yourself if you want, we won’t charge you to print
it, and we will only ask respondents to pay a dollar for each response
— just to cover the overhead of sticking an address and a stamp
on their envelope. See page 44 for details and for this week’s participants.
Top Of Page
To the Editor:
SINCE STRAUBE Centers announced the free "Pennington LIVE"
message board at www.straube.com/board/ on April 6, the site has been
accessed at the rate of 112,420 visitors a year, or an average of
308 visitors a day, Tuesdays being the highest traffic day with over
900 visitors.
Anyone seeking exposure to such a large Web-savvy audience in the
area is welcome to post their own messages free of charge at www.straube.com/board/
in the following categories: News and Hot Topics, Irresistible Bargains,
Computer Club.
The "Irresistible Bargains" section is managed by J. Dale
Foote of Straube Center, and "Computer Club" by Richard Butterfoss,
former Pennington councilman. Joseph Sinniger of Pennington is in
charge of the "News and Hot Topics" section. Together with
his wife Rosemary, the former librarian, they also host the Pennington
Borough and Pennington Day Web pages which are particularly attractive
and useful this year.
Win Straube
Honolulu
Corrections or additions?
This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com
— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
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