Grammar questions answered; Washington, DC, writing events publicized; and job openings posted: the DCPubs Yahoo! Group

The DCPubs Yahoo! Group is a great resource for communications professionals in the Washington, DC, area.

DCPUBS is a list for editors, designers, production folks and other people in the Washington DC area working on publications who want to discuss anything related to editing: sticky style issues; newspaper, technical, and other specialized editing; reference books; production and desktop publishing; marketing and distribution issues; client relations; Internet resources; electronic editing and software; freelance issues; and so on.

Sure that description includes so many areas that DCPubs could be construed as so inclusive as to be useless. That’s not so. I find the group most useful in these three areas:

• Job postings—A lot of freelance and contract jobs are posted here. Also when people ask me for help finding a full-time communications person, I refer them to DCPubs.
• Questions—While the style manuals I reviewed on a previous post are great resources, there are times when none of them will contain the information you need (especially if you are writing about emerging technology). But a quick post on DCPubs will get your question answered within minutes.
• Events—The DC area has a plethora of book stores, writing centers, and other cultural venues, so it’s hard to keep track of all of the writing-related events. Also, several of the regular posters on DCPubs often give lectures and publicize them here.

You need to apply to join, but it takes less than a minute, costs nothing, and has only about a one-day lag time for new members to be accepted.

Also, as the forum is a busy one, if you do join, I recommend subscribing to the daily digest rather then receiving each post individually (unless you are lonely and want more e-mail).

The Economist publishes my criticism of former British prime minister Tony Blair

The Economist‘s May 31st issue contained an article titled “What I’ve learned” by Tony Blair in which he “reflects on the lessons of his decade as Britain’s prime minister.”

A few days ago The Economist printed my letter in response to Blair’s piece on its website (scroll down to the last letter):

SIR–

Tony Blair lays out evidence for Iran’s involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as Al-Qaeda’s having been “in Iraq before Saddam’s fall”. It’s unfortunate that Mr. Blair’s credibility is such that my immediate reaction was to wonder if he was exaggerating. Notably, Mr. Blair did not reflect on the need for accuracy and honesty in dealings with the public.

Mr. Blair goes on to write “terrorism recruits adherents on the basis of an appeal to human emotion”. How do accounts of yellow cake purchases in Niger and Mr Hussein being 45 minutes away from unleashing weapons of mass destruction differ from the terrorists’ tactic? It’s unfortunate that none of Mr. Blair’s reflections pertained to the need for world leaders to be honest and forthright when advocating a course of action—especially when making the case for war. Inflated, or “sexed up”, claims cause a loss of credibility which, in turn, can mean future threats go unheeded. And leaders who exaggerate these threats see their potential wasted and legacies tarnished.

Zach Everson
Washington, DC

(Please note the punctuation, notably putting commas and periods outside of the quotation marks, follows the standards for British English.)

After pulling an all-nighter, I started seeing things—namely Marion Barry—and ended up on Wonkette

Some work came in late Wednesday that needed an immediate turnaround; I didn’t finish it until 7:30 a.m. Thursday. Typically I follow up all-nighters with a quality nap, but I had another job that day: jury duty. Thankfully I was dismissed within a few hours.

On my way home, however, I had an encounter that lead to a pro bono writing gig—for Wonkette (it’s the last item):

Wonkette—Wonk’d

I got out of jury duty Thursday [10/19] and was walking to the Judiciary Square Metro stop when a 50-something Asian businessman turned to me and said “Isn’t that the mayor?” I looked in the direction in which he was nodding, expecting to see a bald head and bow tie. Better—Marion Barry himself, clad in a suit, was sitting on a wall. That led to this exchange:

Asian businessman: What do you think he’s doing here?
Me: Seeing how there are a slew of courts around here, I can think of many reasons.
AB: Didn’t he get busted with a hooker and then claim he had a sex addiction?
Me: I think so.
AB: But we’re all addicted to sex. Some of us can just handle it better than others.

Jeffrey Sachs to speak about The Millennium Villages Project next week in Washington, DC

Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and noted author on global development, Jeffrey Sachs, is speaking March 14 in Washington, DC. Sachs is a renowned economist, although The Economist, while supportive, has written that sometimes he pushes his theses too far to support his agenda. Regardless, the discussion should be interesting and worth attending.

For more information, check the Center for Global Development’s website.

And while perusing other blogs to see what people had written about Sachs, I found Sonny Khan’s excellent summary of some of Sachs’s main points. While it’s probably not good for business for an editor to stress the value of a graphic over text, “The Giving Gap” graph speaks volumes.