[Macworld]

Post your comments for Writing tools we use here

[macu22009]

interesting video. I'd be curious to find out what encoding you use. 17.3 MB for over 6 minutes is impressive, and the quality of the video is quite good.

[Jason Snell]

Podcast version: H.264 at 240 kbits/sec, 320x240, Baseline profile.
Flash-embedded version: VisualHub at Standard quality setting, 320x240 FLV.

[k2director]

No Pages discussion?

[rlav]

Fascinating. Thanks for showing us these tools and, more importantly, giving us an idea of when you use what, and how they all fit together.
One thing that it seems you haven't really addressed as a team is typo elimination. I sometimes find it quite shocking how many typos get through all the collaborative edits (or perhaps are caused by those edits?) even in very short articles. This sometimes includes even the introduction to the headlined article on the site homepage.
You're certainly not alone in having problems with this. I've found new editions of 10-year-old Tom Clancy novels riddled with typos. Recently, even edited and peer-reviewed academic papers are often full of errors. About the only outfit I've found that really seems to have their act together in eliminating errors is TidBITS.
I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on this, perhaps in a future article/video on how to use tools such as spellcheckers/grammar checkers/TextExpander, etc., effectively.

[douglas_goodall]

I can't help but notice the absence of the "Pages" application that is part of the iWork product from Apple.
Not being a professional article writer, perhaps there is something I don't know. I just bought BBEdit for coding, and Pages for random word processing. What don't I know?

[Jason Snell]

@k2director: We don't use Pages, or at least I don't. Some of my colleagues might, but I don't know of any examples. I believe we've had some attempts to use it in lieu of Word for some comment/change-tracking issues.
@rlav: Generally spelling errors are not the fault of any computer software, but of the flawed humans who use them. Or don't, as the case may be.

[Jason Snell]

@douglas_goodall: Pages might be a replacement for Word in our workflow (since it does some degree of change-tracking), but honestly since what we write is bound for the web or for a print magazine, most of the rich-formatting features found in those programs are useless for our purposes.

[jonro]

Do you outline articles before you write them? If you do, what do you use for the outline? I downloaded the Scrivener demo. It looks great and seems to have an index card outliner that might be useful for articles. I often write parts of drafts in longhand with a good fountain pen. There's a lot to be said for the visceral sensation of putting a fine pen to good paper to get the ideas flowing.

[NicholasCox]

Um...I did National Novel Writing Month twice, and I only wrote 50,000 word novels. When you said 150,000, I thought it might've been a mistake, but then you have a screenshot of Scribner, and there's a reference to 150,000 on there. Now, I'm certain the rules are only 50,000, so my question to you, Jason, is: did you do your OWN NaNoWriMo, are you an overachiever, or did you just feel like writing 150,000?
Also, both times, it was a struggle to write just 50,000, but I did it. How did you triple that, considering how much writing you do for a living (and I think you have at least one child, too, based on the child-proofing on your cabinet in your living room)?

[dominiquejames]

The focus has been on the writing tools, and mainly of the process, including collaborative work. However, I noticed no mention of fonts. Here are a few questions about fonts in relation to the piece:

• Do you use a different font for each of the writing software you use?
• Do you have a favorite font?
• Do you change fonts for different types of writings?
• Do you use colored fonts?
• I love the fonts of the website and the magazine, what are these fonts that you use?
• Do you feel that fonts can contribute or distract from writing?
• Are you inspired by fonts?

Sorry for lots of questions; I'm just really curious.

[Jason Snell]

@NicholasCox: I actually wrote my 160,000-ish-word novel during two NaNoWriMos (50k each) and another 50-ish K in non-November months.
@dominiquejames: Generally I write in monospace fonts. Courier, Monaco, Consolas. Don't ask me why. Because I'm old-school, maybe? :-)

[dominiquejames]

Consolas. I'm sure it's old news to many; but for me, it's a new discovery. Love it. Thanks!

[whitedog]

I think the proliferation of typos both on the web and in print has a lot to do with the time constraints on publication deadlines these days. Much like newspapers, blogs and time sensitive web sites like MacFixIt have very fast turnaround times and copy editing is rare or nonexistent.

To begin with, no one is the best editor of their own work. A fresh pair of eyes will almost always do a better job of rooting out errors than we can do ourselves. In this regard, I would think the collaborative strategies Jason describes at Macworld would be effective, both for collecting and collating content quickly and for proof reading.

Then there is, of course, e-mail. People are invariably in a hurry and seldom take the time to check their words.

SMS? Let's not even go there!

The most unforgivable errors, however, are in printed books and articles. I suspect this is not just a matter of tight deadlines but of budgetary constraints that preclude having sufficient qualified staff on hand to do the necessary editing. And, of course, editors are paid by the number of pages they review, not by the number of errors they correct, so the incentive for thoroughness is often lacking.

The on-demand nature of our news and information also creates problems of veracity, but that's another discussion entirely.

I agree, the writers and editors at TidBITS are to be commended for the uniform high quality of their work. I think this may have to do with the fact that TidBITS content actually is edited before it's published. It shows what can be done when time restraints are a little less rigid - and where quality is a highly valued virtue.

I don't think writing is a dying art, though, despite all the error laden material we come across every day. The simple fact is that with blogs and other democratic forms of publishing, more people are writing more than ever before. No doubt hand writing may be loosing currency, but since mine was always frightful I shan?t mourn it's passing. ;-)