Page 7 - Autumn 2019

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However, before emailing it to the printers, I have to check each page one by one to
make sure I have it correctly and more often than not I have to make corrections and 7
changes to things I have missed. I have to go back and change the original page in the
magazine software, save it again as a .pdf then recompile all pages into the one .pdf.
I then carry out a second and final check on each
.pdf page. I still miss the odd thing as checking your
own work is not easy, as you can quickly see what you
think is there and not necessarily what is actually there.
By this time, I’m brain dead so I do miss things!
The printers then send me a copy of what I sent them
to ask me to verify the final image of the magazine so
that at that point, any errors are mine not the printers,
which absolves them if there are any errors.
If you look at a finished printed magazine, you will
see I indent paragraphs in most instances and I Justify almost every page. i.e. the text goes
from one side of a page to the other with no gaps on the right. If I add a coloured background
or a partial colour, I try to indent each page so the is a uniform gap each side. However, this de-
pends on still getting everything I want onto a page, otherwise no gaps either side.
Not everyone agrees with the following explanation of Widows and Orphans, as some have
it the other way around. A widow is a lone word or sentence that appears at the bottom of a
page. i.e. the first word or sentence in a paragraph, with the rest of the paragraph at the top of
the next page. An orphan is a similar unwanted straggler, but this is where the last word or sen-
tence of a paragraph runs over to the top of the next page - poor little thing all on its own!
So what happens when you don’t have a photo or the ones sent are not usable? They
might be too dark and won’t lighten properly or perhaps they are out of focus etc. I generally
dislike pages of text with no images so I try if possible, suitable clipart to brighten a page, which
can also be used to make a page fit, as I have done here, at least to brighten this article, although
one now ex-contributor thoroughly disliked my lightening of his article.
As to spelling, I notice mistakes in the text on MSN every now and again and even the
cleverest can do it! 46 million of Australia’s new $50 notes, the most widely circulated Banknote,
have been printed with a typo in the “micro-text”, The “new and improved” $50 banknote was
rolled out with a host of new technologies designed to improve accessibility and prevent coun-
terfeiting. But the note also contains a typo that misspells the word “responsibility”. Ed - I now
feel much better about anything I get wrong!
The first magazine I produced was in 1992 under the title Short Mat World and was A5 in
size, which is half the size of the current magazine. Ostensibly, it was part of the ESMBA but
committee members gave me nothing to put in the magazine and 27 years later, it is still the
same! After a year it became indipendent and eventually changed to the current A4 size and
was basically Black & White with a spot colour cover and was bi-monthly. I always wanted a full
colour magazine and subsequently went full colour a few years later but the cost was so high, I
went to the quarterly magazine as we have today.
There are no staff, just me and those kind enough to send in reports and help the publicity
in our shrinking sport, which all forms of bowls are currently experiencing. Other magazine for
flat green, Crown Green and Carpet Bowls have come and gone over the years and this mag-
azine will no doubt suffer the same fate in a sport that generally shuns publicity and where (as
in all forms of bowls) to many bowlers have short arms and deep pockets so they cannot reach
their money. If bowls was completely and utterly free in all respects, it still would not be cheap
enough for some.
In terms of the English, the thing I have to change most is semi-final, which is hyphenated
but most people don’t do it and word spell checking marks this as an error. Looking at what
Word picks up; I have long realised that my grammar leaves a lot to be desired and for every-
one’s protection I run all submissions I get through Word. There is much, much more to talk
about but that will do for now.