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Re: A plague of subheads

Ok, memory lane. What do I see? I'm just out of college with a job as a copy editor of technical textbooks, in the late 'sixties, sitting in a roomful of cubicles with other copy editors.
 
These were the last days of lead type and the early days of film typesetting. No computers yet, where I worked. We still used galleys, those long rolls (not sheets) of printout that were later made into books.
 
Copy editors were trained to mark the original manuscripts, assigning each head and subhead a code of A, B, C, or D to guide the printer in font selection. If the authors had not used subheads appropriately we would take them out, move them around, or put them in. Authors had a chance to review the changes.
 
Heads and subheads had nothing to do with design, for none of us had any way to know where the headings would fall on a finished page. They were intended to help guide the reader through some really dense material.
 
Subheads are just a tool and can be helpful in some cases and annoying in others. The better the writing, the more it can flow along without them.
 
Betty Mackey, Publisher
B. B. Mackey Books
P. O. Box 475
Wayne, PA 19087
bbmackey@prodigy.net
www.mackeybooks.com
 
 
----- Original Message -----
 

Absolutely. But their primary function is visual. The degree to which they are both is a function of the editor's talent.

Brook 

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