Karen

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So you can imagine the glee with which I immersed myself in Kristen Cashore’s Graceling. Katsa is just my kind of heroine: wild, strong, determined—but full of mistakes and inner conflict. Her transformation provides an excellent lesson in self-knowledge and self-mastery. Graceling ranks among the books young women and young men should read.

What is the book about, you ask? In my excitement, I kind of forgot to explain. The Seven Kingdoms are ruled by monarchs, some wise, some foolish. Magic exists in this world in the form of gracelings, people born with superhuman skill. A graceling might, for example, be an exceptional cook, or an adept swimmer, or the best tree climber you have ever seen. Revered or feared for their gifts, gracelings live difficult lives.

Katsa has a killing grace. Her ability to hurt and maim is feared throughout the kingdoms; her uncle, King Randa, uses her to advance his ambitions. But Katsa does not wish to kill, and her inner impulse to control her grace—to do right—sets in motion a complex, suspenseful, satisfying story.

I love the characters; there are many of them, yet I never felt overwhelmed or forgot who anyone was. I love the settings: wild places vividly described. I love the plot, which paints a full spectrum from horror and sorrow to tenderness and triumph. And, though I understand now that being Katsa is a much greater challenge than I had imagined, part of me still wants to be her.

1. envelope
2. folios
3. approximately
4. text
5. weather patterns
6. a longing for Jupiter
7. coffee ice cream
8. beep
9. morning
10. star

1. chiesa
2. negozio
3. разговор
4. anew
5. what?
6. promises
7. whirlwind
8. mocha
9. drenched
10. reconciliation
11. typography
12. resilience
13. Apollo 1
14. reinforcements
15. responsibility
16. time

First of all, professional editors excel at writing. They have to know how to write in order to recognize and refine good writing. They simply (gasp!) prefer to be editors. Likewise, many writers are excellent editors. Writers of quality understand the need to edit, and they do carefully revise their work.

Second, why continue the tired campaign of pitting writers against editors? We are of the same flesh: the written word.

Finally, why imagine this one’s or that one’s failure when, clearly, so many successful and happy authors and editors dwell in the world? I know this goes against the stereotypes of the miserably creative writer and the self-righteously cranky editor but–guess what?–those are myths, too. Ok, we might have the occasional problem with earning enough to feed ourselves, but so does everyone. The point is that we like what we do, and we are good at our respective professions.

So now I am going to get back to editing a research paper about martian geology and climate. I am going to do it well, and I am going to do it with a smile on my face.

• author names,
• date of publication,
• title of publication,
• page number or numbers.

Other embellishments are optional—or required, depending on your taste. These include

• article or chapter title,
• abstract title,
• volume number,
• publisher,
• publisher’s city.

Each element is distinct, so it is important not only that all of them appear but that they appear in a way that sets them apart from each other. Thankfully, we have the usefulness and beauty of punctuation.

• Klein, H.P. (1977) The Viking biological investigation: general aspects. J. Geophys. Res. 82:4677–4680.
• Klein, H.P. (1978) The Viking biological experiments on Mars. Icarus 34:666–674.
• Levin, G.V. and Straat, P.A. (1976) Viking labeled release biology experiment: interim results. Science 194:1322–1329.

Ah. Note, also, the use of italics—another way to set information apart from what surrounds it. (I added the bullet points to make the references stand out; they are not part of the reference entries.)

What you see above are three references formatted according to Astrobiology style (for articles in a journal). You see, then, the ingredients we require and the way in which we blend them together. Astrobiology uses the author-date system for references, so reference lists are organized by author last name. I have come to appreciate my journal’s treatment of references because of its intelligent use of a variety of punctuation. Parentheses are an effective way of setting the year apart so that it is quickly visible. Italics clearly distinguish the journal title from the article title. And a colon nicely stands between the volume and page numbers. Commas and periods to the job; but, if carefully and wisely used, additional punctuation can create references that stand out to the reader.

I have had considerable time to think about this because (1) I have edited a lot of reference lists and (2) I was recently asked to look at the reference formats from other journals. Let’s take the third Viking reference above and see how it looks in a few other styles:

• Levin, G.V.; Straat, P.A. Viking Labeled Release Biology Experiment: Interim Results. Science 1976 194, 1322–1329.

This comes from The ACS Style Guide, 3rd edition. Article titles are optional, but I have decided to include this one. I appreciate that the article and journal title appear directly after the author name—that is a useful way of getting right to the point. A semicolon between author names looks a bit heavy handed, mostly because I am not accustomed to it. Using boldface for the year of publication is one way to make it more visible, but to me it is not as effective as the parentheses. Also, I see that the volume number is italicized, which I am not so keen on.

• Klein, H.P. 1977, JGR, 82, 4677.
• Levin, G.V., & Straat, P.A. 1976, Science, 194, 1322.

Brief and to the point are references in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. The article title has disappeared. In the Klein reference, the Journal of Geophysical Research is compacted to JGR. I must say, this is admirable—the reader swallows powerful little reference pills. I do miss seeing the article title, though.

• Levin, G. V., and P. A. Straat (1976), Viking labeled release biology experiment: interim results, Science, doi: 10.1126/science.194.4271.1322.

This is from the American Geophysical Union, which publishes a number of journals (including JGR, above). Note the spaces between initials. (Copy editors are trained to see spaces. Indeed, in the words of one journal: “spaces matter.”) And the last name comes first only for the first author (see P. A. Straat?). Also, the AGU prefers to use the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) in lieu of a volume and page number. To my mind, there is a excess of commas in this style. A few more periods might help to keep things separate.

• Levin GV, Straat PA (1976) Viking labeled release biology experiment: interim results. Science 194:1322–1329.

My first thought is “Yikes, PNAS*! What did you do to the author names and intitials?” But, after a second look, I quite like how they streamlined that information. The author information stands fine on its own; there is no need for those periods. Altogether, if I had to choose a reference style besides my well-known Astrobiology mantra, I would probably choose this one.

*PNAS is Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. Yeah, sometimes abbreviations are helpful.

Another thing I have learned about reference lists is that a little bit of them goes a long way. So, for now, I am done discussing them! But I may return to chew on them here from time to time.