# Edit guide
presented by Masato Nakata

## What's this guide about?

What I keep in mind when Editing 推敲
Applicable to Japanese and English, and even other languages
Focus on "edit" ── i.e., surficial, grammatical, wording checks
Not focus on semantical revision

## 1st principle of editing

Don't hesitate to rewrite!
If you don't come up with a good modification,
rewrite the whole sentence,
the whole paragraph,
the whole section, and more

## 2nd principle of editing

Read back again and again, and yet again!
Never overlook the slightest oddity
Never trust yourself

## 3rd principle of editing

Be conscious, be consistent
Consistency is the most important rule governing a document

# Lexicons

## Misspellings

Beware the misspellings that are not detectable by spell-checkers
Similar pronunciation, but different meanings:
  • to vs. too
  • dessert vs. desert
  • discrete vs. discreet
  • pain vs. pane

## British vs. American

Spell-level differences:
  • -ise/-ize.: localise/localize, specialisation/specialization
  • -our/-or: colour/color, behaviour/behavior
  • -re/-er: metre/meter, centre/center
  • -el-/-ell-: modelled/modeled, labelling/labeling
  • -ce/-se: defence/defense, practise/practice
  • misc: grey/gray, encyclopaedia/encyclopedia
Word-level differences (e.g. petrol/gasoline) ── Just memorize!
Literature, laws, politics tend to exhibit differences

## Plural forms

Plural of loan words (foreign words)
  • focus → foci
  • simplex → simplices
  • complex → complexes
  • formula → formulae (formulas is more common, tho)
  • schema → schemata
  • mouse → mice
  • brother → brethren (Religion)

# Grammar

## Articles 冠詞

A(n), the, or no articles
  • My son is at a school. ── Which school?
  • My son is at the school. ── In the school, but not attend class?
  • My son is at school. ── Good student!

## Tense/aspect/voice 時制・相・態

Conjugation of verbs:
  • Create(s)
  • Created
  • Is/was creating
  • Is/was created
  • Have/had created
Participles:
  • NOUN created
  • NOUN creating

## Position of adverbs

Adverbs come before or after
  • Manually created vs. Created manually
  • In the future, we will ... vs. We will ... in the future
  • However, it fails vs. It, however, fails

## Conjunctions 接続詞

A sentence cannot start with a conjunction.
  • It is good. So, I buy it.
  • It is good, so, I buy it.
  • It is good, so I buy it.
  • It is good. Therefore, I buy it.
  • It is good. That led me to buy it.
But they are allowed in the informal writing. (Like this.)

# Orthography 正書法

# Orthography
── Numbers & Ordinals

## Enumeration

  • 1, 2, 3, ...
  • one, two, three, ...
  • i, ii, iii, ...
  • I, II, III, ...
  • １, ２, ３, ...（全角数字, full-width）
  • 一, 二, 三, ...

## Math formulae or plain text

  • 数式フォント：... about $5,000$ tokens ...
  • 本文フォント：... about 5,000 tokens ...
  • 数式フォント：$1$ 個
  • 本文フォント：一個
In many cases, it cannot be perfectly consistent

## Decimal separators

  • 1234567.8
  • 1,234,567.8
  • 1.234.567,8 (French style)

## Significant digits

  • 0.1
  • 0.10
  • 0.100

# Orthography
── Full-/half-width
（全角・半角）

## Greek alphabets

  • α (Unicode U+03B1) vs. $\alpha$
Maybe handled as half-width, depending on TeX engines

# Orthography
── Spacing

## Around symbols

Beware of spaces before/after symbols
  • ,, ., !, ? (punctuation)
  • ', " (quotations)
  • (), , [] (parentheses)
  • / (slash), - (hyphen), & (ampersand)

## Units ── English

Always put spaces before SI units
  • 1 kg, 0.50 N
Not always put spaces before/after non-SI units
  • 1%, $1

## Units ── Japanese

Even before SI units, some people do not put spaces
For consistency with Japanese units: 円, 本, etc.
  • 1 kg vs. 1kg
Maybe the majority of scientists prefer to include spaces?

## Math kerning

  • $P_{video}$ → $P_\mathrm{video}$ or $P_\text{video}$

# Orthography
── 漢字

## 漢字 vs. ひらがな

  • する時，する事，した所
  • 言い過ぎる，高まって来る
  • 見倣す
  • したことが有る（vs. 在る，ある），食べ無い
  • 或る単語
  • しても良い，し易い，し難い
  • 従って，却って，此処，且つ，但し
  • 〜の様に
  • 一つ目（vs. 一つめ），一つ一つ（vs. 一つひとつ）
文科省によると，「漢字でもひらがなでもどちらでも良いが，ひらがなの方が読みやすい．」

## 別表記

  • 関数 vs. 函数
  • 才 vs. 歳
  • 活かす vs. 生かす
  • 満たす vs. 充たす
  • 慶應 vs. 慶応
ニュアンスが異なるもの：
  • 硬い，固い，堅い
  • 現す，表す，著す，顕す
  • 作る，創る，造る
  • 空ける，開ける