The hybrid library is not, of course, by any means the only hybrid profession. The computer and the internet spread their tentacles into numerous fields where traditional methods still apply in parallel with electronic. That is very much the case for printing and publishing, and exemplified in this handy little dictionary by a sequence of entries: hot‐ground pulp, hotline, hot link, hot melt adhesive, hot metal composition. And on the opposite page an entry for house style is followed shortly by HTML. Yet, just a page or two earlier there is still an entry for hand press. Gutenberg, too, still merits his entry although Caxton is gone and Plantin and Baskerville are only entered as the names of typefaces: Plantin tells us the origin but gets the century wrong, but for Baskerville no mention of the eponymous John. Black letter finds itself opposite bit map, again exemplifying the mix of ancient and modern.
There has been much discussion in recent years about the demise of the sub‐editor. The entry for Sub‐edit describes the function exactly: “to read, mark and correct a manuscript text, so that it fits house style, making sure that the facts in it are correct, that the illustrations are obtained and are correctly referred to in the text, that the index and page numbers are correct, etc.”. The demise of this function among publishers has led to a regular series of complaints of errors or infelicities in published work of all kinds; this remains a function that the computer can do only very imperfectly and perfunctorily but as long as the accountant rules, the cheapest option is taken and quality suffers as a result.
This is a very workmanlike little dictionary; and not so little, really, with more than 8,000 words and expressions. The printing industry especially has long developed a very specialist and often necessarily very technical vocabulary, while publishing too has its specialised terms and usages. All is comprehensively covered here and if I decry the necessity to include such obvious terms as Management Team or Department, at least they do serve to show the inclusiveness of the work. Among the topics covered are editing, commissioning, contracts and rights, desktop publishing and design, electronic publishing and publishing on the internet, typesetting, papermaking, printing and binding.
Definitions are concise and accurate while for some terms there are also short quotations to illustrate usage. Presumably aimed more at non‐native English speakers, each term also carries a pronunciation guide in phonetic symbols. The dictionary is completed by a series of supplements (a competent sub‐editor might have suggest the term “appendices” as more appropriate): proofreading marks (a page which brings back memories of my early editing days); UK copyright law and resources; UK publishers with web site addresses; book prizes and awards; international book fairs; the Greek alphabet and diacritics; font samples; and a directory of resources on the web.
All‐in‐all this adds up to a very useful little low‐cost paperback dictionary, part of a wider series of similar specialist dictionaries formerly published by P.H. Collin and with which many of our readers are likely to be already familiar. For reasons nowhere explained the name of The Guardian newspaper appears on the front and rear covers. This is specifically aimed at students and people in their first jobs in particular areas of myriad printing or publishing industries. It will certainly be invaluable in those circumstances, and, I suspect, much more widely even than that.
