Purim Book Discussion and Brainstorming

Everybody: don't star proofreading comments for attention.

@IsaacMoses ooh, how time flies! Chanukah was the other option (besides Purim) that got positive feedback this year IIRC, so doing that one next sounds good to me. We should remember to bring it up on meta in mid-to-late summer. (Early because we don't want to wait until Cheshvan to start, but who's going to pay attention in Tishrei?)

@TRiG :) If that was proofreading under diminished capacity, I shudder to think what a more alert TRiG would generate.

@IsaacMoses :-) Thanks again to you, @TRiG, @msh210, @BabySeal, and MotherMoses for all the work this week, and everybody else who asked, answered, and compiled the questions! I am looking forward to spreading Purim joy around Pittsburgh.

@TRiG Once again, thank you very much for all your help. I've incorporated or at least considered all of your notes.

pg 6 "And so indeed the second party was free of idols, and Esther felt free to make her plea, which indeed was successful." -- omit either "indeed".

pg 6 "would be in her own private apartments"... probably omit "in".

pg.6: "She realized, then, that such a place is not suitable for a miracle to take place." -- I'm not liking this syntax/usage. I think "...place is not suitable for a miracle." or "...place is not suitable for a miracle to take place in." would be better. (And preferably the former.)

..... actually, "was" would better than "is", too.

pg. 5, bottom, "In other words, you're scared to visit the king now because you're not sure how he feels about you, how do you know the situation won't be the same when it comes time to save your life." should be "In other words, you're scared to visit the king now because you're not sure how he feels about you; how do you know the situation won't be the same when it comes time to save your life?" (semicolon in middle and question mark at end)

page 5, boldfaced pasuk - perhaps use regular face, since bold is otherwise exclusive(?) to q&a headings. Same on page 22 near the bottom.

Alright, I think we've got a 90% first draft: PDF Word

@IsaacMoses thanks, good idea.

WORD: FULL / CARD

FIRST (HOPEFULLY LAST) PRODUCTION DRAFT (v 1.0): PDF: FULL / BOOKLET / CARD

Seriously, as for the Hagada, you've done a tremendous service to the quality of the document. Thank you. TZT for now.

@TRiG Thanks very much for your heretofore tireless efforts!

("Is he going to find anything?" I thought, "We've already had three people go over it. Well, if he finds nothing to correct, we can celebrate that.")

HOPEFULLY LAST ROUGH DRAFTS (v 0.81): BOOK_WORD / BOOK_PDF / BOOK_FOLDABLE_PDF

/ CARD_WORD / CARD_PDF

@MonicaCellio I'm not sure whether it should be the title, but to answer your question, it's a paraphrase of a verse from Esther (4:14).

The spacing around the line separating Qs from As is inconsistent on the first 3 Qs in the book -- no extra space on 1, extra space below on 2, and extra space above and below on 3. When we decide which we want, let's update the template for next time.

same par: "once realized" should presumably be "once he realized".

p7 "Shmuel Brin" paragraph: this is the second case I've noticed (in the PDF) of the descender on a "g" being clipped (first was "Haman's 'god'" a couple pages back). Is this an artifact of the PDF conversion and reading on-screen (fewer pixels than print)? Does it do that in a printed copy too? (Haven't tested.) Later: there are more on p8 in the Q. I think it's a pattern.

Re 3 comments ago: but "(No source.)" here seems completely fine. I think the other one only got my attention because it's a longer sentence.

p7 par 1: "to make sure the Jews [do] not depend" - missing "do".

Same par: would @msh210 accept a friendly amendment to change "Mordechay" to "Mordechai" there? It's the only variant from the other form on that page so it jumped out at me. But we respect contributors' individual voices and transliteration schemes, so he gets to decide this one.

p6 last par: the two consecutive parenthetical sentences read awkwardly to me. Can one of them be promoted to a non-parenthetical sentence? Also, instead of "No source" consider "I have no source" or some such, to make it a complete sentence.

p6 question par: is that an em-dash in "Esther 5:4-8"? It looks too long (reads as a dash to me rather than a hyphen).

p5 last par: comma after "about you" should be a semicolon; sentence should end with a question mark.

p4 - consider making "teaching the Purim story to children" the first Q in its section, since it follows the section of megillah questions. (I make this suggestion from the TOC alone, not having read the Qs yet to see how it all flows.)

p3 - it'd be great if we could prevent "Mi Yodeya" from breaking across the two columns (last word of col1 is "Mi"). There's not really room to add a couple words somewhere in the first half (don't want it to overflow the page), but possibly if we shrink the gutter by as little as 0.1" it'd do what we want. (Note: I'm reviewing the PDF so haven't tried this experiment.) This is a nit.

p3 par1 -- "their sweet tooth" feels a little awkward because I don't think all my friends share one tooth, but you definitely don't want to pluralize either. Figures of speech are hard. I should just get over it. :-)

אם לעת כזאת - I parsed this with some thought, but my difficulty was that "if this time" didn't seem to make a lot of sense as a title. Am I missing something? Is everything here spelled as intended? (It obviously doesn't match the English title below.)

@BabySeal Y"K

Page 4, bottom, copr. notice: perhaps instead of "user contributions licensed...", use "user contributions © 2010[en dash]2014, licensed...".

@TRiG @IsaacMoses is a prophet.

Page 3, col1, in the Question: you use straight apostrophes. That's great for the 'Net but the usual in print things is typographic apostrophes, and I really think it looks better. (Actually, I'm surprised Word didn't convert them.) Again, I'm not gonna keep pointing this out in this version unless you want me to.

@IsaacMoses These notes are on the Google Docs version of the PDF. Page3, col 1, line 2, two hyphens should be a dash. Usual is en dash with spaces around or em dash without. Some people use em dash with spaces, I think. Whatever, just be consistent throughout the document. I'm not gonna point out future instances of hyphens for dashes or inconsistent dashes or spacing around them in this version. (Unless you want me to.) (But this is also relevant in the title "Purim - Mi Yodeya" itself.)

@BabySeal also - Thanks!

@BabySeal If you'd like help (we certainly don't want this to interfere with your schoolwork), you could add the list to the meta post and invite people to help with definitions. The post is community wiki so everybody can edit.

@BabySeal A clap of the flippers to you!

@BabySeal wonderful! Much appreciated.

@TRiG It only sounds clever because you're saying it in some sort of European accent.

@IsaacMoses Haven't read this, but it looks relevant: docs.google.com/gview?url=http://www.jewishideasdaily.com/…

Let's use this room for brainstorming (now) and (presumably) organizing the effort later. Please remember to bring things back to the meta post (linked under the room name) when ready!