Chanuka 5775 publication

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TRiG

15:40

Well, this is definitely an early draft, but in the spirit of not proofreading at midnight, here are some remarks:

> Cannukah is such a widely celebrated holiday, but what do people really know about it?

Such that what?

I generally expect such to be followed by that.

It is such a widely celebrated holiday that something-or-other.

Possibly just drop the such.

> Are there questions about Chanukah that they would would like answers to?

Yeah, yeah, the "rule" about not ending sentences with prepositions is bunk, I know, but sometimes it really does lead to more elegant prose. And this, methinks, is one of those times.

...to which they would like answers.

Onelook.com has not heard of octapartite, and suggests ocotopartite instead.

A general rule of thumb is that parts of larger works (chapters, essays, poems) have their titles in quotation marks, while things published as whole in themselves have their titles in italics.

Some publications change this style for themselves: I believe that Newsweek always refers to itself in small block caps.

That said, I would suggest that where the publication actually refers to itself by name, it uses italics. (Ditto for where it refers to its sister publications.)

Apostrophes: curl.

> don't rely on any halacic rulings brought in this book

This usage of bring and brought seems to be the norm for the community to whom this publication is addressed, so I'm a little wary about suggesting a change to it. I'm just going to comment that it interests me.

It appears to be followed by a hyphen, which should be a dash. But it might be an en-dash, in which case it's fine. I'm not sure.

It has spaces each side, so I'm going to say it's an en-dash, and therefore fine.

That serif font in the footer contrasts sharply with the rest of the page. Could it be made smaller, and/or the same font as the body text. Right now it pulls attention from the rest of the page.

> not-allowed to change my name asked

This is followed by a superscript 1. I went searching for a footnote, but couldn't find one.

In the blockquote in LazerA's answer:

> purified ... twenty-fifth

As I said before, in this font, the dots of is butt up against the curls of fs. Using fi-ligatures would make it look nicer.

At the end of sam's answer:

The translitteration of the Hebrew is in a sans-serif font, slightly larger than the surrounding text. Why?

In Double AA's answer there is a parenthetical remark that links are omitted from the printed document. Why not render them as footnotes?

The bullet points in Double AA's answer appear to be a couple of small Hebrew letters, rather than normal bullets. Is this intentional? What do they mean?

> Note that Rashi to Chaggai 2:6 connects his prophecies to the Maccabees.

I think that this is using Rashi to mean the commentary written by Rashi, which I suppose is a common enough usage in this field to pass unremarked. Still, I'd suggest a small tweak. How about Rashi's commentary on Chaggai 2:6?

Technically speaking, the pronoun his is unconnected to anything. It means Chaggai, but he's not been mentioned yet, only his self-titled book.

I'll try a complete rewriting, just for the fun of it.

Note that Rashi, in his commentary on Chaggai 2:6, connects Chaggai's prophecies with the Maccabbees.

I changed to to with, because one might read prophecies to the Maccabbes as one unit, and then wonder with what Rashi was connecting these prophecies.

Credits

> this Purim book

Ah, I take it these haven't been rewritten.

(Also, I see that the apostrophes in this section are curled.)

Last page

> Got through Purim?

Ditto.

The titles of the other publications are there in sans-serif. which I dislike. I'd go for italics.

...

That's all, folks.

1 hour later…

Scimonster

17:32

@TRiG I used "such" to mean "it's a very widely celebrated holiday"

@TRiG What interests you about "bringing" rulings?

2 days ago, by Isaac Moses

There's supposed to be a footnote on Day 1 p 1, but it disappeared in my messing with the header.

@TRiG I just see bullet points.

@TRiG Yes, when we say Rashi to __ it means Rashi's commentary to __, but considering that we're aiming for people who aren't well-versed in Jewish jargon to be able to understand, perhaps this would be a welcome change.

Thanks for the initial proofreading!

1 hour later…

TRiG

18:43

@Scimonster I see them as normal bullet points in the Dropbox preview, and when I open the PDF directly in Firefox, but they printed as letters. Look like a subscript backward gamma followed by a lambda.

@Scimonster It's not a usage I've ever seen outside this site.

in V'dibarta Bam, Jul 19 '12 at 13:23, by TRiG

There's a particular usage of the word bring which I've seen only on this site. It intrigues me.

@TRiG They're Greek letters; I'm pretty sure these ones are Hebrew, both because that seems more likely and because the letterforms are slightly less regular. Hebrew letters don't have the angularity of Greek or Latin letters.

Scimonster

19:02

@TRiG Well, i didn't print. Could you maybe take a picture?

TRiG

@Scimonster It'll have to be tomorrow. I have neither phone nor camera with me.

Scimonster

@TRiG That's fine.

Most people here won't see it until tomorrow anyways. :)

Scimonster

19:16

I was going to add the images from Nerot Shabbat @ HebrewBooks to this post, but did a word-count first and came up with >800 for both pages. Skip the images? (cc @IsaacMoses)

4 hours later…