h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Forgive the umlaut missing from the subject line

Your entry on the B.O.C. having been selected for the UnderGuide, I've come round to introduce myself: I shall be 'polishing' it.

What this involves is, firstly, me making a copy of it, which will go on to become the finished article.

Then I'm going to do a bit of polishing. Firstly, I'm going to have to do a bit of work on the Guide ML - which will make it look a bit more 'open' and break up those blocks of text - then I'd like to tidy up the formatting a bit.

At present, it's a bit difficult to tell what is an album, what's a song-title, what's a quotation and so on. So, I'd like to try to make that a bit clearer by ...

Actually, with all of this, it's probably rather easier for me to show you what I mean, than to tell you about it in the abstract. So, I'll go ahead and do the formatting - and only the formatting - and, once I've finished, I'll drop a link on this thread so that you can see what I've done (it should also pop up in your 'Guide Entries' list).

BUT (and here's the important bit), because this is the UnderGuide rather than the Edited Guide, YOU get the final say-so. If you don't like anything that's been done to it ... say so. And, as far as the actual writing is concerned, that's all yours: I'm just here to polish.

If I've got any suggestions, I'll run them by you. But they will only be suggestions

Right, here's the UnderGuide version: A7281722

That's the formatting done

I've also put a few list devices in a few places (sing out if you don't like); made the link work in footnote 10; tidied up one or two bits of punctuation ...

One or two things I haven't done and would like to run by you:

It's now inverted commas for songs and certain other things, italics for albums and books and quotation marks for quotations - basically, I've just made this consistent. However, I could make some of the quotations stand out a bit more, if you'd like (those lines from 'ME-262', for instance), by using 'blockquote' tags (this italicises them and indents them in a little block of their own - I could do the same with the subheader quotations too). Speaking of which ...

The titles of Patti Smith's albums: would these be better off as subheaders too? I wanted to ask, but it would break up that section nicely (just makes it a bit easier on the eye).

Anyway, I'll leave you to have a look

oh, wow, excellent!

Please feel free to make any other style amendments that are called for.

I'm impressed.

Thanks, Trin!

Although one thing occurs:- the Underguide logo in the top right.

How easy would it be to import a version of the band's logo to illustrate the article?

From a point of view of copyright, it's important to say that the Blue Öyster Cult logo has always been one of the conventionally accepted astrological symbols for the planet Saturn (in his aspect of Chronos the Destroyer, apparently, or of Death the Grim Reaper).

As such, it must be in the public domain and uncopyrightable, therefore there wouldn't be any issues with using it. (If it were, the band could slam a copyright charge on every professional and amateur astrologer in the world for using their logo every time they do a birthchart... as an astrologer MUST do, as Saturn is in everyone's horoscope!)

Ö :- ALT + 153 (numeric keypad), incidentally!

Good! I'm glad you like it In that case, I may do a tiny bit more tinkering, but nothing major.

(The numeric keypad thing needs a little more fiddling with in Guide ML, by way of the tag. It needs to be done in a certain way so that it can be read by different systems. Or something like that. Anyway, one of the h2g2 Guide-ML buffer's most useful pages can be found here: GuideML-Characters).

As for the symbol - sounds great! I'll see what I can find

Oops - here's an actual link instead

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/GuideML-Characters

Right - there's nothing in the picture library (though I can do you a grim reaper right now, if you're interested).

To get a particular picture made involves making a request with the Community Artists (again, because of the need for everything to be in approved Guide-ML). I think that can be done (as you say, copyright wouldn't be an issue for an astrological symbol), but it might take a bit of time.

Are we talking about a particularly squiggly letter 'h' with a cross at the top? As with the one near the bottom of this page:

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/astronomy/planets/saturn/

Because the symbol on the B.O.C. website seemed to be an upside down question mark, also with a cross at the top.

The "upside-down question mark" is also a conventional sign for Saturn/Chronos: the "letter h with the crossbar" is closely related, if you view the lower loop on the "h" as a symbolic sickle, as befits the Planet of Death!

Although a Grim Repaer would be a lovely touch and I totally approve!

Cheers

AP

I've done just a tiny bit more tinkering (made the quotes lower down stand out a bit more) ... and put in a Reaper!

I think this is 'done' Are you happy for it to go on into the UnderGuide?

(It struck me after we spoke about other pictures for it, that if you're still planning an Edited Guide entry on the B.O.C. at some point in the future, you'd probably have more joy there).

Oo, just one last thing:

>>a middle eight where the guitar stings alternate with the sound of marching jackboots<<

Do you mean 'stings', or should that be 'strings'?

I'm very happy!

Thank you.

A guitar sting (definitely no "r"): I suppose that defines a short sharp burst of guitar playing of the sort to be found in the middle eight of "ME-262", which kind of runs:

{Three sharp staccato chords on guitar - marching jackboots - more sharp staccato guitar chords - more marching jackboots - cut back to three more guitar chords - cue siren and bursting bombs - back to guitar}

You have to listen to it to appreciate the sheer depths of bad taste the song plumbs!

Thank you once more and I shall watch the Fromt Page in days to come!

AP

Not at all - my pleasure!

I rather thought it would be 'sting' - it's that kind of writing, frankly: I hope you'll be putting much more like it in the AWW in the future

More in the AWW would be good .

Just coming by to say you're currently on the front page Agprov.

and thanks again.

Thank you for help with the UG version!

Just to draw you to A8379732, which is an attempt to re-create this article in the approved EG form - some way to go yet and quite a bit of work to do, although this may be the first circulatable version for discussion!