l..Pasting up Reproduction Copies 48 ? .. Tools 48  .. How to transport reproduction copies 56  .. How to paste up 58  .. Step-by-step instructions for pasting a headline into a typed page 59  .. Hints 60  ..Bits to paste in 61  L---P----1----+----2----+----3----+@10-4----T-#V-5----R----r----r----7--T-+--r 87cL---+----1----+----2----+----3----+@10-4----+----5----+----6----+----7----+----8----+-C--9----+ ---L--P-----1----+----2----T----3----+@10-4-C c/c V---L--P-----1----+----2----T----3----+@10-4-C V-- ---L--P-----1----+----2----T----3----+@10-4-C c/r V---L--P-----1----+----2----T----3----+@10-4-R V-- ---L--P-----1----+----2----T----3----+@10-4-R r/c V---L--P-----1----+----2----T----3----+@10-4-C V-- ---L--P-----1----+----2----T----3----+@10-4-R r/r V---L--P-----1----+----2----T----3----+@10-4-R V-- 87rL---+----1----+----2----+----3----+@10-4----+----5----+----6----+----7----+----8----+-R--9----+ M--LQ-P-----1----+----2----T----3----+@10-4-R .N:29 ..N: was 53 when previous section was single-column @ 100% .M:1 ..dh:--------------- ..dm:1 ..pb ..xl:4 ..xr:18 ..X:12 ..XB:7 .L:99 ..L:66 .IF:Index4.man .KF:Content4.MAN ..$$Z:MI$$, $$Day$$, , $$D Mon Year$$ 87rL---+----1----+----2----+----3----+@10-4----+----5----+----6----+----7----+----8----+-R--9----+ .HL:How to Edit Your Club's Newsletter...page $$$ .HL:________________________________________________________________________________________________________  .HR:Pasting up Reproduction Copies...page $$$ .HR:________________________________________________________________________________________________________  87cL---+----1----+----2----+----3----+@10-4----+----5----+----6----+----7----+----8----+-C--9----+ ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿPasting up Reproduction Copies ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ .K:Pasting up Reproduction Copies ---L--P-----1----+----2----T----3----+@10-4-R Tools  .K:-Tools A drafting board: essential. Any flat, smooth surface with one true straight edge will do, but it is better to have a surface devoted exclusively to drafting. If food is ever allowed anywhere near your drafting surface, sooner or later you are going to get a big grease spot right in the middle of something you can't replace. (This is one reason that drafting boards continued to be made of unfinished softwood long after drafting pins went out of style: any trace of dirt will show up conspicuously, and few people are ignorant enough to think that it's permissible to set a cup of coffee on unfinished softwood.) A proper draftsman's table is best, and I imagine that a light table (a translucent drafting board with a light under it) would be the cat's pajamas, but I've been getting along nicely with a simple board that fits into a big canvas envelope I made for it. The envelope has a holster for my T-square, a large pocket that holds my other drafting tools, and sling handles for pulling it out of the hall closet. I lay the board on a freshly- scrubbed dining table when it's time to paste up. A drafting board should be flat and smooth, have at least one true edge, and be bigger than the biggest sheet of paper you are going to use. I use a 20" x 24«" board for 17" x 11" paper and find it just right. That's probably because I'm used to it, but it's handy to be able to put sheets side-by-side now and again. It came with a pad of 18" x 24" tracing paper, which, I presume, fits the board reasonably well. A drafting board without a T-square would be like an anvil with no hammer; some boards have a T- square built right in. I've never used a "drafting machine," but there are enough times that I put my T- square to one side that I don't think I'd like having it nailed to the board. On the other hand, there are times when it slips at inopportune moments; it might be helpful to be certain that it's always at the same angle to the edge of the board. Not too long before writing the first edition, I read an old high-school mechanical-drawing text _ so old that the students are instructed to stick drawing pins into their boards _ and found the author as adamant about putting the head of the T-square on the left side of the board as an Effective Cycling instructor is about putting a bike on the right side of the road. What nonsense, said I, the natural thing is to pick up tools with the right hand, and I've been getting along fine for ten or more years doing it the other way. So I tried it, and guess what? It really does work better to hold the ruler down with the left hand and fiddle things with the right. I might not have managed at all with the head on the right if I weren't slightly ambidextrous. A T-square should be just long enough to reach across the board. The edges of the blade should be smooth and straight, and the blade should be at an exact right angle to the head and never wobble. If your old T-square wobbles, don't toss it out before you look for screws to be tightened where the blade joins the head. If you find them, inspect and tighten them at intervals thereafter. Draftsman's triangle: A piece of transparent plastic with three ruler-straight edges and one right angle. Three beveled edges on the hole in the middle serve for picking it up. Try to choose transparent red, rather than clear _ unless your habits are so tidy that you always know precisely where you put everything down. Searching for an invisible tool is not fun. A 60/30 triangle takes up less room than a 45- degree triangle, and for pasting up, they work exactly the same. Make sure that one leg is more than 11" long, so that you can mark the sides of an 8«" x 11" rectangle in one stroke each. You draw horizontal lines with your T-square and rest a triangle on it to draw vertical lines. (Draftsmen also use triangles to draw slanting lines, but we have no use for those.) I never used to bother with a triangle, saying that my drafting board's edges were at true right angles and I could use the T-square in both directions. But while studying for my lecture at GEAR, I decided to dig out a large 45ø triangle I'd bought when I was making bias tape, and guess what? Doing it the way the experts say to do it is a lot easier. Scissors: If you are improvising most of your tools, .i:scissors put your budget into your scissors. I have a heavy pair over a quarter of a century old which will cut a sheet of letter paper lengthwise in two snips, and I wouldn't trade them for a lightweight pair of modern scissors if you threw in a computer. (A laser printer, and I might be tempted _ but the price of those is coming down and a good pair of scissors is hard to find.) Though long-bladed editing shears are a great help, old sewing scissors will do if they still cut clean. Warning: do not "borrow" scissors still being used for sewing and cut paper with them; if you do, there's a chance that your dead body will be found with a tape measure around its neck. Drafting tape: the reason drawing pins went out of style. You'll notice this item missing from my list of expenses: there was a reel of drafting tape in the drawing-board case when I "stole" it ten years ago (my spouse recently asked to borrow "my" drafting board, having forgotten that it's his) and I'm just now nearing the core of the reel. Whatever the initial expense, it can't work out to very much per year. I notice that stationers offer drafting tape in the form of pre-cut round dots on a backing. This is no doubt more expensive than regular tape, but it looks convenient and if your 'zine isn't humongous, you'll use an average of three dots per session: it's more convenient to re-use the old dots than to reach for new ones, and tape works better the second time around anyhow. After three or four uses tape begins to lose its grip, but you'll notice how firmly it grips when you peel it off the previous sheet, and throw it away before a catastrophic failure happens. A caution: drafting tape's grip grows stronger with time, so if you leave your work and aren't absolutely certain you'll be back the same day _ make that the same quarter of the same day _ untape the paper and put it away. If you keep cats, you'll be doing this anyway. Never stick drafting tape to anything it would be disastrous to tear. Never stick tape of any kind over an image, except to conceal or destroy it. Rubber Cement: we may call it "paste-up" but don't use paste. Do not allow any adhesive that  30 contains water anywhere near a reproduction copy. Water wrinkles paper. Rubber cement is the only bottled adhesive that doesn't wrinkle paper, and the only adhesive you can get off if you have to use a paste-up a second time. Professionals use "waxers" to put a special wax on the back of the thing to be stuck down. When the work is burnished, the wax softens and sticks firmly to both pieces of paper. Wax, which is easier to lift when you err and has the advantage of not oozing out when rubbed down, has ousted cement from shops where paste-up goes on all day, but for the small- scale amateur, rubber cement is the only acceptable adhesive. I'll go farther than that and say that there is only one acceptable brand of rubber cement: Best Test White Rubber Paper Cement, which comes in little red cans (actually a red and black design on a white ground, but it looks red from a distance) and is sold only in art-and-drafting supply stores. Look for little red cans near the huge red cans; it comes in several sizes. My store recently stopped carrying four-ounce cans of cement; if yours still has it, buy that size even if it costs as much as an eight-ounce can. You'll be money ahead because cement doesn't keep worth a nickel, and one tends to try to use up the can. Since it thickens very slowly, you can be having a lot of trouble with it and never realize that you're having any trouble at all until you finally use it up and start a fresh new can. And if you do notice that it's thick and add thinner, you might add too much thinner and end up with cement that soaks into your paper. All in all, the smallest can is worth paying extra; if you could use up a gallon in a reasonable time, you'd be using a waxer. I've used stationery-store cement in emergencies, and it works, but it's harder to use, and as a beginner, you need all the help you can get. Rubber cement is an excellent cleaning agent for paper. Among the things it removes are monotype and typing; be careful where you put it. Photocopier toner is fairly safe from cement, but loses its resistance if the copy has been curled or sharply bent while, for example, peeling off a mis-glued heading. Some of the younger editors swear by glue sticks. Glue sticks, particularly the removable-restickable types, do have advantages. First and foremost, glue- sticked paper remains sticky until you are good and ready to stick it down. If you don't paste up often enough to get co-ordinated, glue sticks may be your only choice. If you have an elaborate background from which you pick off and replace dates and the like, rubber cement would quickly ruin it. I prefer to mess with copies and keep my original safe, but sometimes readily-available copies just aren't good enough. Glue sticks are easier to learn how to use than rubber cement, but the speed and grace you have on the first attempt are about as good as you are going to get; with practice, rubber cement can be applied very rapidly. The instructions on the glue stick will tell you to hold the stick by the base so that you push the glue out of the sleeve as you rub. If you do that, you will get too much glue and it will roll up in little worms. Hold the stick by the sleeve, near the business end, and alternate between rubbing glue on the paper and smoothing glue out with one of the little flanges that protrude from the rim of the sleeve. The glue seems to feed without any special effort, but if you find that it doesn't come out fast enough, make an occasional light stroke while holding the base. Rubber Cement Pick-up: A small block of latex rubber found in drafting-supply stores. Rubber cement sticks to it, and you use it like an eraser to clean up your copy. Don't use it until the cement has dried completely. Don't rub back and forth; that will rumple your paper. Continue moving in the same direction for a while after lifting the pick-up, to be sure that you don't catch the paper and drag it back. A rubber cement pick-up can also be used to remove bits of monotype left behind after you've picked up what you can with the point of your knife. Be careful: even well-burnished monotype will come off in spots if rubbed with a latex block. If an unwanted monotype character hasn't been burnished, you can sometimes get it off by coating it with rubber cement, allowing it to dry well, then picking up the cement with your latex block. A pick-up will smear typing; if you have to pick up cement near typewriter ink, press straight down and lift straight up to blot the cement away. If you've got cement right on the typing, you might be able to save it by blotting with your pick-up; it will fade the ink, but if you don't rub, it won't smear. White paint: begin with a bottle of water-based typewriter correction fluid. You'll need the brush and bottle to use with the drafting-supply store paint anyhow. Don't, I repeat, do not use freon-based correction fluid. Quick-dry correction fluid is designed for people who have to wait for it to dry before continuing to type. It dries much too fast to be any use for the sort of work you are doing. Besides that, it dissolves copy toner and makes a mess. It won't give you much of either sort of trouble, however, because it will quickly solidify in the bottle and you will throw it away. Correction fluid is wonderfully convenient when you want to shake it up, cover a typing error, cap the bottle, and go on with your work. It's a royal pain when painting over little specks is your work. You won't use up many bottles of whiteout before you start wanting something in a more-accessible container. Go to the art-and-drafting store and look for a one-ounce bottle of opaque white watercolor. As near as I can make out from the faded and worn label, mine was made specifically for touching up reproduction copies. Where whiteout can be shaken, watercolor has to be stirred, and stirred with something stiff. I happen to have a stainless- steel knife with a thin, round-ended blade like the blade of a palette knife; I find that ideal. Stirring is more trouble than shaking, but once the paint is properly stirred, that's it for the day's work. If it starts to settle, swishing a bit with the brush is enough. You're going to open and close this jar a lot more times than a professional would, and let it sit longer between openings. After the paint is about half gone, keep a paper handkerchief handy when opening the jar, in case you need to wipe rust from the lid off the lip of the jar to keep it out of the paint. If the jar is rusty, also wipe the lid. Paper is abrasive enough to do a tolerable job of rust removal, and it should be a while before you have more trouble. Speaking of opening the jar, when it has been a month since you last opened a jar of paint, you are going to need a strap wrench to get the lid off. There may be something in the kitchen that you've been using on recalcitrant ketchup bottles. A rubber band wrapped around the lid of the jar will give the strap wrench a better grip. (A rubber band on the lid of your rubber cement is also a good idea; besides giving your fingers more purchase, it makes it obvious which bottle is for current use and which is the backup and ought not to be opened.) A professional applies touch-up paint with a fine, long-handled camel's-hair brush which is carefully cleaned at the end of each working day. I put about .3 oz of water into an empty .6-oz correction-fluid bottle, and use the brush in the cap. The bottle  31 makes a handy place to park the brush when I'm not using it, and when I'm done for the day all I have to do is screw down the cap. It's also handy to have water right there when the paint needs thinning. The brush should be wiped across scrap paper before and after use avoid carrying water into the paint and paint into the water. Correction Tape: Optional, but handy. Correc tion tape is a strip of white paper with glue on the back, preferably the kind of glue that allows you to pick up the tape and reposition it. It's useful for covering large marks which might warp if painted out. I use two-line tape, which is a third of an inch wide, most of the time. One-line tape (one-sixth inch) is useful in tight places. I use the six-line tape (one inch) only a few times a year. Unwanted marks that large are easy to cover with paper. Cut the tape off the roll with scissors, or trim the ragged edge before you stick the strip down. If you have enough space between images, correction tape is a convenient way to paste in illustrations. Because it is so thin, the edges of correction tape rarely photograph; sometimes I will cover the imperfect edges of a cemented image with tape. Removable correction tape is particularly handy for temporarily assembling assorted bits that I want to have copied at the same ratio; it does less damage than drafting tape, and doesn't show on the copies. It's also the best way to paste in something you have only one copy of and may have to use over again. Make sure your contributors know that if you find transparent tape anywhere near artwork or camera- ready text, you will have hysterics and go into a decline. (If you can't convincingly threaten a decline, threaten to punch them out.) If it's too late, pick it up with two fingers, hold it at arm's length, avert your gaze, and say "What [pick expletive which fits (or, preferably, sharply contrasts with) your image] am I supposed to do with this." This no doubt seems extreme to you, but if left to their own devices, they invariably stick tape right over the image. Scalpel: often called an Exacto knife, after a popular brand. Get the kind with a triangular blade, shaped like a long rectangle cut in half. A knife is used primarily for picking up small bits, lifting the edges of pieces of paper so you can get your fingers under them, and nudging small bits of paper that are almost where they belong. Even the sharpest knife can't cut as clean as a pair of scissors; if you have to make a cut with a knife (cutting a bit out of the middle of something when you want to save both pieces, for example) try to manage it so that you can clean up the cut with scissors, or cover it with white tape. If this isn't practical, use a new blade that is making its very first cut, and eschew newspaper in favor of a special cutting surface. If the cuts are small, an end grain cutting board from a kitchen-supply store is perfect. For long cuts, look in the same stores that sell the knives. For very long cuts, look in a sewing-supply store for a "rotary cutter" and a cutting mat. A knife may also be used when a cut has to be dead straight, as when cutting corrugated boxes into protective boards. The blade of your knife is theoretically replaceable, like the blade of a razor, but paper and cardboard dull a knife faster than you can change blades. Keep a whetstone handy and give the knife a lick on each side after every stroke after you've worn the new off a blade. Take it from one who has learned the hard way: another essential for cutting with a knife is lots and lots of newspaper. Put a half-inch layer under the thing you are going to cut, and let it extend far enough on all sides that you can be sure that you've used too much. Also watch all your body parts and their relation to the direction of the force on the knife. Hold the straightedge _ a metal straightedge; the old name for this was "brass-edge ruler" _ very firmly, but manage the knife with guile rather than force. If you have a good enough grip on your straightedge (I usually kneel on it) you can make several passes and have all the cuts match perfectly. Cut in smooth strokes from one end of the edge to the other. Begin before the place you want cut and continue past it. You will almost certainly have to give the beginning and end of the cut an extra lick anyhow. Do not jump to the conclusion that the cut is finished when the parts separate; picking it up prematurely could tear the cardboard at a corner where it isn't cut quite through. If you need to cut with your knife frequently, a second knife just for cutting is handy to have. The primary knife is likely to be dirtied with rubber cement. An editor who is also an EMT has told me that she can make scissor-clean cuts with a medical scalpel. The method described for cardboard will also work to square up the edges of a booklet. A couple of C clamps to steady the ruler are a big help. Use the point of the knife to flick separated sheets out of your way. This method is recommended only for very  short runs. Some copy shops will trim books brought in to them; several years ago, when I last required such a service, it cost $0.50 per cut/lift. The small card cutter, which is really a grid-marked platform with a huge pair of scissors permanently mounted on the end, might serve for thin booklets. Be careful not to buy a toy card-cutter by mistake. These are also called "paper cutters," "paper trimmers," and "card trimmers." Or just jog the tops and bottoms nice and straight and let the fore-edge pooch out. If the 'zine is folded neatly, a tapering fore-edge won't make it hard to read, and if it's not folded neatly _ why go to all that work to make it look as though it had been printed crooked? Thin 24" wooden ruler with at least one brass- colored steel edge: optional equipment used for cutting cardboard. See "Scalpel". Monotype Stylus-Burnisher: This gadget has a spring-loaded ball stylus on one end for rubbing on rub-on letters, and on the other end it has a slightly- flexible plastic flap for burnishing them. If you don't use monotype, a simple burnisher or a folding bone will do fine. Sometimes I press a hand-carved cedar letter opener into service. You need this gadget to rub down freshly-glued items such as envelope-flaps, stamps, and paste-ups. Rub paste-ups only through a sheet of junk paper, clean side down, to prevent shifting and to avoid marring the image. As the name "folding bone" implies, it is also invaluable when folding paper. I use it only for pressing creases; bookbinders use a folding bone to persuade inner layers to settle into place. Non-reproducing pencil: I love my Copy-Not pen for making notes on things I'm reading, but a pen will make a slightly darker mark whenever you hesitate and sometimes the mark is dark enough to reproduce; if you mean to trust a non-reproducing writing implement not to reproduce, use a pencil. Pale blue is the only color that a copy machine won't pick up _ and some machines can handle that. When in doubt, paint it out. I thought a mechanical pencil with non-reproducing leads was the perfect answer to making fine marks, but the "non reproducing" leads turned out to be purple and I have yet to find out what sort of machine fails to pick it up. Near as I can figure out, all they mean by it is that it isn't a hectograph pencil.  32 If you plan to use the original (a poster, for example), a disappearing-ink pen from the needlework store comes in handy. Don't use it on long-term work; the ink might change color again after a few years. I use it when I'm cutting cardboard protectors; guide marks wouldn't matter, but I like clean protectors. "Air-erasable" ink disappears from brown cardboard in a few minutes. On white paper it takes a day or two in indirect light, or an hour or so in sunlight. Disappearing ink is also good for notes you need now and don't want around later; even if a note persists until you've forgotten what you meant by it, you'll know that it's all right to throw it out. Blue writing pen or blue pencil: never write notes to the printer in black ink; he might think he is supposed to print them. Never say to yourself, "Only an idiot would think this was meant for reproduction"; fifty percent of his customers are idiots. Since blue ink reproduces poorly, blue writing is a good way to get a printer's attention. Don't use non-reproducing ink unless you have to write in the image area (as "put photo #2 here"); it is hard to see, hard to read, and easy to ignore. Don't write on reproduction copies with a ball- point pen except, perhaps, in areas that you know the printer is going to cut off and throw away. Above all, don't write on the back of a photograph with a ball-point pen; it creases the paper and it's going to show on the right side. (The usually-recommended #2 graphite pencil skids over the slick surface of photo paper and the ink in felt-tip pens is likely to soak through to the right side. Beats me. Try a Post-it Note. I put them into individual envelopes and label the envelopes.) (Don't think that you've gotten away with using a felt-tip pen if it doesn't soak through right away. Some inks never stop migrating, particularly in photograph paper.) A sandwich bag: I save time when setting up my drafting board by keeping small implements in a plastic bag that I can empty onto the table beside my board. An unlimited supply of junk paper: This is used to .i:paper keep rubber cement off the drafting board when you cement right up to the edges of things, and to protect paste-ups when you are rubbing them down. If you use a computer, you have plenty. If you don't, try to get some office worker to save you a discarded report. Anything that's clean on one side will do. I find 8« x 11 sheets convenient to use and readily available. I keep a few spoiled 11 x 17 sheets tucked away, but rarely require them. A pica ruler: A ruler which measures in picas (sixths of an inch). I have seen them for sale in art- and-drafting stores, office-supply stores, and computer-supply shops. It may be called a "word processing ruler" or assorted other names. Persist until you find exactly what you want; when mine goes missing, I ignore my five other rulers, both yardsticks, and all three varieties of measuring tape to run around in circles whimpering pitifully. Mine is a strip of transparent plastic an inch and a half wide and a trifle over fifteen inches long. When you hold one end up, it is marked down the right edge in tenths of an inch from "1" to "150". When you hold the other end up, the right edge is marked in sixths and eighths of an inch, labeled from "1" to "90" and "1" to "120". When it's horizontal, the middle stripe is divided into inches and the divisions are marked from "1" to "14" along the upper line and from "14" to "1" along the lower line. The important points:  > The ruler must measure directly in lines and spaces in the system you use: this is usually picas for vertical measurements and tenths of an inch for horizontal measurements. If you are stuck with elite type, the pica scale will do: one pica is two twelve- pitch characters. You need tenths even if you never use ten-pitch type; this scale gives you numbers that you can feed into a calculator. The tenths-scale is much more useful if it runs along an edge of the ruler, rather than down the middle.  > The ruler must be transparent; you can't measure what you can't see.  > It must be longer than the longest thing you will measure: I have been getting on fine with a 15" ruler to measure my 11" x 17" paper. I think a ruler more than 18" long might be cumbersome. (On the other hand, if it were a yard long it would be harder for it to conceal itself.) The 1/8" scale is provided in case your computer saves paper by printing eight lines to the inch. I find it handy for dividing a line into four equal parts. When I pasted up ads for a convention book, and for the first time in my life pasted from scratch instead of dressing up a typed page, I learned that blue is an extremely unfortunate color for the scale- shading on a ruler which is being used to measure non-reproducing pencil marks. A few stripes help you to locate the various scales, but it might be better to have a ruler with no shading at all than to peer through blue. If a ruler with a convenient arrangement of scales is blue -- there's no law that says you can't keep two rulers in your office. Paper: If you are dressing up typed material, you are going to be using typing paper, but if you are going to start with a blank sheet and paste everything, it's convenient to use a heavy paper called "layout board"; that which I've seen is about as thick as post-office postcards. It comes marked with a drop-out blue grid that makes it easier to stick things down neatly. For typing paper, you must strike a balance: you want a stout white paper with no specks, slimeholes, or bits of wood -- but you don't want any watermarks or fancy texture. If you use a lot of white tape, you will need heavier paper than you would need for rubber cement. I prefer 70# offset paper for my 11" x 17" sheets; 60# should be ample for 8«" x 11". (In the bond system, 30# and 24#.) 60# paper is easier to find than 70#, and quite adequate unless large pieces of paper are to be assembled with tape. All your sheets should be the same size. If large and small sheets are stacked together, the small sheets tend to fall out and get lost. Some of the Bikeabout's pages are typed on 11 x 17 paper to be reduced to 8« x 11, and some are to be printed the same size as the reproduction copies. I hardcopy everything on 11 x 17 paper and the printer cuts the margins off when they get in his way. You may think you can save him this trouble, but he doesn't cut the paper until he's ready to put the copy under the camera or tape it to some other sheet; in the meantime, he has a stack of paper that he can pick up with one hand, rather than a basketful of untidy bits. If something is already on a smaller sheet of paper, I tack it to a full-size sheet with drafting tape or correction tape. Remember never to stick drafting  33 tape anywhere that you will mind if it pulls the surface of the paper off. Don't get carried away. If you have fourteen pages on 8« x 11 paper and one special page on 18 x 24 paper, deliver that issue in two packages. Printers sell paper. This is to accommodate people who want to match something they have had printed, so if you want to buy plain, white paper you must explain why you want it and let the printer choose. If you buy paper at a stationer, look among packages meant for feeding copying machines; these papers won't have watermarks. Don't pick anything thinner than 20# bond. 16# paper is too loppy to support paste-ups and too transparent to conceal what it's pasted over. Layout board is found at drafting-supply shops. Don't make originals larger than 11 x 17 without knowing how they will be duplicated. Well, don't make any original without knowing how it will be duplicated. Nearly all office-model copiers nowadays can handle ledger paper, but only nearly all. Some drafting-supply stores have copiers that can handle originals up to a yard wide and any length; look for places that cater to people who make blueprints. Ask first and paste afterward. Extra-fine black drafting pen, medium-point black felt-tip writing pen, and black felt-tip marker: if your newsletter accepts ads, you are going to spend a lot of time touching up unbelievably bad artwork. Wide-mouth wastebasket: Nothing is going to stop the bits you snip off from making right-angle turns in mid-air and ending up fifteen feet from where you are working, but your basket should be big enough that you can dispose of a cement-contaminated sheet of junk paper without taking your eyes off your work. While rearranging my office, I accidentally wound up with a wastebasket under each hand. I found it convenient. Bits to cement down: this deserves a chapter to itself. How to transport reproduction copies  .K:-How to transport reproduction copies It may seem odd to discuss how to carry the pages before discussing how to create them, but you have to create them to withstand the way you will carry them. If a pasted-up sheet is to be rolled, you must not put more than one strip of cement on any one paste- in, the strip must not be more than half an inch wide, and the strip of adhesive must be parallel to the axis of the roll. If you roll a stack of papers, you will notice that the edge of the stack isn't square, as it was when you started, but tapered; each sheet has shifted a little over the sheet below. If you don't leave pasted-together papers free to shift in this manner, they will wrinkle and crease when rolled. If you roll a paper, roll it with the image on the outside. Don't think you can protect it by rolling it on the inside; the proper way to protect paper is to put a blank sheet of paper on top of it. A rolled paper placed on a table with the concave side up tends to snap shut and gives the person trying to read or otherwise use it the impression that he is wrestling an anaconda. If it's a reproduction copy, the situation is even worse: each pasted-on bit rolls up independently. You might be able to photograph such a curly-locks after leaving it under weights for a week, but I wouldn't count on it. Paper with the concave side down is much easier to handle, but better yet is to keep the work flat in the first place. I find 11 x 17 sheets easy to carry flat on my bicycle, and you are unlikely to paste up sheets that won't fit through a doorway. If your sheets are awkward to carry, you can get a portfolio .i:mailing with a handle on it. Only if you have to mail large sheets is there any excuse for rolling reproduction copies. If a sheet is rolled, it must be placed in a stiff tube at once; rolled sheets are vulnerable to accidents. Don't secure a rolled sheet with rubber bands unless you are done with it, but for some reason can't throw it away where you are. To handle a stack of 8« x 11 reproduction copies, put a blank sheet of paper on top, to keep the top sheet clean and prevent the paste-ups from flapping. You may, of course, use this sheet to label the stack and write instructions to the printer -- but write on it elsewhere and then move it to the stack; even a felt-tip pen might crease the sheets below. Keep the side next to the repros clean. If you are going to carry it yourself, all that is necessary is to slip it into a 9 x 12 envelope. If you are going to entrust it to someone else, put a sheet of cardboard into the envelope under the repros. If you are going to mail it, put a sheet of corrugated cardboard into the envelope. (At this stage you may have to move up to a 10 x 13 envelope.) If it would be hard to replace, put another sheet of corrugated board on the other side of the bundle, with the corrugations at right angles to the corrugations of the first sheet. (Now you'll definitely need a 10 x 13 envelope.) Don't mail repros if you've got a choice, and if at all possible, make a reproduction-quality copy of them first. If you buy boxed paper, save the box for stashing finished work. There are special "manuscript boxes" for mailing large quantities of paper. Envelope boxes are handy for filing drafts and other untidy stacks. Never throw out the lovely stout boxes that computer paper comes in. The first thing I noticed when I started using 11 x 17 paper was that 12 x 18 envelopes are hard to come by. Later I decided that there are few envelopes for large paper because large paper is difficult to slip into an envelope without risk of bending, wrinkling, or catching a corner. I cut corrugated cardboard to 11¬ x 17¬ or 11« x 17«. These boards separate stacks of paper in the bookcase and serve as trays to carry and sort 11 x 17 repros. When an issue is finished I'll write a label on the blank sheet which has been protecting the top sheet, put a second sheet of cardboard on top, and secure the bundle with rubber bands. In this way the stack is never subjected to sliding friction except for jogging, and never held by one edge while I try to maneuver the other edge into an envelope. The assembly (minus rubber bands) could be slipped into an envelope for mailing. (If so, make sure the corrugations in the two boards run different ways.) If I plan to take the bundle outside, I put it into a plastic bag. I keep an eye out for clear bags without pleats, and for shopping bags that are exactly big enough to slip a bundle into sideways. I don't know where to buy bags because sufficient numbers have always appeared spontaneously. Don't use plastic for long-term storage unless it is an archival grade of plastic. You can get archival- grade plastic bags from people who cater to comic- book collectors. If I think it might rain, I wrap the bundle in no fewer than three plastic bags: it is unlikely that three overlooked pinholes will line up, and if the outer bag is wet, removing it is going to get the next bag wet. You should be able to get the middle bag dry enough to keep water off the innermost bag; at the worst, there will be so little water on the innermost bag that careful blotting will remove all danger to the repros.  34 How to paste up  .K:-How to paste up To a stripper, a piece of paper has no edges. You should line up a new, blank sheet of paper by the top edge, but if there is typing on it, if you have drawn a line on it, if you have pasted something to it, if it has a drop-out grid on it, if it bears a mark of any kind ---L--P-----1----+----2----T----3----+@10-4-C >>> ignore the edges and put your T-square on the  ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿimage. <<< ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ ---L--P-----1----+----2----T----3----+@10-4-R Always use a T-square. If you can eyeball perfect alignment, you suffer from a visual defect known to printers as "inability to perceive lack of parallel". Your "perfect" pasteups are pointing in all directions. One dot of drafting tape at each of two opposite corners is sufficient to keep a sheet of paper from shifting. When nervous, I'll tape three or four corners. Always use a ruler when you want to center things. One way is to measure the distance from each edge of the image to the edge of the space it is to occupy. I prefer to determine the center of the image and mark it with a small, non-reproducing tick in the upper margin. (I paint these ticks out, no matter how good I think my non-rep pencil is.) Another tick or a guideline marks the center of the space the image is to occupy. I line up the ticks and put it down as straight as I can, then put the T- square on it and adjust it, if necessary, by nudging with the point of the knife. If the item is large enough, I adjust by pushing and pulling the lower corners. One day, when I was ticking a batch of headlines that I was about to paste into the Bikeabout and thinking about this chapter, I asked myself why I had to do this job again every month. I immediately ticked all the headlines on the original monotype -- being careful to use a non-non-reproducing implement. A red drafting pen is good for this; it reproduces well enough, and the marks on the original don't look accidental. You may eyeball up-and-down centering, because top and bottom margins are supposed to be unequal. Headlines and most clip art should have more space above than below, but a small ad in a large box looks best when slightly above the center -- if the small ad has no border. If the ad has a border, your attention should be directed to making the space between the two borders into an attractive frame; carefully- measured equality both right and left and top and bottom will work if the margins look equal. If there is a wide discrepancy between the widths of the side margins and the top and bottom margins, make the top margin equal to or slightly greater than the side margins, leaving a wide bottom margin to "weight" the bottom. Another way is to make the bottom margin equal to the sides and stick some small decoration or heading into the space above: make sure the decoration is relevant. If the top and bottom are narrower than the sides, shoo any small children who ought not to hear foul language out of the room and shift the item around in the box. If you can't find an attractive position, consider cutting off the inner border or adding clip art at one or both sides. Try the ad at a cockeyed angle to see whether it looks as though you were trying to attract attention. Don't go hog-wild with rubber cement. Only the smallest clippings should be completely covered. For most paste-ins, a strip across the top or a dot on each corner is sufficient to hold the item. If you are pasting a whole sheet of paper, put a strip not more than half an inch wide across the top, position the page and rub it down, then tap a small dot under each of the free corners to keep it from flapping when handled. Sometimes you should cement all edges to keep them lying flat to the paper so that they won't cast shadows, but this is usually unnecessary. Step-by-step instructions  for pasting a headline into a typed page:  .K:-Step-by-step instructions for pasting a headline into a typed page First lay the typed page on the drafting board. If you have a choice of positions (i.e., if the drafting board is considerably larger than the paper), consider where you'll want to put the T-square later. When in doubt, put the paper at the top left. (If left-handed, top right.) Put the T-square on a prominent horizontal line, preferably one that extends the full width of the paper. Adjust the paper until that line lines up with the T-square perfectly, then place a dot or short strip of drafting tape on each of two opposite corners; I prefer upper right and lower left, but cannot give any reason. Be careful not to disturb the alignment while taping down the corners. Check with the T-square again to be sure. Select a heading from your collection and cut it out with sharp scissors. Try it in the space where you intend to paste it to make sure there is clearance all around. Trim if necessary. Leave less margin on the bottom of the heading than on the top, because this will encourage you to leave more white space above than below. Cuts should be at least 1/16" away from the image. Give yourself _ or your printer _ a fair chance to paint out the shadow of the edge of the paper in case the camera picks it up. Use a ruler to find and tick the middles of the heading and the space it is to occupy. Try the heading on for size again, with the ticks matching. If it looks odd, check your measurements before you compensate for the "optical illusion". Don't trust your eyes as much as you trust your ruler, for your eyes will try to center the slip of paper instead of the heading itself. It helps if you trim the heading to uniform-looking margins. If there is a sub-heading typed on the paper, center over the heading rather than over the column. Ragged-right columns may require headings to be slightly to the left, to center them over average lines. If so, shift them all the same distance. (Automatic centering of typed lines can be adjusted for ragged-right by typing two hard spaces after each heading.) Put the heading face down on the clean side of a piece of junk paper. Make sure that a second sheet of junk paper, your knife, your T-square, and your burnisher are ready to hand. Brush rubber cement sparingly over the back of the heading. Make one swipe, two at the most. Rubber cement dries fast. Put the lid back on the rubber cement. Twist all the way closed; you don't honestly save any time by drop- and-run corking. Lift the cement-coated slip of paper by slipping the knife under its edge. Try not to slide it; that would get cement on the face. Place the slip onto the page with the ticks matching, as straight with the printing as you can eyeball it. Try not to cement your fingers while doing this; it's wise to wear old cotton pants, or drape a rag through your belt. Place the T-square on the heading. If it isn't perfectly straight, nudge gently with the knife. You don't nudge at the edges of the paper, you stick the point of the knife into the paper, not more than halfway through. This is a delicate operation; if you dent the underlayer, you will pin the clipping down instead of sliding it. Yes, this does make a pinprick in the paper. If it doesn't flatten out of sight when you rub the clipping down, fill the hole with white paint. (This is another good reason to allow generous margins whenever you can.)  35 Tack in place by delicately pressing straight down with your fingertips and lifting straight up. Cover with a sheet of junk paper and rub down with the burnisher. There is an obvious fact about rubbing down that takes a surprisingly long time to learn: if you rub from left to right, any excess cement under the paste-in is going to come out on the right side. In the beginning, when you are likely to use too much cement, be careful to rub away from the typing. Pick the junk paper up between strokes and move it, so that fresh areas can absorb the excess cement. If it's your very first attempt, be prepared to switch to an entirely new sheet of junk paper after the first pass, to avoid dragging cement onto other parts of the page. Rub lightly at first, then with increasing force, so that excess cement may come out in installments. If you get a great goosh of cement, check with the T-square to see whether the paper has slipped. When the cement is dry, use the rubber cement pick-up to remove excess cement. Just before removing the page from the drafting board, paint out your ticks and any other unwanted marks. Dab the paint on, no thicker than necessary. If you feel tempted to brush the paint _ well sometimes I do brush the paint, but if an unwanted mark is so large that you lack patience to dab it, you should consider using correction tape or cementing a slip of paper over it. Allow the paint to dry thoroughly before allowing anything to touch it. As a sign that I'm finished with the page, I write the page number in the lower right-hand corner, using a writing-blue pencil. It is important that the numerals be at least twice as high as the "p." so that even the most casual glance can tell which is which. Now that we use a melange of reproduction ratios, I write the reproduction ratio in the other bottom corner. I use the same pencil that I use for the page number if it is the ratio the printer expects to see, a purple pencil if it's a larger ratio, and a red pencil if it is a smaller ratio. I picked those colors because I had those three pencils. I chose the brightest color for the ratio most likely to cause trouble. You should always imagine your printer taking up your job half an hour before a long-delayed supper, right after spending two overtime hours on a job almost the same as yours. Anything you can do to make his work easier will improve the looks of your newsletter. Note: the reason I have these corners to write in is that 11 x 17 paper is longer in proportion to its width than the finished 8« x 11 pages will be. Consult with your printer before writing in margins that will appear in the finished newsletter. If you are having sheets copied while you stand there, or if you are doing the work yourself, label them with reproduction ratio, number of copies, etc. for your own benefit; you'll be amazed at how easy it is to get confused. A non-reproducing pencil will do, because you are the only person who needs to read the notes and you know that they are there to be found. If the machine picks up pale blue, use a #2 pencil, cover the notes with removable correction tape, and peek under it. Hints:  .K:-Hints Sometimes it is easier to use the T-square to draw guidelines on the paper and then line art up with the guidelines than it is to use the T-square directly. You can buy paper with a "drop out" grid already on it. When ticking images and spaces, tick all the spaces on the page and then all the images that you plan to paste in. (Or the other way round; the point is to work yourself into each ticking mode only once per page.) When you haven't time to do the job the way you want to, headlines should be the first to go; typed headlines will do fine if all of them are typed. You can do a lot to make paste-up easier during the jigsaw-puzzle stage. Include only paste-ups that do something for the newsletter, and never plan to fill a space exactly. Leave yourself comfortable clearance around the image. Sometimes pasting can save you work at other stages. It may be easier to repair a page than to rehardcopy it. If you type by hand, it saves work to do the job in sections that are later pasted together. It is occasionally easier to position physical pieces of paper than to dead-reckon processed words. If cement has not yet set, sometimes it is possible to separate two items and save both if you work a thin blade between them. Usually, you have to sacrifice one or the other. To re-use a pasted item, put it on the drafting board with the paper you want to save next to the board. Keep the paper you want to save flat on the board during all operations. Peel the other paper off by tearing it into narrow strips. Remove cement and paper fuzz by rubbing with your cement pick-up directly away from a finger pinning the paper to the board. Rub from the center of the paper toward the edge. Get the pickup completely off the paper before you start back for another stroke. If you intend to re-use an item you are pasting in, be especially stingy with the rubber cement. If you can, use removable correction tape instead. If you can't use tape, try a repositionable glue stick; apply the glue to the paper that will later be discarded, rather than to the paper that will be reused. Best of all: paste in a photocopy. You can cut between images separated by as little as an eighth of an inch, but why not be easy on yourself and leave at least a quarter of an inch between items that you assemble to have duplicated in one pass? If the assembly is to be reduced, leave at least half an inch. Improper tools:  .K:-Improper tools When deadline forces you to work without your T- square, remember that correction tape is of uniform width. If you stick it to one sheet so that it near- misses a line, then stick it to another sheet so that the other edge near-misses another line, the two lines are going to be pretty close to parallel. You can draw a parallell line fairly accurately by measuring equal distances from the existing line, with the ruler squared up as best you can eyeball it. Make two points as far apart as possible to determine the line. A third point between them will check your work, but under these circumstances, I'd rather not know. In surveying, you can make a square corner by pegging out a 3-4-5 triangle, and in geometry you can "drop a perpendicular", but there isn't any good substitute for a draftsman's right triangle when you are pasting up. Sometimes the margins or the columns of typing can be made to serve as a guide, and if the scales on a wide ruler line up, they form lines at right angles to the ruling edge. If you have no non-reproducing pencil, be careful where you put guide lines, then cover them with correction tape. As "lady" was to "hairpin," as "chemist" is to "sealing wax and string," as "nurse" is to "cardboard and adhesive tape," so "editor" is to "removable correction tape" -- keep a spare reel tucked away for emergencies. If an advertisement or contribution is badly pasted you can cut it up and re-paste it. It's usually better to square up the most prominent or most convenient element (or a central, sort-of-average element) and let the rest fall where they may. Try not to put it where it will be the first thing a stranger sees. A dressmaker's cutting mat is marked with a grid, and can serve as a makeshift drafting board. Put a ruler on a prominent line, tick the margins of your paper, and tape it down with the ticks along one of the grid lines. Cutting mats are expensive; to avoid repercussions from the dressmaker, be careful not to leave drafting tape in contact with the mat more than one hour, and wipe the mat with a damp cloth when you are done with it. With the matching "rotary cutter," the mat can also fill in for a light-duty paper cutter. (You won't get into as much trouble as you would when borrowing scissors, because you can buy a new blade for the cutter. But don't gouge the mat!) It is surprisingly difficult to cut along a ruler with a rotary cutter, because you can't feel the ruler as you do when cutting with a scalpel. Use a clear plastic ruler with a square edge, and watch the blade closely. There are special rulers for rotary cutters; these are often quite wide, and marked with a grid.  36 87rL---+----1----+----2----+----3----+@10-4----+----5----+----6----+----7----+----8----+-R--9----+ .HL:How to Edit Your Club's Newsletter...page $$$ .HL:________________________________________________________________________________________________________  .HR:Bits to paste in...page $$$ .HR:________________________________________________________________________________________________________  87cL---+----1----+----2----+----3----+@10-4----+----5----+----6----+----7----+----8----+-C--9----+ ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿBits to paste in ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ .K:Bits to paste in ---L--P-----1----+----2----T----3----+@10-4-R Monotype  .K:-Monotype Rub-on letters are called by many names, most of them proprietary. They allow you to get the look of typesetting by spending time and labor instead of money. They can also fill in if you need a heading quickly and your typesetter is only intermittently available. Monotype is useful primarily for very special headings and headings that you will use over and over again. Assemble your standard headings on a sheet of letter-size paper and have it duplicated as required. Always have a few extra copies made; you will need them. If a 50% ratio is readily available, you can buy letters twice as tall as you want, and assemble them on legal or ledger paper. Monotype letters the same size as your typewriter type can be handy for repairs. If, for example, a page has the wrong page number, cover it with correction tape (non-removable, if you have some) and rub a monotype number onto the tape. It's not going to match perfectly, but it's neater than using a pen. Monotype is also handy if you want to assemble pages before you know what numbers will be on them; you can leave all the numbers blank and fill them in with rub-ons; for this purpose, choose numbers a little bigger than your type, so it will look as though you did it just to emphasize the numbers. Rub-on letters are made of very thin plastic that is slightly sticky on the back. When you rub the plastic fronting above a letter, the letter sticks more firmly to the paper than to the carrier, and you can lift the carrier away and leave the letter on the paper. If you then burnish the letter through special tissue (slick side down!) it will sink into the texture of the paper and look as though it had been printed there. It is still a bit of plastic glued to the paper, and not an ink-stain; anything that sticks to the letter can pull off bits of it. When I can, I have a monotype heading duplicated even if I mean to use it only once. You will find monotype in two varieties: small, handy sheets that are available everywhere and cost pennies, and large, awkward sheets found only in certain art-and-drafting stores at a price that will make you blink. Get the large, awkward sheets. They are made for professionals and are much easier to use. The guide lines run below the letters instead of through them, and the letters are more likely to come off in one piece than cheaper letters are. I cut my sheets in half and store them in a file folder. Another way is to sandwich uncut sheets between two sheets of 17"x11" cardboard. Rub-on letters come with a protective blue tissue paper, slick on one side. Keep the slick side next to the letters whenever you haven't a good reason to expose them. I like 18-point monotype. It makes about as big a heading as will fit neatly over a typed heading. If you leave a blank line above and below a typed heading, you allow half an inch total; 18-point type occupies a quarter inch, which leaves you a quarter inch of clearance to divide between the top and bottom. Pasted-in headings that occupy the same amount of space as typed headings are convenient when you allocate all your space before you realize that you haven't time to monotype. Assemble words or titles on a blank sheet of paper, then cut them out and paste them where wanted. Mark your guidelines all the way across the paper. The longer your baseline is, the easier it is to line your letters up accurately. Select the first letter and maneuver it into position. It will be far enough above the guideline that you could cut the guideline off with scissors and still leave an adequate margin on the letter. The guideline creates difficulty when you want to make lines one below the other. One way is to create lines separately and then paste them together, which limits damage: no mistake can destroy more than one line. Another is to use a light table and put the guidelines on a sheet of paper underneath the paper you are using. Tracing paper enables you to use this trick without a light table, but it can be hard to handle such thin paper, and it won't hide marks on the base paper. Match the marks under the letters to the guideline; choose marks as far from the letter as possible. Now don't let things shift! I tape down the paper, but count on not moving my left hand until the job is done to steady the monotype. Rub down the right edge of the black mark immediately under the letter you have chosen. You don't need the left end of the mark and might as well leave it on the carrier. Don't be gung-ho about rubbing down the guide mark; you are going to have to pick it off later. Rub the letter with your stylus. Practice alone can tell you how to do this. You must rub the entire letter, but no part of adjoining letters. You must rub hard enough to make the letter stick to the paper, but not so hard as to warp the carrier and dent the paper. A spring-loaded stylus may help you to get the hang of it. The letter will grey as it separates from the carrier because the patch where it was stuck is slightly frosted. Even if the letter is all grey, steady the sheet with one hand while you lift an edge with the other to see if it has come away clean. If it hasn't, lower the sheet again and re-rub the reluctant bits. If you are myopic, you can re-align a sheet that has shifted by taking off your glasses and putting your nose right down to the paper. This is the only time you pay attention to the letter instead of the guideline. Line up the second letter as you did the first, except that you also match the left end of its guide mark to the right end of the guide mark of the previous letter. There should barely be a hairsbreadth between the two marks. If you try to match the ends exactly, you can't see whether or not you have overlapped a bit; if the paper is visible, but just barely, all the matches will be the same. When all the letters in a batch are done, get out your knife and a magnifying glass strong enough to reveal that paper is a felted mass of fibers. A strong-enough glass will be less than two inches in diameter, and it will require you to put your face close to the paper. Through this glass, the guide marks will be revealed as strips of black plastic lying on the paper. Pick them off with your knife. If bits are stuck firmly enough that you might rough up the paper trying to get them with a knife, rub cautiously  with your rubber-cement pickup. The stubborn bits that resist the pick-up can be removed by coating them with rubber cement and rubbing it off when dry, but this procedure is risky because rubber cement is thick, the brush is coarse, and the object you want to remove is close to one you don't want to damage. I ignore any stubborn specks; if they are still around after pasting up, I cover them with white paint. Sometimes you can trim the guideline off, or cover it with one-line correction tape. Once unwanted rub-ons are removed, put the protective tissue over the letters slick-side down and burnish until they look like part of the paper. Through your glass, the fibers of the paper will be reproduced on the surface of the shiny black letter. You will notice that some duplicators and some expensive computer printers make shiny letters and the copy comes out warm; these devices put minute specks of plastic onto the paper and melt them into it. You can regard copies made by such machines as a sort of heat-set monotype. Photocopies are usually rubber-cement resistant, but if the copy is bent sharply, the plastic will crack. After that, cement can pull off pieces. If a copy is creased, the crease will usually show as a white line through the letters. Symbols and decorations other than letters are available as rub-ons; leaf through the catalog to see if any inspire you. If you intend to use part of a rub-on rule or border, cut the thin plastic strip by scratching the back of the sheet lightly with the point of your knife. Rub almost to the cut, but be careful not to rub the other side. Alphabet books  .K:-Alphabet books Letters to cut out and paste down may be easier to use than rub-on letters when the letters are big enough to pick up without the aid of a knife. They are definitely cheaper than monotype when you want only a word or two in each style. An ad for Dover's "Ready-to-Use Art Deco Alphabets" offers eight different alphabets, each in 24-, 36-, and 48-point sizes, for $3.95. If nobody in your club has access to a typesetter, or if you need a title page by Tuesday and you won't see George until Thursday, alphabet books can be handy. When you cut out a letter, include its section of the guideline and match it to a guideline on the paper. The guideline may be cut off or painted out when the whole word or phrase has been assembled. Cut-out letters can sometimes be assembled directly on the finished sheet instead of assembling them on blank paper, then cutting out the assembly to paste to the page. If a multi-letter heading is to be centered, it is better to work in two stages. If a heading is two words, you can center the calculated length of the heading and work from both ends toward the middle. If you try this trick with more than two words, it may be difficult to make the spaces come out equal. Since they have more edges, cut-out letters are more likely to make shadows on your work than monotype; cut-out letters are best reserved for times when you are going to have a chance to paint out stray marks. Clip art  .K:-Clip art I have found Dover's "Ready to Use" series both cheaper and more useful than other clip-art books. The most useful of the series is "Holidays and Special Events"; they have also published a Christmas book. I wish they would go on to publish Spring, Summer, Fall, and Non-Christmas Winter. I have made use of Floral Borders and Thematic Borders; sometimes I'll use them as intended and create borders, but they are most useful as alternatives to typed lines for separating articles, and as sources of small spots. Sometimes I find exactly what I need in my copy of "2001 Decorative Cuts" _ but have you any idea how long it takes to search over two thousand illustrations, even when whole pages can be dismissed out of hand? As a rule of thumb, the more clip art you have on file, the longer it will take you to learn that nothing you have will do. Since I'm accustomed to using rubber cement, pre-pasted clip art looks more like annoyance than help to me; perhaps someone accustomed to wax would find pre-pasting handy _ somebody must; the books seem to be selling.  37 I find it difficult to find a book with more than one or two usable illustrations, except for Ed Sibbet's work. If your club is affiliated with a national organization, it may send you useful clip art. Treasure it; they seldom have replacement copies. You can have clip art re-sized at a copy shop. (See "Scaling") A bicycle border precisely as wide as my unreduced columns and able to fit into a space half an inch high often comes in handy; it was 7.5 inches wide when I got it. I've also pieced a version that spans both columns. Tack one or more copies of often-handy reusable clip art to your page of standard headings and accumulate a folderful of copies. Borders with irregular edges are easier to patch and piece than plainer borders; your splices will be lost in the confusion. Some borders have gaps to make piecing easier. Organizing Clip Art: Mission Impossible  I keep clip art in a hanging file _ and wish I'd gotten one years ago; it has no tendency to slump or wrinkle, and when I put a folder down, I can put it directly into the filebox. Folders don't wander off or spill as much as they used to. Since we accept advertisements, the majority of the box is occupied by folders bearing the names of advertisers; these contain old ads, logos, and other things the advertisers might someday ask for. Pasting copies of the ads that are in the current issue are in the folder "current ads"; copies used to create the pasting copies are filed under the name of the advertiser or will be found in a cardboard envelope marked "to copy next trip". Ordinarily, originals are sacred and used only to create pasting copies, but if an ad is to run only once or twice, I will paste the original for the sake of fidelity, particularly if it is a full-page ad; I don't have to handle full pages as much as smaller ads, so they are less likely to be damaged. (When pasting something to be re-used, use the absolute minimum of cement, or use removable white tape.) Other originals (including monotype and first- generation copies of monotype) are filed under "Original Headings" and "Reproduction Copies." Smaller folders inside these folders divide them into "club logos," "Nameplates," "borders" and the like. Manila folders fit inside hanging folders, and 9x12 envelopes with two edges trimmed off fit inside manila folders. Envelopes with wider strips trimmed off fit inside the envelopes, and on down. (I don't throw out the brown envelopes on incoming mail.) The folder marked "current" has a plethora of sub-folders: Borders (sub-subdivided into 4.8", 4.2", bicycles, stars, . . . ), headings, other club's logos, seasonal headings . . . Clip-art books are slipped into the front of the box without folders; since they are stiff and slick, and because my box is jam-packed full, they are not inclined to slide down and warp. Typing & typesetting  .K:-Typing & typesetting It isn't surprising that you can get most "personal publisher" effects by cutting and pasting; the programs are designed to imitate this activity. Some go so far as to put pictures of scissors and paste pots on the screen. Nor is pasting an intolerable chore; it takes only a few minutes to assemble two columns and a  38 heading into a page, almost nothing compared to the time you spent typing _ and you have to punch the stuff in no matter what sort of equipment you have. Be careful to keep rubber cement off typewriting; it will cause the type to smear and fade. If you are getting the newsletter out on a manual typewriter, a waxer might be worth the expense and the time spent waiting for wax to melt if it reduces risk to your copy. Always cover typing with another sheet of paper before you rub it down; it will smear. Always type reproduction copies with a brand-new ribbon, and put the old ribbon back into the machine when you stop even if you mean to type more repros when you come back from lunch. Carbon ribbon, of course, is always brand new and is much to be preferred if your typewriter will accept it. The most common kind of carbon ribbon is called "multistrike". Never, never, never attempt to erase a mistake on a reproduction copy. Erasers fuzz the paper and the erasure will photograph as a smudge. Use chalkpaper: little slips of white carbon paper available under a number of different proprietary names. I like best the kind that puts the white stuff on stiff slips of transparent plastic. It goes where you put it without catching on the ribbon guide, it never leaps out of the path of the key when the ribbon rises, and you can see whether or not there is white stuff on the part you mean to use. Use a slip systematically from one end to the other. "Erasable" paper has no redeeming social value. Do not use it for any purpose. If you need to erase, invest the same amount of money in rag paper that can stand up to an ink eraser. Typeset sheets are sacred. Handle them carefully, keep them away from cats and children, and know exactly what you are doing before cutting. Fiddle and experiment with photocopies. If you work with a typewriter, ask your copy shop and printer what they charge for typesetting. It can be a good way to get headings, nameplates, mastheads, and the like. Folks who won't give you carte blanch to use their machines constantly might let you borrow them once to create a nameplate or a set of standard headlines. Quasi-Custom Logos  .K:-Quasi-Custom Logos When we sponsored GEAR '89 Saratoga, the GEAR committee had a professional artist create a logo which compressed the full name of the event and a picture of two cyclists into one compact design. I used that logo as the heading for all the GEAR committee's reports, and jealously wished for similar custom headings for other departments. That isn't in the budget, but I found a pair of scissors exactly one- half inch high in "2001 Cuts" and a half-inch mountain in the "Summer Fun" section of "Holidays and Special Occasions". I asked our ride calendar editor, who has access to a typesetting machine, to set "Editor's Column" and "Mountain Bikes" in 36-point Times Roman Bold. The headings came out just enough shorter than my half-inch illos to be in good proportion. I pasted the illos and the headings together and had them copied at 50%, which reduced them to the exact size of my 18-point headings. Now I wonder what sort of illo I can find for "President's Writeabout" and "V.P. Land". Perhaps I can find a spectacular bandage or a cast somewhere and draw a circle-and-slash on it for "Education and Safety". Original Art  .K:-Original Art As a general rule, you don't cut original art, you don't paste it, you don't do anything with it except have reproduction-quality copies made. Art should be returned to the artist intact. Art is even harder to come by than writing, and you can't re-write bad art. Many good writers will work for nothing, but even a barely-competent artist expects to get paid. If marrying an aspiring artist seems extreme, you might consider learning to draw your own illustrations. If you didn't, when you were a child, spend countless hours staring at things and trying to copy them onto paper, you're not likely to do it now, but you might be able to practice enough to disguise crudity of outline as originality. Work big (see "scaling"), and if a piece has false starts in it, lay a piece of tracing paper over it. Professionals work in pencil, then trace in ink _ it isn't cheating. M--LQ-P-----1----+----2----T----3----+@10-4-R