Readers of this blog may have guessed it, but I don’t do a whole lot of copy editing these days. That means I don’t have a lot of need for CriticMarkup (CM) in my daily life. But, I do still use one feature of the syntax almost everyday: comments.
My meeting notes often have annotations like this:
1{>>Q<<} Does this guarantee FIFO ordering 2{>>A<<} No. The order is maintained by the time stamp The {>>Q<<} comment is a reminder that I had a question while meeting or working.
I use the heck out of Critic Markup, but I don’t have a lot of time to make all the tools I want. Some awesome people are taking matters into their own hands.
CriticMarkup.js converts the syntax into HTML.
Critic Markup support is now available in SmartDown, the Windows Markdown editor.
Marko Editor for Mac added Critic Markup support awhile ago and it’s pretty cool. (EDIT: I just noticed that Marko is no longer available for download.
I use the Critic Markup syntax more than most. Maybe it’s because I like the idea of dogfooding things I make. Maybe it’s because I made it to perfectly fit my own quirky way of thinking. Whatever it is, you can find the syntax sprinkled throughout almost everything I do.
Here are some brief examples where I think it’s most applicable outside of editing.
Meeting Notes I probably use the comment syntax the most.
Brett Terpstra does some more magic with PopClip and now there’s a new PopClip extension for CriticMarkup. It’s really nice.
We are changing from this:
{{some highlighted text}}{>>comment about the selection<<} To this:
{==some highlighted text==}{>>comment about the selection<<} The Backstory We decided to make a significant change to the Highlight syntax for CriticMarkup. Due to our own ignorance, we created a conflict with HTML templating engines like Mustache. One of our primary goals with CM is to avoid conflicts with “common” text markup languages like LaTeX, HTML, Textile and MultiMarkdown.
Most of the CriticMarkup processing for the CLI, Sublime Text and BBEdit modules is done with regular expression matching. I’m terrible at regex. My best friend through the whole process was Sublime Text. I could load some example text and pop open the search bar. When in regex mode, the search field highlights the escaped characters and also performs real-time matching on the document ext. Granted, this is some simple regex, but we didn’t start simple, we ended simple.
I like almost everything about working in plain text and MultiMarkdown. However, after trying to do editorial reviews in plain text, I realized there was a major problem. How do you indicate deletions, additions and comments in plain text without mangling the text or making changes laborious.
After some failed trials with Github and file diffs, I decided I needed a new markup language.1
Enter Erik Hess, my friend and part-time editor.
Erik Hess over at TheMindfulBit sent me this great resource about copy editing markup.1 I really have an affinity for markup, especially in well developed fields. Every expert can speak in a language totally incomprehensible to an outsider. That fascinates me.
On a related note, here’s a good description of the difference between a a copy editor and proofreader.
I’m sure it’s not a hint or anything. I’m sure.
