Lars Eighner's Lavender Blue

Using the Online Edition

The information on this page pertains to the mechanics of consulting the online edition and simply understanding what appears on the pages. Information on how to approach the material in the various chapters, the order in which to take them up, and the methods of learning to learn to learn to write does not appear here.

This is a Hypertext Document

Although this document reproduces much of the text of the first edition of Lavender Blue, this online edition makes extensive use of hypertext. In short, you need a web browser and you need to know how to use it to get the most out of this document. Most definitions and many usages articles are contained in the glossary and can be consulted by following hypertext links from the text. Since every web browser I know of has a back function, few articles have a back link. You should be familiar with how to use the back function of your browser. A few of the links in the text go to documents outside of my site. You should know how your browser tell you the nature of a link before you select it. If you got to this page, your browser almost certainly has the necessary functions, and you almost certainly have the necessary skills.

Browser which can do something useful with the TITLE attribute in hypertext links (such as the tool-tip feature of some graphic browsers) can provide useful information about some links.

Marks

I use several marks in the text of this online book. Some depend for their appearance on the browser that is used to view them. Text character marks may be used within lines and graphic markers may be used with full lines or blocks of material. Here are the meanings of these marks:

Usage Marks

• This sentence illustrates the use of the insertion and rub out deletion tags provided by HTML. This is not how insertions and deletions are indicated on real paper manuscripts.
• This is the mark for good examples or acceptable usages. This mark may or may not indicate the only answer or the best answer possible, and it may not even indicate some especially good except in comparison to other examples in the context.
• This is the mark for bad examples. They may or may not be clearly wrong as a matter of grammar or usage, but they are decided inferior (in my opinion) to the good examples.
• This is the mark for questionable or uncertain examples or for examples that illustrate one of several alternative and acceptable (if well executed) ways of doing things. This may also indicate an example for you to try to improve upon as an exercise.
• This mark indicates that the following quotation is merely something I made up to illustrate a point.
• This mark indicates the following quotation is a citation to illustrate my point. If you cannot tell the difference in the marks, citations are always attributed after a dash (—) that follow the closing quotation mark.
• This marks examples of or remarks about usage in the United Kingdom or in English-speaking countries other than the United States. In many cases, the usage common in the United States is one of several competing usages in the United Kingdom and other English-speaking countries. The policies of publications in the United Kingdom and especially in Canada tend to vary much more than the policies of similar publications in the United States. I can only alert you to the existence of the alternative usage. You must determine whether it applies in your situation. Naturally I have not made an exhaustive attempt to sort out the differences in spelling or the many words which mean different things in the different nations. This mark may also indicate other information especially pertinent to writers in the UK. I am not be mistaken for an authority on British usage. You should consult an appropriate authority if you live in and write for publication in a country in which British English is the rule. However, if you are an American, in most cases you should simply write the best American English you can. Editors can make any translation that is necessary and like to decide whether it is necessary.
• This mark is used in exercises and at other places to indicate that I mean to give you the opportunity to form a response, solution, or answer in your mind or on paper before proceeding. Sometimes it indicates that a question I have posed is not to be taken as entirely rhetorical.
• This mark indicates things to do.
• This mark indicates things to avoid doing.
• This mark indicates something to do. This mark does not indicate an exercise. It indicates something that you need to do really.

Learning Aids

The following learning aids appear in color-coded boxes if you use a styles-enabled graphics browser. But if you use a text browser or if you turn style sheets off in your graphic browser, these learning aids appear between rules (horizontal lines) and the name of the type of learning aid appears in parentheses just below the top rule. Thus previews have (preview) just below the top rule and so forth. If you cannot use the color coding, simply turn off style sheets in your graphic browser and the text cues should appear.

Blackboard

Previews

Summaries

Exercises

One of the principal weaknesses of the print editions of this book, which the online edition hopes to overcome, was the lack of exercises. Exercises in a book (or an online book), of course, cannot take the place of practice, but they can help to indicate what to practice. There are several kinds of exercises here.

• Exercises in Review: These exercises pose questions about the preceding text. Answers are not provided. Readers who are not confident of their answers should review the preceding material.
• Exercises: Exercises other than Exercises in Review may or may not have answers. Unlike exercises in mathematics, most exercises here do not have precisely one correct answer. Some exercises will depend upon work from a previous exercise. In that case, I should have included a link to the prerequisite exercise.

Comments

Pullouts

Pullouts (or pullquotes) are short quotations from the text set in large type. Pullouts are often used in magazines to break up large blocks of gray text and as enticements to the read the article. Pullouts serve something of the same functions here. In addition, pullouts may help you find your place in the text or may help in reviewing the material.

Questions

Manuscript

          This is a Dummy Manuscript.
          It doesn't look exactly like a manuscript.  Most of the
     time it simply represents a passage in a hypothetical 
     manuscript.

Examples

Answers Section

Skip to: Top or page information.