Signposts - a blog about Te Ara the Encyclopedia of New Zealand

It was very gratifying last night for Te Ara to win the 2008 WriteMark New Zealand Plain English Award for best plain English website. And it was a bonus that another of the ministry’s websites, NZLive.com, received an honourable mention in the same category.

Te Ara editors past and present were on hand to share that rare moment when all the largely invisible work behind the scenes takes centre stage.

Good plain English is one of those things that, if done well, nobody notices. That’s as it should be. Plain English just means saying what you mean in a simple way - rather than using fancy or complicated words unnecessarily. So it should be easy to read and understand. From the beginning Te Ara staff have been committed to reaching a really broad audience. This means we’ve put a lot of effort into using clear and comprehensible language.

So far we’ve published over a million words by more than 100 writers on thousands of pages covering hundreds of topics. Some of the topics are highly technical, and we’ve recruited experts in their fields to write for us. All of their words have been edited for consistency and style by a small team of very talented editors.

In the early days, voices were sometimes raised and teeth gnashed as writers feared the ‘dumbing down’ of their high concepts or blunting of their finely honed prose. But that’s not what plain language is about, and the editors persuasively argued that the most abstruse concepts can usually be presented in a clear and plain way, avoiding jargon and complex vocabulary. That’s one of Te Ara’s real points of difference (along with its richness of illustration and attractive design).

Editors are usually the unsung heroines or heroes of publishing. They certainly are appreciated at Te Ara. Not only do they help writers to make their words speak clearly, but they also write the Short Story for each entry – lively and succinct summaries for a younger audience.

So we are really proud of this award, which honours the core of our work, no jiggery-pokery, bells and whistles or technical gizmos required.

From the judges’ comments:

Readers young and old can get immersed in this website. The website is very well structured in layers to draw the reader from general information into more technical detail. It shows sophistication of writing as well as wide appeal across many types of readers and groups of New Zealanders. The site uses wonderfully plain language and an engaging style with good use of headings, layout, and sidebars.

Hometown boy makes good – David Grant

Te Ara launched its coverage of Southland on Monday night, 8 September, with a celebration at Invercargill’s Civic Theatre. Associate Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Mahara Okeroa cut the virtual ribbon.

Our friends at NZLive.com also put on a show. There was an excellent turnout – possibly partly because Jackie, NZLive.com’s manager, hails from Gore, and I think she invited all her relatives!

Author David Grant, who was raised in Southland, spent three months researching in the southern province. Te Ara General Editor Jock Phillips and Resource Team Leader Janine Faulknor also made field trips to capture some of the region’s highlights in digital form.

David says he particularly enjoyed writing about things that were uniquely Southland, like swedes, Bluff oysters and the rolling ‘r’. (’Good for picking up chicks’, says one hopeful Gore-ite in our rather cute video clip).

One of the nice things we’ve been able to do this time is to add a gallery of images from our Flickr group. Thanks to everyone who contributed!

This brings us to the midpoint of our Places coverage – 11 to go. Next up, The West Coast. Watch this space.

The Tasman Glacier, by Gottfried Braun-Elwert

We are very sorry to hear of the sudden death of alpine guide Gottlieb Braun-Elwert, who passed away yesterday while on a back-country expedition with Prime Minister Helen Clark and her party.

Gottfried Braun-Elwert was a former nuclear physicist who had been guiding for over 30 years. He was also a talented photographer and was very generous to Te Ara, kindly allowing us to use three of his photographs on our website. His impressive image of the Tasman Glacier is in the South Canterbury places entry, and photos of climbers on Aoraki/Mt Cook and the prime minister skiing are both in The Bush theme.

Mountain guiding has had a long and notable history in New Zealand since the 1890s, when the government employed professional guides to aid climbers on Aoraki/Mt Cook. The advent of new technologies and equipment encouraged more amateurs to try mountaineering, but guiding re-emerged in the 1960s, and Gottfried Braun-Elwert was one of the new generation of experts who succeeded the pioneering guides Peter and Alec Graham, Joe Fluerty, Harry Ayres and other notable characters.

Here’s a historical footnote: Gottfried Braun-Elwert was not the first German-born guide to accompany a New Zealand prime minister in the mountains. That honour may well have belonged to Harry Peters (born Peter Hinrik Peters), who in 1890 assisted the ageing ex-premier Sir William Fox on a marathon 18-hour ascent of Mt Taranaki. Fox had intended to demonstrate that a man of 78 who had been a teetotaller all his life would be ‘as active and enduring as a man of 45′. The contention was apparently not borne out.

The eager editor

Another departure from Te Ara prompts a trip down memory lane and a chance encounter with an embarrassing archive of institutional memories.

Way back when, in the days when Te Ara had gestated from a sparkle in Jock Phillips’s eye to a rapidly growing neonate, its gross weight was bulked up by the incorporation of a fully formed, indeed rather mature, fellow encyclopedia.

McLintock’s magnum opus

A. H. (Archibald) McLintock’s classic An encyclopaedia [sic] of New Zealand was published by the Government Printer in three volumes in 1966. The print run of 30,000 sold out in three months and it was never reprinted though remains widely available in second-hand bookshops, a copy in every library in the country, quite a few to be found gathering dust on the top shelves of small-town junk shops throughout the land. Digitised in India, TEI-ised in Wellington by the New Zealand Electronic Text Centre, Te Ara swallowed it whole and incorporated it as a stopgap until we finished our coverage of the entire world of Kiwi knowledge. We skited (skote? skate?) about it to the world (or at least to anyone who read the DigiCULT.Info newsletter in November 2004).

Taming the unruly XML

Of course it didn’t happen entirely automagically and this post was prompted by the departure of our long-serving production editor, Fiona Oliver, who delivered the not-so-small but perfectly formed behemoth, tamed and caged the beast. It (and this) is a tribute to her strength of purpose, patience, and reach.

I doubt if there’s anyone in the country, or on the planet, who knows so much about what lies between its brown buckram boards.

A civilised conclave

Of encyclopedic interest only, perhaps, is this hilarious period piece – a re-enactment of a Te Ara ‘resource meeting’, at which resourcers tremble, writers wail, and editors harrumph from the distance among the tendrils of the vineyard in which we labour. Another sow’s ear? You’d never know it from this candid shot of creativity in action. Butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths. O tempora, o mores.

The parting gift (Moon Explorer Cupcake by Sam Broad)

Wailing and gnashing of teeth at Te Ara as another one gets away. We bid farewell to Helene Coulson, our lead designer, who joined us fresh out of Wanganui design school in 2003.

As well as designing leads, Helene’s masterminded the standards we set for maps, graphs and interactives. A large part of what makes the site special is due to her.

There are thousands of imaginatively thumbnailed images created under her eagle eye, and she really has been able to make something quite palatable out of some pretty unpromising raw material.

Shy Helene retiring

Of course she’s surrounded herself with a great team blah blah blah but, hey, this is Helene’s parade, and she is a bit special. And we mean that in the nicest possible way.

She also bakes the best cupcakes. And the macaroons are to die for.

Follow these links for some Helenean highlights:

• Te Ara’s first interactive, a devil of a swampland of blood, sweat and consultation came together to make this tiny masterpiece.
• The Auckland Islands shipwrecks map.
• The gracefully sinking ships are Helene’s little touch of genius.
• The diagram from hell. Measure your own earthquake.
• Solar water heating – you thought it was simple?
• Helene makes the earth move.
• Some nice pies, and a mean line.

Now that’s art – and who says she can’t be both beautiful and faithful?