Letter 1

Hania

May I suggest you make a list of the things you do... then after a week or several you can look back and see where you spend how much time, and then you can think which tasks could be delegated: I've not been quite so systematic, so I think I should follow my own advice!

You will then think about how you can best explain how to do the task, and eventually you will produce a set of 'procedures' that others can follow...

Essential as no one is indispensible - as I used to say to Mario! Help pass on some of the work, and you'll last longer too :)

One thing I've found is that as I start to write how to do X task, in finding the words to explain to others, I too become clearer in my own mind.

Guess who dropped in on me 2 days ago? Wonderful surprise, far better than Father Christmas: MARIO!!!

Take care,
Claire Ozel

Letter 2

Dear ….,
1. I am writing to you as HLT's editor from Feb 1999 until early 2006.
2. The fight has been to persuade the money people in Pilgrims not to kill the magazine.....to do this we have had to be as economical as possible: the hltmling is done by a student and one of these students made a pig's ear of the search engines, the author search engine and the section search engine. This, we hope, will shortly be rectified.
I was restricted to six weeks to bring out six issues a year......this is about a third of the time given the editors of a mag like ETp. You will appreciate that HLT carries many more editorial words than ETp per year.
3. Given these constraints I decided on a policy of accepting English as a Lingua Franca from non-native authors, leaving many of their non-native ways of expressing their thoughts unquestioned. You will find texts in HLT that would just about get a C mark in Cambridge Proficinecy.
4. Proof-reading on my watch was a very weak area.
I appreciate your concerns and feel that they prove that HLT has some importance for you and maybe for some of the 1500 people who visit the site each day.

Have you thought of sending Hania a piece so perfect as to be editrorially untouchable?!

Mario ( Rinvolucri)

Letter 3

Hello Hania

Yesterday I forgot to mention the remarkable typeface of HLT. Reading from the screen is rather tiresome. I mentioned this before but apparently the problem cannot be solved. Are they working on it or is this a permanent thing? I can imagine that readers give up reading too soon.

Just a reaction from a stalwart reader of this splendid webzine.

Best wishes

Henk