AWKWARD

So, in the industry (the publishing industry, that is), there's a term for all the stuff that comes at the beginning of a book. You know, it's the stuff on the pages that are numbered with Roman numerals instead of, um, regular numerals*. The term is "front matter." Similarly, the stuff printed in the back of the book, the glossary, the index, anything that comes after the "real" content of the book, is called "back matter." Also prevalent in the publishing industry is the use of alpha-abbreviations (Heh--I just made that word up, but it sounds GOOD, don't you think?) for everything. For example, text that is missing but will be inserted later is marked "TK" ("to come"--go figure). A table of contents is a TOC. And, as you can imagine, front matter is FM and back matter is BM. Unless you have a particularly sensitive client that prefers to use EM (endm atter). Which, apparently, I do.

Today my client pointed out to me that the publisher of a project I'm currently working on would prefer to use the term "end matter" for obvious reasons. Ever the professional, I popped off the following IMHO hilarious e-mail.

I'm disappointed that they're using EM instead of BM. It takes all the fun out of a hard day of work. "Someone is going to have to help me knock this BM out if we're going to make that deadline." "There's no way I'm going to finish this BM by the end of the day." "Could someone run to Starbucks and get me an espresso? I'm only halfway through this BM and I've been working on it for hours."

I could go on and on.

'Cause I'm so mature.

And you know what her response was? Nothin'. Nada. Stony electronic silence.
Man, I hope there wasn't a no-potty-talk clause in my contract, because if there was, I'm screwed!

I think I'll go take that shower now. . .

* Why can't I remember that word? There are Roman numerals and ??? numerals. Aggghhh. Once again, I place blame on the brain damage.