Desktop versus Electronic Publishing

 

Along with looking at the confusion over certain words in our Language Tips section, in the coming weeks we’ll also be zeroing in on specific publishing terms that are often (incorrectly) used interchangeably.

 

To start, let’s look at three publishing categories. These definitions come from the Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary. As always, the end of any quoted material is denoted by this symbol: ∎.

 

publishing 

noun

:  the business or profession of the commercial production and issuance of literature especially in book form for public distribution or sale 

 

desktop publishing 

noun

:  the production of printed matter by means of a desktop computer having a layout program that integrates text and graphics 

 

electronic publishing

noun

:  publishing in which information is disseminated by means of a computer network or is produced in a format for use with a computer

 

∎

Webster’s “publishing” definition merely describes the process in the broadest sense without regard to the methods used or the intended destination. Notice the inclusion of “especially in book form”: This is a dated outlook that doesn’t really take the digital age into account. If you blog online, you are actually publishing. 

 

The chief differences between desktop publishing and electronic publishing really having nothing to do with the methods used: The differences are in the final deliverable.

 

In many cases desktop publishing and electronic publishing may share, to a large extent, identical workflows. The difference is that electronic publishing is not intended for print. Production of this tip would be an example of electronic publishing: it is never intended to be printed.

 

Let’s elaborate on the desktop publishing definition and look at the entry in our Publishing Glossary, posted here.

 

desktop publishing

Using a personal computer or workstation to produce high-quality printed documents. A desktop publishing system allows you to use different typefaces, specify various margins and justifications, and embed illustrations and graphs directly into the text. The most powerful desktop publishing systems enable you to create illustrations, while less powerful systems let you insert illustrations created by other programs. (From webopedia.com; edited.) (Contrast word processing programs.) 

The takeaway is that the terms electronic publishing and desktop publishing are not interchangeable. 

And note the mention above regarding word processing programs: Microsoft Word is a word processing program, while Adobe InDesign is desktop publishing (or layout) program. You’d never write a book in Adobe InDesign. And you should never attempt to build book pages in Microsoft Word: It’s simply not built for that. That’s why at Virtus, we use Adobe InDesign exclusively for creating the page layout for the books we produce.

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