A complex sentence is made up of two clauses: one independent clause (a simple sentence) which can stand on its own, and one dependent clause that would simply be a fragment if left alone. The dependent clause also contains the subordinating conjunction (the word which ties the two clauses together). Subordinating conjunctions are words such as “because,” “although,” “if,” “when,” “unless,” etc. Are you still awake?
A common error occurs with this type of sentence though because there seems to be confusion on where exactly to pencil in the pesky little comma. The rule is simple:

Auditing is a must for consumer and business magazines that depend on advertising and newsstand sales, but if your magazine is controlled circulation or directed at a small, well-defined group, do you really need to pay for an audit?
“Yes, an audit is necessary regardless of whether or not your circulation is controlled,” says Sue Scott of James G. Elliott, Inc. “With the increased competition for audience and ROI accountability, agency media buyers are more focused on having a trusted, impartial third-party independent verify what they are paying for.”
The big two circulation audit agencies are ABC (Audit Bureau of Circulations) and BPA (Business of Performing Audits International). BPA Worldwide is similar to ABC, however it tends to focus on trade publications, rather than consumer titles. BPA Worldwide audits the circulation of primarily business-to-business publications. It also provides audit services for consumer magazines, newspapers, Web sites, events, email newsletters, digital magazines and other advertiser-supported media produced by its members.

Three thousand members in your Facebook group! You’re following 5,000 on Twitter! You’re well on your way to social media nirvana, right?
Maybe.
The low barrier to entry for most popular social media tools today means that anyone can be in the game. But it also makes it very easy to abuse your audience, perhaps resulting in the opposite of what you intend.

Soliciting feedback from readers is an important part of a magazine’s research efforts. With a reader panel, a magazine has continual access to a group of readers who they can survey on various topics including past issues, future content and general opinions about the magazine. In addition to these editorial benefits, reader panels also provide an opportunity for advertisers to pose questions to your group of readers. Here are a few tips to help you manage your reader panel:
1. Keep it Short
Don’t be greedy with your panelists’ time. Limit each survey to 10 or fewer questions that can be answered in five minutes or less. Do not send a survey more than once a month or you risk panelist burnout. Remember these are volunteer readers so if you respect their time you are more likely to return a higher response rate.
2. Offer Incentives
Reward participation by giving readers something in exchange for their participation. Select incentives that are appropriate for your audience. Gift cards are a practical option for most groups.

3. Experiment with A/B Test
Segment your panel into two groups and try different subject lines, day of the week, time of day and personalization. Analyze the results to determine the optimal combination for the most successful survey.

Led by the intrepid Barbara Mathieson, who is serving a two-year term on the Metro Nashville Beautification and Environment Commission, a few hardy Team Hammockites trekked to western Davidson County, Tenn., on Saturday to do our part for the Great American Clean Up. In addition to filling piles of garbage bags with fast food debris, bottles, cans, cigarette butts and other gross litter, we also braved the snaky banks of the Harpeth River to properly dispose of a couple of realty signs. (Who hurls signs off a bridge?)

Join us for next year’s “Keep Nashville Clean and Beautiful” project–it’s a dirty job, but we promise lots of laughs.

It’s a common mistake, and one that slipped by me recently, to describe the firing of three volleys of 7 rifles as at military funerals as a 21-gun salute. It’s not.
A 21-gun salute is fired by pieces of artillery, not by rifles. According to the Navy’s History Division, “Today, the national salute of 21 guns is fired in honor of a national flag, the soverign or chief of state of a foreign nation, a member of a reigning royal family, and the President, ex-President, and President-elect of the United States. It is also fired at noon of the day of the funeral of a President, ex-President, or President-elect, on Washington’s Birthday, Presidents Day, and the Fourth of July. On Memorial Day, a salute of 21 minute guns is fired at noon while the flag is flown at half mast.”
The rifle salute can be described as a “three-volley salute”.

What seems to confuse so many folks is that civilians tend to think of a rifle as a gun – whereas gun has a more precise meaning as a piece of artillery.

Each year between March 1 and May 31, Keep American Beautiful sponsors the Great American Clean Up to encourage community involvement in keeping America Beautiful.

According to the kab.org website:

In 2007, Great American Cleanup volunteers collected 200 million pounds of litter and debris; planted 4.6 million trees, flowers and bulbs; cleaned 178,000 miles or roads, streets and highways; and diverted more than 70.6 million plastic (PET) bottles and more than 2.2 million scrap tires from the waste stream.

This Saturday, May 17, some of us from Hammock Inc. have volunteered to clean up along McCrory Lane and Charlotte Pike in western Davidson County.

Working on lots of long-term magazine projects, we don’t select new fonts all that often, particularly when it comes to body copy. In general, you choose a font for the body copy of your publication, and you stick with it, unless it’s time for a big redesign. And a lot of times, you still stick with it after a redesign.
Because a body copy font is such a long-term commitment, we are very careful when we’re choosing one. I sat down with our design team recently to get their insights on what makes a great body copy font for a magazine.

[Cross-posted on rexblog.com]

Wired editor and author of the book, The Long Tail, Chris Anderson, posted an item on his blog today that contains an observation I believe is so obvious, it is completely missed by many self-appointed experts. (Okay, I’ll admit I live in that glass house.):

“Not only do small (Long Tail) publishers montetize their content at 3-5 times the rate of the larger publishers in PubMatic’s survey, but they’re improving in the current environment while the big publisher decline.

This is a fact of life in business-to-business-media, where the business model has long been focused on “free” distribution of content to decision-makers in specialized fields. The “cost per thousand” (CPM) model of advertising sales does not exist as a metric in this long-tail of the media world. Of course, if an advertiser selling a $100,000 piece of equipment can reach 90% of the decision makers in a market of 5,000 specifying engineers, then, hell-yeah, the publisher of that content should be able to monetize it at hundreds of times the rate of, say, a newsweekly.

The lesson here: Online, if you want to monetize content, the number of eyeballs seeing your content is less important than who those eyeballs belong to. And the more helpful that content is in assisting real people make important and valuable decisions, the more “monetizable” it will be.

Warriors have always struggled to find uniforms that provide both protection from the elements as well as from enemy arms. Solutions have ranged from the bronze greaves of Achilles’ armor before the walls of Troy to the colorful garb of Louisiana Zouaves to the bulky battle uniforms seen on the cover of the new issue of Semper Fi, the Magazine of the Marine Corps League.

Though not as heavy as medieval armor, today’s battlefield attire and accompanying gear can add up to 150 or more pounds to the average Marine’s 163 pounds. Much of that is in the form of composite armor plates designed to stop a supersonic bullet or red-hot shard of shrapnel. Add to that eye protection, fire-resistant uniforms, weapons and ammo, communication gear, rations and water, and it’s a wonder the Marine can move at all.