Surf Wiki
Save to docs
general/printing

From Surf Wiki (app.surf) — the open knowledge base

To come (publishing)

Phrase used in publishing to indicate missing material

Summary

Phrase used in publishing to indicate missing material

"To come" is a printing and journalism reference, commonly abbreviated to "TK". The abbreviation is used to mark where additional material will be added to a manuscript before publication. It is used without periods.

The use of the abbreviation is to prevent the phrase "to come" from being mistaken as a deliberate part of the text.

Since very few English words feature the letter combination TK, it is more easily searchable than TC. The abbreviation TK and the repeated TKTK are "unique and visually arresting" strings that are both easily seen in running text.

Criticism

This shorthand is described as "imprecise" in a Q&A on the website of the Chicago Manual of Style, which advises,

It's best to be more straightforward and specific. For example, use bullets or boldface zeros (••• or 000) to stand in for page numbers that cannot be determined until a manuscript is paginated as a book (but see paragraph 2.37 in CMOS). For items like missing figures, describe exactly what's missing. In electronic environments, you have recourse to comment features, like the `` syntax of SGML, which allows for descriptive instructions that will not interfere with the final version of a document.

References

References

  1. (2022-09-29). "In Praise of TK: Why the Handy Shorthand Has a Surprising Emotional Hold on Me".
  2. (2007-04-08). "Hed, dek, lede, graf, tk: Live with it". Language Log.
  3. Safire, William. (1996-10-06). "Of Hacks and TK". The New York Times.
  4. [https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/ManuscriptPreparation/faq0006.html Chicago Style Q&A]
Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

printing placeholder-names
Want to explore this topic further?

Ask Mako anything about To come (publishing) — get instant answers, deeper analysis, and related topics.

Research with Mako

Free with your Surf account

Content sourced from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

This content may have been generated or modified by AI. CloudSurf Software LLC is not responsible for the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of AI-generated content. Always verify important information from primary sources.

Report