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".

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.

Today, I received an email from a client wanting to know when she would receive the postage estimate for her magazine. Usually, postal estimates are one of the last things clients want to receive. Checks have to be requested, approved, written, signed and Fed Exed to the USPS Postmaster by a certain date. Often, after the magazines are mailed, excess postage accumulates in the account. The post office will not refund this money, but only hold it for future mailings with no interest paid.

But a year or so ago, Hammock helped this client switch to the USPS CAPS (Central Automated Payment Services) system for submitting postage to the postmaster for her association’s magazines. Using CAPS, a client sets up a trust or debit account for payment of postage.

One or two days before the postage is due in the account, the client is given an actual expense for postage, and her money can be deposited in the account the next day. There is no overage for accounting errors added to the amount as there is with an estimate.

For the above client, it has worked really well. She is included in a co-mailing pool with other magazines that utilize CAPS. Not only are her postal costs reduced because of shared freight charges, the magazines get to local post offices quicker and into the hands of her members. Plus the balance in her account at the end of the mailing is $0.

It can be cumbersome and time-consuming to navigate the postal system, but we have helped many clients achieve similar efficiencies. We serve as a bit of a translator for the intricacies of the postal system for our clients.

We love to tell great stories. We love to hear them, too. That's why our ears are always perked for good ones. And sometimes, good stories come in the form of podcasts.

In a nutshell, a podcast is an audio file, distributed over the Internet, which is ready for playback on your computer or a portable MP3 player.

Although they started out as a way to distribute radio-type shows, podcasts are also being used to market new products, distribute class lessons to students and share news. Podcasting and other forms of social media like blogging and photo-sharing are popular and effective ways of telling a story. And a growing group of associations are embracing the trend as a new and popular way reach out to their members and potential members.

Here are a few good ones we've noticed recently.

We send all kinds of files back and forth to clients and vendors every day -- Word documents, spreadsheets, images, PDFs -- whatever you can imagine! But the need to email photos isn't exclusive to custom media companies. We frequently send and receive electronic files with people who aren't members of a creative profession -- and of course with our friends and families. We've found that outside of the small circle of us who regularly use electronic images in the course of our business, the proliferation of point-and-shoot digital cameras has led to some bad habits as we try to share images.

Make sure you are sending your electronic images in the best way using these tips.

There’s no doubt that photographers are artists, but their work at a photo shoot also includes a certain amount of science and, of course, skill. At Hammock we aid in that scientific process by preparing our photographers as much as we can before they aim a camera at one of our assignments. We believe that the more we communicate a story’s purpose beforehand, the better a photographer can represent our subject and convey a powerful visual message. A Hammock photo shoot isn’t point-and-shoot time.

Just last week, my mind was having a little battle between the words "maximum" and "maximal," and it was driving me crazy. I had typed each word out a few dozen times as I wrote and rewrote a story. I had stared at them both for so long that they no longer even looked like words to me. So, to end the battle, I turned to the best resource I know for answering tough grammar questions: my colleagues here at Hammock.

To me, there is no better resource than the smart folks around me for hammering out the proper use of a hyphen. We talk about it over lunch, from opposite ends of the hallway. And, as you've heard us mention before, we use Instant Messenger to talk about pronouns and dependent clauses as much as we use it to discuss last night's episode of LOST.

But when some of us are up to our necks in a project or out of the office for lunch (or sleep), where do we go when our deepest thoughts about the subjunctive mood just won't rest?

Online, you'll find us logged on to:

• AP Stylebook online
• Grammar Girl
• Your Writing Guru
• Dr. Grammar

Off the shelf, you might find us grabbing:

• Strunk and White's Elements of Style (I'm surprised my copy is still in one piece.)
• Basic English Revisited: A Student's Handbook
• The Associated Press Stylebook
• The dictionary

There are dozens of other great resources out there. What's your favorite?

Bill's post earlier this week celebrated all that we love about magazines and their punny, punny headlines. But you'll notice here ("How to Write Headlines for the Web") we're playing it straight. And there's good reason for that.

When you're titling articles, posts and features online, your headline has to do a lot more than look pretty and act clever. Since headlines may show up as links, and often help with search engine results, they have to cut to the chase: Just tell us what the page is about.

Our client's magazines were being delayed once they entered the Bulk Mail Center. The magazines were entering a facility that served a large area of the heavily populated northeastern United States, but the magazines weren't making it to our client's members' homes for three or four weeks. They were being transported from postal facility to postal facility to postal facility until they reached the local post office for delivery.

While participating in a webinar on postal concerns, I learned about a company that co-mails magazines together. We worked out a plan where:

• Our client’s magazines would be picked up at our printer, who would have them sorted by zip codes


• The magazines would be shipped to a center where hundreds of other magazines would be pooled together into mail streams by ZIP codes


• These large bundles of magazines would be directly trucked to USPS distribution centers close the subscribers’ homes


• The magazines arrived at the local post offices quicker and were delivered within 7-10 days after leaving the printer’s dock.

Plus, the client paid less in postage or postal freight.