"To preserve the reputation of the Fraternity unsullied must be your constant care."

BE A FREEMASON

Thursday, March 04, 2010

The Vanishing Cheat Sheet

The Dummies® people at Wiley Publishing have begun printing a new edition of Freemasons For Dummies that no longer includes their old trademark yellow "cheat sheet" in the front of the book. This seems to be a trend across all new Dummies books beginning this year. The "cheat sheet" was originally designed as a tear-out card that you were supposed to rip out of the book and keep folded up in your wallet as a handy reminder of pertinent facts from the book. I can at last reveal that the content of these cards generally became the subject of sleepless nights and endless wrangling between authors and an internal editorial staff of Cheat Sheet Oberführers who obsessed over the things.

I have yet to meet anyone who actually tore them out of the book.

They hung on for so long for a reason Freemasons can easily understand: that's the way they'd always done it, since the first computer Dummies book back in 1991 with DOS For Dummies, back when IDG published them, 1,700 titles ago.

Well, now they are gone for good.

Well, not entirely for good. They are still available on the Dummies website.

Click here for the Freemasons For Dummies Cheat Sheet

It's not just my books. Click here for the U.S. Constitution For Dummies Cheat Sheet.

1 comment:

  1. I'll miss those cheat sheets. I didn't always tear them out but they were excellent quick references for various pieces of info I needed. Not so much in your book but in more of the Computer related dummy reference books I have. The sheets are very useful. Alas, they will be missed by at least me...

    ReplyDelete

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