I know that a lot of people are confused about the use of quotation marks. Though they seem to be very sure about them in their usage, so maybe they don't think they're confused about them. Here's a really short explanation of when to use quotation marks: around dialogue, such as: "The store is open," he said. around words which might be unknown (or used in a way previously unknown) to the reader, such as: When we're talking about a store being available to the public, we refer to that store as being "open" - though its front door may not be standing open, or it may not have a physical door at all. around words which might be facetious, where "air quotes" might be used if you were speaking,
We've talked about this before, but I found a great example of it recently, so I thought it was a topic worth a quick revisit. Spellcheck - spoiler alert - only checks for spelling errors. (If only they could have named it in some way to clue users in on that, right?) This means that a word that is technically spelled correctly - and might even look right at a glance - isn't necessarily the word that you intended. But Spellcheck isn't going to tell you, because Spellcheck is looking at the spelling of the word, and not the word's meaning. This is how men end up with receding heir lines, and why women have to be careful about how they style their hare. Spellcheck, unfortunately, is also the g
It seems somehow topical, as the current election season wears on, that we take some time to discuss the art of argument. Or possibly even to simply debate the meaning of discussion. (I could go on, but I'll stop before I have use up the entire thesaurus.) As you work with an editor, you'll more than likely have some pushback. There will almost always be times when you and your editor - moving along all happily and breezy - come across a point of contention. You might be asked to change the order of chapters. You might be told that a character's name doesn't really work. You might even be told that a major point in your argument is flawed. Does this mean it's time to start doubting all
If you look at the websites of most editing service providers (including my own), you'll see that they either list a wide range of fee structures or no pricing at all. Believe me, this is not because all of us editors and proofreaders want to spend the first week of your interaction debating fees. Instead, it's because - in this field - no two jobs are ever the same. I was checking, recently, with some other freelancers, asking them about their rates. A number of them (typically those who work with long-form manuscripts which are going to become books) said that a lot of work comes directly from publishing houses, and the rates are set in advance - typically set at a certain rate per word. A
I once told an author that he needed to include "more concrete and fewer roses" when writing a scene about his past. When we talked about that, he was kind of frustrated with me - because when you're writing about your past, it usually goes through filters - but when he read back through the scene (having taking a few weeks away from it) he started to see what I meant. You see, there are a lot of rose-colored filters that smear Vaseline on the edges of your memory and make things all soft and pretty. There are even more - at least for some people - that make all of the memories gritty and dark and film noir. Unfortunately, neither of those sets of filters really give a true version of what w
