Proofreading & Editing Tips
A Housing Crisis: Tenants or Tenets?
From a text I was editing earlier today: She was a certified translator of French and Italian documents, particularly those relating to the Western tenants of European intellectualism. Oooh…I just love this kind of typo, where the author has used a legitimate word but...
My Favorite Punctuation Mark—The Em Dash
In case you aren’t familiar with an em dash, I put it in the title as a visual aid. It’s name comes from it being the same width as the letter m; similarly, an en dash is the same width as the letter n. An easy way to find these symbols in Microsoft Word is to click...
Back to the Basics: Dialogue
Refreshers are necessary at times, and based on my recent editing projects, how to properly format dialogue has got lots of writers confused. Are you in a tizzy over this too? Read on and see if you’ve got the bases covered. Start a New Line First, whenever a speaker...
“I Could Care Less!”: An Oft-Mispronounced Phrase
“I could care less about what you do!” This is something a character said in a story I recently edited. Perhaps you’ve said it in real life to someone who has bothered you in some way. Maybe they hurt you, so as a way to clap back at them with an I don’t care anyway...
Word Pairs: What a Difference Letter Placement Makes
I texted my daughter today. She’s been dog sitting for a neighbor, and when she came home this morning before school, her eyes were half-open. When I dropped her off at school, she still hadn’t woken up entirely, so at noon, I texted her. Hi, honey! You doing okay?...
Wonderful Nomenclature: A Congress of Baboons
It’s no surprise that I love words, and I truly love the English language. Lately, I’ve especially enjoyed learning what different groups of animals are called, such as a prickle of hedgehogs. What fun it was to learn that a group of baboons is called a congress of...
Freedom From the S: Toward, Forward, In Regard To
Sometimes, we add an “s” when it isn’t needed. Are you one of these “s” adders? Are you prone to saying “towards” and “forwards”? If so, you aren’t necessarily wrong to do so, but you’ll end up sounding more British than American. Over in England, they still have...
Clench Versus Clinch
It’s time to get a grip on English. We gotta clinch it. Or do we clench it? Uh-oh…I sense word-choice insecurity. I recently came across this sentence during an editing project: “They will be crushed,” the warlord said, clinching his fist. Word Alert! Historically,...
Bursted? Busted!
What a strange feeling to find out that a word you use isn’t a word at all. Typo Alert I was recently editing a book for a client and came across this line: Everyone bursted with relief and joy. I quickly fixed “bursted” to “burst,” because—and here’s where your mind...
Itch a Scratch?
Hmm. Have an itch? Do you scratch it or itch it? English can be so irritating (pun intended). Scratch Scratch as a verb most commonly means to tend to an itch, usually by scraping it with your fingernails. But here’s the rub: it can also be a noun. If you get an owie...