-TYPICAL ERRORS AND HOW TO FIX THEM-
IMPORTANT: Please be especially alert to the rules on italics. It's a problem easily managed, once you know the ins and outs.
Due to my being overwhelmed
with editing, (yes, we're growing quite rapidly, <g>), I'm asking our
authors to pay special attention to correcting particular items BEFORE I begin
an edit. This speeds things along greatly for me, and it also ensures a much
cleaner edit--something we both want. Below are some helpful tips, along with
an explaination of how to fix each problem. These guidelines won't make your
own writing more difficult. It's just a matter of following them as you write--
BTW, I use a reference titled, "Action Grammar", written by Joanne
Feierman. Rules of syntax vary somewhat from expert to expert, but I find this
particular book more accessible and useful than most. If you're interested in
this reference, it's available at Amazon.com. Some of the examples that follow
are from this reference. If you want the ultimate in reference, invest in the
Chicago Manual of Style. However, most of the errors I encounter don't require
this reference, but it's the absolute last word if you need it.
Notice in the examples that
follow I've highlighted the errors in RED.
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COMMAS: There are many rules for commas, many of them ambigious and difficult
to apply to some kinds of sentences. The rule that's most clear, though, and
most often broken by authors is Joanne's Rule 28. "When two or more adjectives
precede a noun and each one independently describes the noun, put a comma between
the adjectives. If they do not, omit the comma." What's meant here? It's
clearest with some examples:
CORRECT:
She was a gorgeous, intellegent, especially talented woman.
The words gorgeous, intellegent, and talented, are all adjectives that describe
"woman." So commas should separate them.
INCORRECT: She was a gorgeous,
intellegent, especially, talented woman.
Notice the comma after the word, "especially", which is incorrect.
The word, "especially" is an adverb that supports the adjective, "talented",
so "especially talented" is a glued-together unit. Since "especially"
isn't an adjective, no comma should follow. Believe it or not, this error is
committed over and over again because authors don't have a rule in mind. They
try to wing it and then it's just a toss up. A simple "trick" to use
when in doubt is to read the sentence with the word "and" in place
of where you think a comma should go. So, looking at the incorrect example--
INCORRECT: She was a gorgeous
AND intellegent AND especially AND talented woman.
That doesn't sound correct, and it's not. Let's try the same trick with the
correct example--
CORRECT: She was a gorgeous
AND intelligent AND especially talented woman.
Bingo! Sounds right because it IS right! Use this AND substitution trick and
you'll never make these common mistakes again.
An exception to the above is when "color" falls into the mix. We think
of color as an adjective. It is. But a comma should not precede it, which would
separate it from a previous adjective. An example would be--
INCORRECT: Her
long, lustrous, shiny, black hair waved in the
wind.
CORRECT: Her long, lustrous,
shiny black hair waved in the wind.
Notice there is no comma separating "shiny" and "black"
in the correct version. Try reading the incorrect version with AND in place
of each COMMA.
Her long AND lustrous AND shiny AND
black hair waved in the wind. That doesn't sound quite right, does it?
Her long AND lustrous AND shiny black hair waved in the wind.
Bingo! <g>
Putting a comma before a color is the most often made comma mistake. Watch for
it!
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SOME CAPITALIZATION RULES:
Authors frequently misunderstand the capitalization rules for words like mother,
father, captain, etc.--words that are titles that identify the character. A
few examples will clear up these misunderstandings.
CORRECT: I love
my mother.
INCORRECT: I love my Mother.
CORRECT: I love you, Dad
.
INCORRECT: I love you, dad.
CORRECT: I would like you to meet my captain.
INCORRECT: I would like you to meet my Captain.
CORRECT: I would like you to meet Captain Dick
Claassen, the commander of Awe-Struck E-Books.
INCORRECT: I would like you to meet captain
Dick Claassen, the commander of Awe-Struck E-Books.
I'm sure you can figure out what's right by studying the examples.
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EDITING CHARACTERS I MIGHT USE:
"Characters" to watch for, [ ] ( ): When I come across a sentence
I don't know how to fix without extensive rewriting--rewriting is left to you
because sometimes sentences are so ambigious I don't know how to fix them--I
will often enclose the sentence or phrase in [ ], followed by an explaination
in ( ). Sometimes I'll say it all with just [ ]. If you run into these, tell
me how to fix it in your error list you'll be preparing for me. Rest assured
that the [ ] and ( ) will be deleted when I fix the error.
Another character I use is @. I edit your books on my Palm Pilot, and the "@"
character is a convenient way to make a quick bookmark. When I begin editing
at this point, I always delete the "@" character. It's possible, though,
that I might forget to do this. More than one author has found these hanging
around and has alerted me.
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ITALICS DOs AND DON'Ts:
I edit a ton of books. You've probably already figured that out. :-) So anything
I can do to lighten my load is a step toward Nirvana, as far as I'm concerned.
The biggest time-taking chore I have in editing any book is italicizing ending
punctuation marks that follow phrases in italics.
CORRECT: Did
I say that?
Notice that the sentence AND the question mark are italicized, as it should
be.
More often than not I get the following--
INCORRECT: Did I say that?
Notice that the ? isn't italicized. It should be because it looks wrong next
to an italicized letter, (in this case, a 't').
CORRECT: "What the heck is going on here?"
Notice that leading quote, trailing ? and end quote are in italics.
INCORRECT: "What
the heck is going on here?"
The leading quote, trailing ? and end quote are NOT in italics.
Looks wrong, doesn't it? That's 'cause it is. :-)
An author recently asked
me about italicized spaces that often appear when you press Enter or
Return at the end of an italicized phrase. Don't worry about those. We get rid
of all those with a special macro. Just concern yourself with the actual text.
In summary: "Leading" and "Ending" punctuation marks
of italicized phrases or words, whether the ending marks happen to be question
marks, exclamation points, periods, semicolons, colons, or commas MUST...I repeat,
MUST be italicized as well. And this also includes leading and ending quote
marks, as well as parenthesis. It's a very time consuming task for me to fix
every single instance of this. If you can avoid this mistake, I would appreciate
it more than you'll know. At least 35% of my time in the edit of each and every
book is taken up with this one dumb task. Sometimes the problem is so acute
I'm forced to send it back to the author to fix before I can even begin the
edit. If you're aware of the rules as you write, none of this will be a problem.
A word of caution in regard to periods: quite often it's difficult to tell
if a period is italicized or not. An easy way to know is to select just
the period. Is the highlight vertical? If so, the period needs to be italicized.
Is the highlight slanted? If so, leave it alone. The non italicized period will
stand apart from the italicized character, and we don't want that. It looks
ugly, and it's wrong. You may consider this picky on my part. It is, and I am.
If we're going to do this, let's do it right from the git-go.
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The following NUMBERS ARE SPELLED OUT in ordinary text:
> Whole numbers one through ninety-nine, and those larger ones follow by
hundred, thousand, million, etc.(e.g., forty-one hundred)
> Round numbers (e.g., two thousand years, thirty thousand feet, etc.)
> First words in sentences