Word Surprises

Did you know that impostor is spelled with “or” and not “er”?

Did you know that guttural is spelled with “ur” and not “er”?

In the word for a big fuss, which letters are doubled? Here it is – hullabaloo.

 

Gimme a gimmick any day,

To tell me a word is spelled which way.

Stationary and stationery are two words that are often confused. One means to stay in one place, and the other refers to letter-writing material.

The difference in the spellings is in the ending (ary or ery).

The “a”  in ary is like the “a” in place. I remained stationary (in one place).

The “e” in ery is like the “e” in letter. I wrote a letter on fine stationery.

EASY!

 

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Self-editing

Wrong name and/or wrong pronoun

Lately I’ve been irked by a certain kind of error that I’ve run into more times than I should have. As I was reading some novels for pleasure (as opposed to reading them as a copy-editing job), I was shocked to come across the names of main characters being switched around.

When Tom was meant, Luke was used instead, and vice versa. This happened several times in one novel. I found the same mistake in another novel I recently read, and the wrong pronoun (“her” instead of “him”)  was used.

The author should have caught these mistakes in the self-editing part of the writing process, but since it is not the kind of error that a spellchecker or grammar checker would catch, it can easily go unnoticed.

If you have changed your character’s name after writing the first draft, you might want to have a closer look  for cases of having used the wrong name.

Have you changed your POV?

Also, if you have decided to rewrite your ms with a different POV, it will require close scrutiny when you check your ms for errors. I’ve done this kind of thing myself, where I’ve written several chapters in third person POV and then decided to switch to first person. It can be awkward to read something like:

I hurried down to the dock to wave goodbye. She hoped I was not too late.

Switching pronouns

Another horror of self-editing can happen if you decide to change a character from female to male. Let’s say you decided that a male character would work better in a certain role. You would have to change all the cases of “her” to “him.” To make the job easier you might want to use the Find and Replace feature in your Word program. But be careful not to make sweeping changes without looking at each case first, or you might end up changing “mother” to “mothim,”  “father” to “fathim,” and “other” to “othim.”

It helps to type a space before and after the word “her” in Find. That would avoid words with the letters h-e-r in them from being selected. Trust me, there are a lot of words with these letters in them. You don’t want to have to sort them all out.

And then what?

Self-editing is good and necessary, but, after you have checked your ms for all of these (and many other) errors, it will still be worthwhile to have a copy-editor go through your work. A good copy-editor can save you from embarrassment, and consequent bad reviews, when readers find mistakes in your published work.

If you would like to know more about my copy-editing work, please click the “Copy-editing Services”  tab on the top of this blog. 

***** ACK! It happened AGAIN!*****

I just put up this post and sat down to read a book. I couldn’t believe it would happen again so soon, but the author of yet another book put in the wrong name. 

Mr. Jones is in a conversation with X, discussing the demise of Mr. Smith. Two sentences later, it is Mr. Jones who is referred to as the dead guy. 

The story is going down, down, down in my estimation. This is after several other smaller errors. Sigh….

 

Run-on Sentences

Do you strive to be a good writer? Do you have trouble recognizing  a correct sentence? Are you guilty of writing run-on sentences? Here are some ways to solve this problem.

One of the most common mistakes beginning writers make is to use run-on sentences. When two complete thoughts are stuck together as one sentence, quite often it is a run-on sentence, and is grammatically incorrect. For a copy editor, a piece of writing that is full of run-on sentences can be a nightmare to work through.

Very often, the two parts of the run-on sentence are related, most likely talking about the same idea. The red and green highlighting shows the two sentences that have been put together to make one run-on (incorrect) sentence.

(Run-on) My house is at the end of the block no other houses are beyond mine.

The simplest way to correct this would be to make two sentences.

My house is at the end of the block. No other houses are beyond mine.

*****

(Run-on) She was only fourteen years old no wonder she was vulnerable.

She was only fourteen years old. No wonder she was vulnerable.

*****

(Run-on) I shopped in the rain today I got drenched.

I shopped in the rain today. I got drenched.

Here are other options:

1. I shopped in the rain today, and got drenched.

2. I shopped in the rain today; I got drenched.

3. I shopped in the rain today; therefore, I got drenched.

4. Because I shopped in the rain today, I got drenched.

*****

Since you have so many options, please use one of them instead of jamming two complete thoughts into one sentence without the proper conjunctions or punctuation. The simplest way to fix a run-on sentence is with a period and capital letter, but as you can see, there are other alternatives. Leaving it as a run-on sentence is not one of them.

For information about copy editing services, please go to my website at

www.anneli-purchase.com

Find and Replace

When I have a long piece of work to edit, enhance, and rewrite, it helps to use the technology available to me. My tech savvy is only moderate, but I’ve learned to make good use of some of the functions available to me.

One of my favourite tools in Word is Find and Replace.

Suppose I am reading over a section of my writing and I’ve just realized that my Constable Andersen mentioned near the end of the book is spelled “sen” and elsewhere in the manuscript I’m sure I had it spelled Anderson with the “son” ending. Now I’m wondering how many more times I’ve spelled it Anderson, and where in my manuscript might those instances be?

Luckily, using Word, I don’t have to read the whole ms to look for “Anderson.” That’s what Find and Replace is for.

I go to the beginning of my ms and click on the Home tab. On the far right, I see a tiny set of binoculars with the word “Find” beside it. I click on “Find” and in the navigation window that drops down, I can type in the word I’m looking for.

I type in “Anderson,” the word with the wrong spelling (for the purposes of my novel). Word will automatically take me to each case of “Anderson” when I click the up or down arrow. At each stop, I have the option of going into the text to change the spelling to “Andersen.”

If I had a change to make that involved more than just a few words, I could use the Replace option to do the work for me. Depending on which version of Word you have, you can either click on Replace (under the binoculars on the right), or, in older versions, click on the Replace tab in the window that opened when you first clicked “Find.”

It’s a fast and easy way to be sure to find all instances of some mistake you may have made.

Watch out for a funny thing that can happen when you are using Replace.

Let’s say you were changing one of your characters from a girl to a boy. Every time you have referred to the girl you’ve said “her.” Now that you are using a boy, you want those words to say “his,” not “her.”

But beware. Find will show you all cases of “her,” even if it is only a part of a longer word. If you changed all cases of “her” to “his,” you might end up with a new spelling nightmare with “mother” changed to “mothis” and “there” changed to “thise.” As I’ve discovered, there are many words with the letters “her” in them.

Definitely use Find, but use Replace more carefully.

Rewriting. What to do and when to stop.

I love rewriting better than writing the first draft of my novels.

• First I’m much more relaxed because I know the hard work of getting the storyline on “paper” is done.

• As I rewrite I find mistakes and have a feeling of satisfaction when I fix them.

• I find little treasures like a paragraph that I can rewrite using dialogue rather than boring narrative, and I’m pleased with myself for figuring that out.

• I can’t believe I fell for the use of other words as dialogue tags instead of “said” and “asked” and I fix those, reaffirming that I can make the dialogue do the job of expressing the emotion rather than relying on the dialogue tag to provide it. Fancy words like “inquired” and “replied” just slow down the action. “Said” and “asked” are more like punctuation—necessary, but meant to be glossed over. This is also the place where I look for “ing” words and get rid of them if possible. (For example: “I’ll be right there,” she said, putting down the phone.) If she was putting down the phone when she was speaking into it, I wonder if the other party even heard her.

• I look for repeated words and try to avoid using the same words or expressions in one paragraph. Repetition becomes obvious immediately when reading your work out loud.

• Speaking of repetition, character names are often overused, especially in dialogue. Have you ever noticed that when you’re talking to someone, you rarely speak their name? The other person knows you’re talking to them and you and that person both know his or her name. Why would you keep on saying it? So for natural conversation, use the other person’s name sparingly. I often have to take out names in dialogue, and in narrative sections I replace them when possible with he or she.

• In dialogue, the sentences should be fairly short. I need to check for long sentences that give a lot of information. People just don’t talk that way. Often they use only one or two words or phrases. Besides, short, snappy dialogue heightens the tension and that is what every author is striving for.

• In the rewrite, I can also add little tidbits of description of people or places, but I try to be careful to do it in small doses. Long descriptions have a huge “yawn” factor.

• When someone speaks, they may have some physical or emotional reaction that should be added, usually before the quotation. This is a good time to add that information.

• As I reread my first draft, it’s important that I remember which point of view I’m in. I’ve made some awful POV mistakes that my critiquing buddy or I have found. For example, if I’m telling the scene in Andrea’s POV, I can’t write a thought that is happening in Jim’s head. Andrea has no way of knowing what he is thinking. I’m so thankful to have the opportunity to fix POV problems before publication and save myself some embarrassment.

• Now that I’ve mentioned my critiquing buddy, I have to say that my writing efforts are made so much easier because of her. I try to do the same for her and it makes us a great team. If you don’t have a writing buddy to exchange files with and help each other out, it’s very much worth your while to try to find someone who is willing to work with you. I find my buddy’s help invaluable! Oops! She’ll say not to use exclamation marks unless it’s for a one- or two-word expression, but in this case, I do want to stress that her help is invaluable!

 Most authors are perfectionists and they tend to rewrite over and over. I’ve heard it said that an author can tell that they’re finished rewriting when they end up with what they originally wrote in the first rewrite. I wouldn’t go quite that far, but sometimes you wonder ….