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Tag: (business) Editing
Book Review: The Elements of Style
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BOOK BLURB ON AMAZON
You know the authors’ names. You recognize the title. You’ve probably used this book yourself. This is The Elements of Style, the classic style manual, now in a fourth edition. A new Foreword by Roger Angell reminds readers that the advice of Strunk & White is as valuable today as when it was first offered. This book’s unique tone, wit and charm have conveyed the principles of English style to millions of readers. Use the fourth edition of “the little book” to make a big impact with writing.
MY REVIEW
(Review of Second Edition from 1972 – review done January 2020)
I recently ran across a recommendation to read “The Elements of Style” and discovered the book on my shelf; I must have inherited it from my parents.
This classic book, though the initial material is over 100 years old at this point, is still relevant today (with a bit of care as the language continues to evolve). The central point of The Elements of Style, writing brief, specific, powerful, and active, is as relevant today in genre fiction as when this short book was a self-published pamphlet Professor Strunk shared with his classes.
If you don’t want to slog through the Chicago Manual of Style, pick up this short book (74-pages in the version I got). It’s still a gold standard.
Other Cool Blogs: Magical Words 8/21/2015
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Glad to see I’m not the only one to go on editing rants.
The best part, to me, of John G. Hartness’ post of “Rude Truths about publishing and writing – Part 347” from Magical Words 8/21/2015 is his first point.
Kill Adverbs. Stabby, stab, stab.
Not only does he tell you why to kill them, but how to kill them.
If you got an adverb + verb combo, just make the verb more powerful. Search on “ly (space)” and start knifing the adverbs.
He has three more points – A trident maybe? Anyway, read all of them here:
Writing Exercise: All the Trimmings
Photo by Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash
All the Trimmings at Thanksgiving usually means so much good stuff: stuffing, cranberry sauce, gravy, homemade mashed potatoes, heavenly hash, yeast buns, and pumpkin pie.
Trimming when writing is cutting things down. Sometimes it is done to control word count, other times to get rid of dead words which add nothing to the book, and still others to slay the dreaded adverb and copula monsters.
Sewing has a saying: As you sew, so shall you rip.
Writing should have a saying of: As you write, so shall you trim.
Modern writing is lean. Trimming words down is a required skill.
WRITING EXERCISE: Pick something you wrote but haven’t cleaned up yet. At least 250 words. Cut the words down by 10%. (e.g. For 250 words, you want to end up at 225. For 500 words, only 450 in your final product.)
REVIEW EXERCISE: What words did you remove? Dead words like “that”? Changing out the weak copula for a stronger verb buried in the sentence? Fixing adverb+verb combinations for a specialized word (she ran very fast – she sped; he walked slowly – he sauntered)? Dropped extra dialog tags like “said” and “asked”? Something else? Comment below.
Editing Rant: Clean Up #3 – Chapter Headings
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
What to Clean Up before Sending Your Manuscript to Your Editor #3 – Chapter Headings
First – Numbering
Verify all your chapters are numbered right. Please – no missing chapters, no double chapters. The one I am editing has two chapter 18s.
About 10 to 15% of the books I have edited have chapter counting errors. This issue is common enough it is on my check every time list. If you are paying me for my time and writing out the problems with the manuscript, do you want to be paying me for telling you there are two chapter 18s? I know, yes, if it is the case, but I’m sure you rather have caught that before you sent it for a professional read.
Second – Titles
Get the capitalization right for the titles – or at least consistent. Also the punctuation. Don’t capitalize all the words in one chapter title and then have a full sentence with a period for the next. Your editor usually won’t care what you choose, so long as it is consistent. You don’t even need chapter titles at all – but if you do have one chapter with a title, they all have to have it.
Three – Returns after Chapter Header
Do you have one or two line returns between the Chapter Header and the start of the document? Be consistent. Your editor usually won’t care what you choose, so long as it is consistent.
Four – New Page Start
Most publishers want chapters to start on a new page. Put a hard page break in there, not a dozen returns until it’s at the top of a new page. Your publisher might have different printer settings, and the pages may change by one line each, destroying the manually created page returns. For Microsoft Word, go to the Insert Tab, then Pages section, Page Break. Check on the submission page if you have a question – and even if you don’t. Always check the submission page in case the rules change. You never know when a publisher will have a software upgrade or downgrade.
Five – Formatting
Many people work each chapter in a separate file – to prevent massive data loss and also because the bigger the file, the longer saves take. They then need to assemble everything into one file for sending the manuscript out. This leads to inconsistent formatting including, but not limited to: font size changes, font changes, margin adjustments, and paragraph indenting variations.
In this case, your editor does care what the formatting is – it needs to be consistent with the publisher’s submission guidelines – in every.single.chapter.
If you have to strip the formatting and redo it, that is better than getting your submission rejected because your margins changed in width from one inch to two inches then went to half an inch before returning to one inch. While you might not like dealing with the formatting errors, your publisher REALLY doesn’t want to deal with it while uploading to three different types of eBooks, plus juggling the paperback and hardback printing. Which is why manuscripts with this type of problem get rejected early in the submission process. Don’t be in that statistic.
Other posts in the Clean Up series
#1 – Commas
#2 – Double Spaces
#3 – Chapter Headings