As most of you know I am a debut author whose first book will arrive in a bookstore near you on October 4th. A lot of you out there either are début authors yourself or are multipubs who probably already know what I’m about to talk about. But for those whose manuscripts have never been copy edited, get ready to print out this blog. It’s one you will want to keep by your side when you’re writing.
So, I just finished Book 2, BEEF STOLEN OFF (BSO) and was halfway through the edits when I received the actual copy edits for Book 1, LIVER LET DIE (LLD). No big deal, I thought. Book 2 is due April 1st, Book 1 copy edits—March 28th. I decided I’d just take a quick peak at what the copy editor found before I finished Book 2.
OMG!! Was I ever knocked off my you-think-you’re–so-smart pedestal. Okay, I never really thought that, but I did think I was smart about most grammar things. Think again, Liver girl!! So, I’ve decided to share the things the copy editor corrected in my manuscript.
The number one big thing for me is I apparently didn’t have a clue when to use ellipses and dashes. Here’s what she told me:
Use a three-dot ellipses for all omission. Periods should not proceed ellipses.
Use em dashes for interrupted speech.
An example: She wondered if he loved her--or if he ever had--as he walked toward her.
"I'm not sure you will ever love me the way..." She stopped when he smiled.
Okay, I have been doing this totally wrong. I use… for everything. In reality most of the time when I use it, I really need the em dash. And here’s another goody for you. I discovered you can go to FORMAT, then AUTO FORMAT and hit Options – then unclick everything but under Replace hit “hypen to dash”, which is what the copy editor did throughout my entire manuscript.
Anyway, how much easier can it get? You just have to know the rules.
Another big problem area for me is that I use a lot of made-up words to say something specific. I’ll use this example.
He gave me one of his famous “I want to jump your bones” looks.
Does that look right? If you said yes, you have company and we're both wrong. Here’s her rule on that:
Long adjectival phrases before the noun are hyphenated in narrative, but in dialogue, use single quotes and no hyphens.
He gave me one of his famous I-want-to-jump-your-bones looks.
“Don’t give me one of your ‘I want to jump your bones’ looks.” she said.
See how easy it is when you know the rule!!!
And one last rule: Use commas with internal and terminal too, anyway, either (Exceptions me either, me too.)
You hear a lot of writers saying it is optional—not according to Berkley.
Again these are the things I got back from Berkley’s copy editor. They may change from publisher to publisher.
Oh, I almost forgot. Most of you know I had hand surgery right after Christmas and had to wear three finger braces for 6 weeks. Since my typing sucks anyway, I got Dragon Speaking, a speech recognition software. I talk—it types. I love it except that the quotation marks it uses are smaller than normal and the terminal one points the wrong way. So, I’ve been going back and changing every single one of them by hand. I tried using the Find and Replace feature, but I couldn’t replicate the shorter quotation mark.
Well, guess what? (I get so excited when I discover this kind of stuff.)I discovered an option that you won’t believe. Again, go to FORMAT and AUTO FORMAT. Hit OPTIONS and under REPLACE chick –straight quotes with smart quotes.
Voila! My whole freakin’ manuscript was corrected.
I’m so smart that sometimes I scare myself!
I’ll give you Part 2 next week. Anybody else have any great clues? If not, let me know how smart you think I am!!
40 comments:
Liz: We KNOW how smart you are AND love it. I confess that I thought I was pretty good at using Word, but I have learned from your post. Thanks!
LOL Liz...I feel your pain. I kept wondering when you would get your copy edits. Mine were an eye opener as well. Especially since my degrees are in English. Eeek! So not as smart as I thought I was :-)
LOL!~ I had the same thing happen to me with my editor. I don't recall all of those rules in English...but then again it's been over twenty-five years too;) Congrats on getting them finished. Now you really learned something and it will go better next time on BOS.
I thought I had a good handle, too. There are tons of rules. Some are obscure which I don't remember. Thanks for the good tips, PP.
Great post, Liz. How long did the copy edits take you? It didn't sound like there was much lead time for it!
I knew how to fix the smart quotes--I stumbled across it one time. LOL But I wasn't sure about fixing the em dashes. Thanks for that!
Liz, you are freakin' smart, and with every book you're going to get smarter. Most publishers give you a style sheet. Did Berkley give you one? I'm learning right along with you, but probably will be a much slower study than you ;) Terrific post and thanks for sharing.
Cassy, you always say the nicest things!! And if you only learned one thing from my post, I've accomplished something. Next week is Part II of this subject.
Kari, you hit it on the head when you called it an eye opener. I'm a science major, so I don't have the know-how that you do, but still, I thought I knew somethings. Come on, LLD is my FOURTH book!!
Tonya, since you have a different publisher, could you share anything you might not have known until you got your copy edits back?
Vicki, it is amazing how much we learn. And since you also have a different publisher, do you have anything exciting to teach us?
And BTW, she called me a PP, short for Plotting Princess. It's a private joke.
Hey, Donna, I have no idea how long the copy edits will take since I just glanced at them. I need to get BSO edited first so I can send it out to beta readers. It has an April 1st deadline.
But there isn't much to do, mostly the quotation marks and a lot of hyphenated word corrections (next Monday's blog). There were a couple notes on the side for the legal department to check stuff out. A lot of corrections involved my recipes at the back of the book. I have ten of them and they want them a certain way (TBSP spelled out, instead of cup broccoli, they want cop OF broccoli, etc).
Donnell, yes they did send a style sheet which basically summarizes all my errors and tells me why they are in correct. I seriously want the copy editor to critique regularly with me!!
Another cool thing is that there were two complete pages listing all my characters, their physical characteristics, their quirks, where they live, the pages to find all this in my manuscript, and even their backstories. How convenient do you think that will be since I am writing a series with recurring characters??
Great tips. Can't wait for more. I finally figured out the quotation marks on Dragon but haven't used it in a while. Glad you mentioned it again.
Liz, congratulations on finishing your edits! I actually do most of that, so it's not a problem for me. Find and Replace is priceless!
Uh oh, I'm in serious trouble. I would have italicized I want to jump your bones look.
Great post, Liz. I went through copy edits too and learned some interesting things. I was using the em dash, but didn't know where it was so I always used two dashes together. The production editor said if you press ALT CTRL while pressing the - on the number pad it inserts an em dash. It works on my keyboard too. I was thrilled. The problem is that if I also use quotation mark with the em dash, the quotation mark is facing the wrong way, as you mentioned. I'm off to check out the formatting you suggested to see if I can fix it. This is great. I love tips.
I'm really interested in the Dragon Naturally Speaking. I may have mentioned that I have it, but never really used it. I decided that I couldn't "speak" the manuscript, since I delete so much. But I wish I could. I would love to record on my digital voice recorder while I'm walking, then play it back into Dragon. Would that work? Do you find it difficult to speak the words? I delete so much I think it wouldn't work for me.
Oh, this was the interesting thing with Sourcebooks, but I learned it before I did copy edits. They want things italicized not underlined. I was always taught to underline, not italicize. Now I'm told never underline, always italicize. That's probably just a publisher preference.
Yes, congrats on getting the edits done. At least now you'll know what your editor wants so when you send in the next book you'll have it right. Until, that is, you get a different editor who might do things differently.
And you're right, this is a post worth printing out.
Liz, I don't want to wait for next week for part 2! It's like you left us on a cliffhanger.
Hey, Sylvia, I'm glad you figured it out on your own. You're way smarter than me.
And you should use Dragon more. I love it.
Edie, you are so smart. I'm definitely coming to you when it's time to put my stuff on Amazon.
And another tip I learned from Find and Replace I didn't know. If you hit MORE at the bottom, you can click on "Whole Words Only" and not get those annoying words like WASHED and WASTED when you want to replace WAS.
I once edited a manuscript for someone who changed her character's name from something like Ian to Eric. She had just hit correct all, so sometimes when it was supposed to say words like thespian, it said Eric. LOL So,you have to be careful and do every one separately.
VR, that's exactly what I did, too. I had to go through both manuscripts to change them. Do it now with yours so the editing isn't too overwhelming.
Anita, great tip for em dashes. I've written that one down.
As for recording while you're walking and plugging it into Dragon, I don't know, but I think I remember reading it could be done.
AS I've mentioned several times, I write long hand, then dictate to Dragon - it may sound like this - Open quotes He laid on his stomach comma too frightened to move close quotes she mentioned period-
I have to do that to get it right. I think that would be too distracting for a computer writer to do.
What you could do is spit it all out and worry about the punctuations and pauses later.
Anita, as for the italicized instead of underlines, I'm pretty sure that is an antiquated practice used back in the typewriter days. I'm doing that with all mine, also.
And something a friend of mine brought to my attention was the rule I mentioned.
And one last rule: Use commas with internal and terminal too, anyway, either (Exceptions me either, me too.)
You hear a lot of writers saying it is optional—not according to Berkley.
Here's my explanation to her:
A lot of authors are now omitting the comma before too, anyway, and either. She's telling me when those words appear on the ends or in the middle, they need commas.
Ex: Wrong way - He led her to the house too OR He led her to the house anyway OR He didn't like lead her either
All of those need commas before the last word. - He led her to the house, anyway.
Also if they're in the middle EX - She smiled anyway, even though she hated him
Right way - She smiled, anyway, even though she hated him.
Does that make more sense?
Lindsay, you're exactly right. Every editor wants it done their way. Do you have any helpful hints from when you were edited?
Oh, Tiffinie, you;re so impatient and I so love to tease. Go eat some chocolate instead!!
Amazing how much we learned from school days--and then we either forget or get lazy. But, I'm not telling...which I abuse...the most...but I've been declared--by some evil-minded, cold-hearted critiquers--to be the ellipsees queen. Hahaha!
Jaye who's off to do global fixes on her mss. Thanks for the reminder and looking forward to Part II.
Jaye, we would have to share that ellipses queen crown, GF. I totally over use it. Now I am the new em dash queen, which I suspect I'll have to share with you, too.
Hey, who's all coming to Dreamin' in Dallas?
Write the way you are comfortable then go through and make sure it's the (w)rite way. Use grammar books if you have to.
In my case the editors used Track Changes. They are great except if you are allergic to red. accept the suggestions/changes made. If you disagree then fight for what you want. In my case because I wrote characters in the Army make sure your fact are right and save your research. You may need to use it to prove a point.
But most of all-don't be afraid.
I hope this helps.
I'm with you on the ... and -- stuff.
Also italicizing foreign words.
creative wording.
Learning how to take a document and putting it into another format with automatic indentations.
Lindsay, the copy editor did use track changes. And guess what? I stood my ground on a few things she wanted changed, Let's see who prevails??
Vicki, thanks for sharing your copy edits. The funny thing about mine was that I had italicized all my foreign words, and the CE UNitalicized them. Go figure!!
All I can say is good luck with winning the fight with your CE. The mighty might be stronger but the determined will prevail. Take no quarter.
As for italizing foreign words-never heard it not done. See if you can find an example or two from the publisher to help prove your point the words should be.
I feel your pain! I had the exact same experience when I got back my edits for my debut novel. "But but but I'm GOOD with grammar!"
Some changes I got were "house style", i.e. cellphone vs. cell phone vs cell-phone. Some were things I honestly didn't know.
I use Dragon too--it's fantastic. Works wonderfully for just about everything, although it doesn't like my email program that much (Windows Live Mail). Although, I have had some inadvertantly hilarous speak-os.(Like mistaking riding, writing, reading, raiding, writhing — I’m having a lot of WTF moments when I read what I’ve speak-written the day before.)
Hey, folks, quit beating yourselves up! Most of these things aren't rules; they're style. They aren't things you're likely to have learned in high-school English; they're things you learn in journalism classes in college, or (as I did) from working as a copyeditor. As Liz said, some of them will vary from publisher to publisher, depending on what style guide the publisher uses. A style guide is intended to provide consistency in published books, not to set down hard-and-fast rules for everyone to use in everyday life.
So to those of you who are feeling stupid for not knowing these points of style: Stop it! You are NOT stupid or careless; you're just not acquainted with the finer points of copyediting. Copyeditors are, and that's what keeps them employed. :-)
And BTW, Liz: I think your publisher has a heck of a copyeditor working on your ms! (And no, it's not me. ;-) )
India, welcome to M & M. I've never seen your name before, but I love that you're here. and tell us about yourself. I'm intrigued. What do you write?
About Dragon, I know just what you're talking about with Dragon. Sometimes I get to giggling so much when I read back the text. I've been a Texan for half my life, but I was born and bred Yankee, so I have a mixed accent going on. My latest wip was about cattle rustling. I just could not get the stupid thing to write cow. It wrote Cal every time. And it will not cuss!!
Again, thanks for commenting.
Anonymous, thanks for the reassuring words to all of us. I am a nurse, so my background is science. I feel so inadequate when it comes to English. I write what I think looks good although I will admit to being a comma freak.
And BTW, are you looking for a CP?????I'll be eighteen of us here would love that.
Your post made my grammar-loving heart sing (after a particularly hideous episode last night seeing passive voice incorrectly explained on an editor interview).
I already knew these particular rules, but it was fun to hear you talk about them, and I'll look forward to your books. :) I am a huge fan of Berkley Prime Crime, Obsidian, etc mysteries...
Sam
Dear Liz,
Your whole post is so cool--You are smart. Now if I can print this and not lose it before I edit. I usually thumbtack everything that I need to the wall...long story, but I can't do that anymore. *grin* Really loved your post. This is a great blog ladies! Gwen Hankins
Gwen, thank you so much for stopping by and welcome to the M & M family. You are so sweet and I hope you'll come back.
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