Day One Consistency

MMW | 1 MANUSCRIPT MAKEOVER WORKSHOP Day One Consistency I hope you’re ready to get started—I’m so excited to share these next ten days with you, and to help you learn some “trade secrets” to line/copy edit your own work a little more efficiently. I think it’s true that often we’re too close to our own work to part with some of it, yet I also think that, given the right tools, it’s easier to take a more objective, more clinical approach to the work of editing. Honestly, the first thing I do when I look at a new manuscript is technical stuff. I find that doing some cut-and-dried tasks to start—spelling checks, bits of formatting, punctuation—helps me to get the ball rolling. And makes it easier to come back with harder tasks later. Here are the first things I’ll check when I start a new project. They fall under the categories of Spelling and Punctuation, but ultimately are concerned with Consistency: • Spelling: o Check name spellings for main characters, then all characters as you come across them. Look for both correct spellings and a few incorrect just in case. For example, Tiffani/Tifany (or look for Tif and see what comes up). o Repeat for place names. o Repeat for book-specific and variable spellings. A big one here is gray/grey. Both are correct, but you must choose and use only one. (Unless you have a Mr. Grey whose cat is gray. Then you’ll have two, but you must keep them ©2020 TheEditingSoprano.com MMW | 2 straight!) A book-specific spelling is particularly important with built worlds (as in fantasy, paranormal, sci-fi) which won’t necessarily be in a dictionary. I highly recommend you keep your own stylesheet or world bible in this case. This is also handy for series. o You’ll be intimately familiar with your book, so you’ll know which words/names to keep an eye out for. Also keep in mind words you know you are prone to misspell. A running list is helpful here, your own personal “this is how it’s really spelled” dictionary. • Punctuation o Most of the time, I defer to Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS), and I think that’s true for most US fiction editors and self-publishing authors. However, if you’re self-publishing, there are some marks that get to be ‘Author style book’ or if publishing with a small press, you may need to adhere to your house’s stylesheet. The main two are the ellipsis and the em-dash. Both have leeway, and there are a couple of different ways to “properly” set ellipses. I suggest deferring to the norm in your genre. Check for consistency by searching each one. o Ellipsis: If you work in Word, when you type … it automatically recognizes that this is an ellipsis and will autocorrect to what you see above as a single character, not three separate dots. Also acceptable is three full-stop periods with a space between them . as here. While CMOS likes ‘open’ ellipses, whether you use spaces before and after is dependent on your personal preference. Whatever you decide though, be consistent. o Em-dash: The em-dash is the mark we use to connote interruption of thought—like so—and is generally displayed ‘closed’ with no spaces between the words and the dash in the US. Word will autogenerate one for you if you ©2020 TheEditingSoprano.com MMW | 3 type two hyphens with no spaces. You can do – like so with the spaces (open), but Word may auto insert an en-dash instead (as it did for me here) so you’ll have to make sure they are corrected properly. (Side-note that as I was checking up on my rules, I saw a couple of web articles stating that British English prefers en-dashes because they’re more aesthetically pleasing. Take that with a grain of salt—it was the web.) o Exclamation and Question Marks: Most everyone knows how to use these (and periods) without getting confused, but it’s nice to check them anyway as you go along. And unfortunately, it isn’t yet quite proper to use them together. (I make exceptions for things like text messages or notes from characters.) Someday the interrobang may catch on, but it hasn’t yet. o Semicolons: Are the phrases on either side of the semicolon complete sentences? If yes, carry on. If no, you have three choices. 1. change the mark 2. rewrite the sentences 3. leave it, knowing your editor may say something later. And you might get away with it if your reasoning is strong. Now that you know what you’ll be looking for, I’m going to tell you how to look. I mean, sure you can scroll through the MS—you’ve probably done that a thousand times, and will do it a hundred more for this workshop—but there’s actually a more efficient way. If you don’t already know about Find and Find/Replace in the Word toolbar, I’m about to rock your world! ©2020 TheEditingSoprano.com MMW | 4 If you click on Find or the magnifying glass icon, which will be right of center next to the Styles section (which we’ll be using later) you’ll open a sidebar where you can type in whatever special symbol, word or word combo you’re looking for. If you’re looking for spelling variations, I’d type in a truncated version (like Michel if you’re looking for Michele/Michelle) and for the one or two that might be misspelled, you can manually change them. If you were to type in gray or grey and come up with 24 of one and 30 of another, you might be better off to use Find/Replace (F/R). To use F/R is practically as easy. Type the ‘wrong’ word in the Find, the ‘right’ word in the Replace, and click either replace (individually) or replace all (self-explanatory). We’ll use these features later, too. Such a handy tool! ©2020 TheEditingSoprano.com .

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