Sheila Deeth Editing

There was a live-streamed debate at church today, involving two prominent scientists, one a "heretic" who accepts evolution, and one a "fool" who doesn't - they're the authors of The Fool and the Heretic , a book I really must read! These two men described how, on first meeting, they were each quite sure they'd correctly defined the other. But then they talked, prayed, ate dinner and talked some more. Gradually they realized that, while each believed the other's position to pose a threat to Christianity, they could still respect each other's intelligence AND each other's faith, and they could be friends. In novels, characters often hold differing opinions. Sometimes those opinions agree with the author's; sometimes they don't. The author's job, at the start, is to keep their own opinions separate from the characters' - just because you believe all creationists are fools, you don't have to make them all look foolish in ...

I believe the spider once invited the fly into her parlour, or was it her parlor? The answer probably depends on whether you're English or American. But the question is, which spelling would you expect in a novel, and what difference would it make. When a Regency heroine invites the "Honourable Fred" into her "parlour," English readers accept the words (and spellings) without a second thought, while American ones, those attuned to Jane Austen movies at least, hear and smile at a peculiarly English tone of voice. Meanwhile, when the Regency heroine says "parlor" (or "honor"), English readers hear an American voice, quickly setting the scene as somewhere across the Pond... but what do Americans hear? (Or Australians even?) If it matters that your readers hear an English intonation, it might be good to use English spelling, in dialog at least. But that gives rise to the vexing question of what spelling to use in narration. Is the narrato...

Once upon a time--when the kids were young and phones were fastened to walls, in the days before computers, scanners, image editing software, and other wonders we now take for granted--I was asked to combine 60 self-portraits, drawn by three and four-year-olds, into one tea-towel sized image, with names of course. If you've ever looked at a three-year-old's self-portrait, you'll know it might be very strange and singularly oddly designed. Taking 60 such images, shrinking them down, fitting them together like a jigsaw... it was a time-consuming task. And I felt much like an art forger, trying to guess for each child, how did they hold the pencil, where did they first put it down, which way did they lean, how hard did they press, and how did they make that swirling shape at the end... After all, my job was to disappear, and only the children's artwork should be seen. Now I edit essays and novels, and sometimes feel that same sense of forgery, learning the sound of th...

Did you spot the typo in the header? Spotting weird typos can depend on several things: What font is being used. Some fonts offer plenty of white space between letters; others run them together, which makes weird typos like this much harder to notice. How involved were you in the reading. Perhaps, like me, you tend to gloss over unimportant stuff like chapter headings - let me get to the story! If you already know what the words should say (if you're the author perhaps), why would see something different from what you expect? And of course, if the words are deep in a complex plot or argument, your brain may be just too busy understanding what's going on to spot what's not. Creating weird typos depends on several things too: Perhaps you typed "moderm" instead of "modern" and spell-check made the wrong guess. Perhaps you scanned in a document, and image-to-text failed to see the white space betweeen r and n. Perhaps you used text to speech ...