Sheila Deeth Editing

When Word red-underlines things like we'll, they'd, hadn't etc., you might be excused for thinking the program's gone crazy. And you might be right. The problem, if you happen to be running spellcheck (or even trying to read without distraction), is to figure out which particular kind of crazy. After all, those red underlines do kind of draw the eye, distracting from the joy of the author's words. So what's an editor to do? As usual, the first answer is to try Google. Then try asking the same question 300 different ways. And finally, fix it. Which means I've now learned how to tell Word that certain words are not English (and that others are), and how to make Word make all the wrongly flagged Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish words revert to English (US) - or even English (UK) or English (Australian) if desired. So here's how it's done: Open your document. Go to one of those wrongly flagged words, and rig...

The headline read "Pope says no to married priests." It grabbed my attention, in part because my brother is a (celibate) priest, and in part because a friend's son-in-law is, in fact, a married priest. So what would the article have to tell me... Nothing at all about married priests if seemed! It described how the Pope had addressed various items brought up in a letter to him--how he supported environmental issues and wanted groups to move forward, etc. But, it said, he didn't address the suggestion that allowing married priests might be a good idea in that particular situation... so maybe he sort of said "no" by default, maybe... And I felt cheated. I should have known better. Headlines are clickbait for readers. Click more and the owner of the site earns more. So who cares the article matches the headline's attraction? Book titles might look like clickbait too. We want the reader to pick up the book or click on Amazon's "look inside...

My Christmas letter reached my nephew yesterday, having spent, it seems, six weeks orbiting the planet. So what went wrong? Nobody knows. We proofread the letter and the envelope. We added the right postage (albeit in a rather strange, printed stamp because the Post Office ran out of "forever international" stamps). We posted it only a few days later than we should have. But six weeks! And sometimes, no matter how carefully you (or your editor) edits, how well you (or your editor) proofreads, and how perfectly you (or your editor) make sure you've obeyed all the rules, some little errors slip by. The advantage of Print on Demand is you can fix them before too many people see them. If you have friends willing to point things out, and a sweet deal where new uploads of files (to your print or ebook service) are free, that's a really big advantage. If you have to pay for uploads, maybe less so. If you have to pay for changes, you'll probably want to balance perfec...

It was an old song, sung on an old scratchy record, and I loved it. The protagonist in the musical tale had won some kind of lottery, and wished he hadn't. At least, that's how I remember it. So now he lamented, "If I'd only put an X instead of one." Maybe it was the tune. Maybe it was the fact that the song really did tell a story. Or the singer's voice. Or knowing I could only hear it if Mum and Dad would put the record on for me... We signed up for healthcare recently - got help with it, because, well, it's kind of a really big deal and we didn't want to make any mistakes. But then I couldn't create my online account, so I called the helpline. "Ah, we're having problems with the website. Just wait till January," they said. Then, "Ah, we're having problems with the website. Just wait a few more days." Then, "Ah, it's the website. Don't worry; you really are insured." Which helped, a bit. Then I ph...

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 ...

A friend is trying to mail a parcel from the US to the UK. It's not an overly large or overly heavy parcel. And the cheapest postage she can get is $94 ! I gave up mailing parcels to the UK when they wanted $56 to send a slim paperback book. And I still don't understand how it can cost so much. But what results from the high cost? People stop sending parcels. (That's me.) People still send them and complain a lot. People make very, very sure that the address label, customs declaration, contents list, and even choice of contents are absolutely right and perfect and exactly what they want before sending the parcel. (That's probably my friend.) So... what's that got to do with the price of editing? Reading, fact-checking, commenting on, and editing a document takes a lot of time. Editors need to be paid for the time they give, of course. And... well, it could always take more time, and we could always charge more... and more... But at some point: Peopl...

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...