​​In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Louise and Denise demystify (and stand up for) one of the most misunderstood pieces of punctuation – the semi-colon.

Click to listen to Season 3, Episode 5

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• ​DOWNLOAD TRANSCRIPT

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Listen to find out more about ...

• What the semi-colon looks like
• Separating two independent clauses
• Subjects and predicates
• Weighting and parallelism
• Comma splices
• Separating items in a list
• Emojis
• Objections to the semi-colon

Resources

• National Centre for Writing’s podcast
• Semicolon: How a misunderstood punctuation mark can improve your writing, enrich your reading and even change your life, by Cecilia Watson
• How to use semi-colons in fiction writing

Ask us a question
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Music credit
‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.

In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Denise and Louise chat about 4 features of written language that are often thought to be Americanisms but aren’t!

​Click to listen to Season 3, Episode 3

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Listen to find out more about ...

• -iz- spellings
• serial commas
• em dashes
• which/that in restrictive relative clauses

Mentioned in the show

• Lexico/Oxford: ‘The Differences Between British and American Terms’
• Lynne Murphy on British and American English (video)
• Free PDF booklet

​Ask us a question
The easiest way to ping us a question is via Facebook Messenger: Visit the podcast's Facebook page and click on the SEND MESSAGE button.

Music credit
‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.

In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Denise and Louise talk with linguist Rob Drummond about grammar pedantry, peevery, youth language, and non-standard language in context.

​Click to listen to Season 3, Episode 2

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Listen to find out more about ...

• Correct or conventional – a linguist’s perspective
• Better versus standard
• Zombie rules, and what we can ditch
• Youth language – dumbing down English or enriching it?
• Young people's language in relation to identity and language change
• Varieties of English in written communication: globalization, national and cultural identities
• The internet’s impact on pedantry and peevery
• The relationship between knowledge and pedantry
• The difference between preferences and judgements
• Recognizing our own pedantry and respecting contextually appropriate style
• Stepping outside our linguistic comfort zones

Mentioned in the show

• Radical Copyeditor blog
• ‘The Business of Being a Writer, with Jane Friedman’
• Rob Drummond Linguistics
• TED Talk: 'John McWhorter: Txtng is killing language. JK!!!'
• Rob's graph: Linguistic knowledge versus linguistic pedantry

Ask us a question
The easiest way to ping us a question is via Facebook Messenger: Visit the podcast's Facebook page and click on the SEND MESSAGE button.

Music credit
‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.

Denise and Louise talk about how to use question marks in fiction and non-fiction according to convention.

​Click to listen to Season 3, Episode 1

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• DOWNLOAD TRANSCRIPT

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Listen to find out more about

• Direct questions
• Indirect questions
• How-to statements
• Idiomatic phrases and question marks
• Double punctuation
• Uncertain dates and date ranges
• Indicating uncertainty

Mentioned in the show

• But Can I Start A Sentence With “But”? by Carol Saller
• Making a Point: The Pernickety Story of English Punctuation by David Crystal

Ask us a question
The easiest way to ping us a question is via Facebook Messenger: Visit the podcast's Facebook page and click on the SEND MESSAGE button.

Music credit
‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.

Here's how to use quote marks (or speech marks) according to publishing convention in your fiction writing. The guidance covers both US English and UK English conventions.

In this post, I cover the following:

• What quote marks are used for
• Omitting a closing quote mark in dialogue
• Whether to use single or double quote marks
• Whether to use straight or curly quote marks
• Where the closing quote mark goes in relation to other punctuation​
• When not to use quote marks​

What quote marks are used for
Quote marks are used in 3 ways in fiction:

• Character dialogue
• To distance the narrator from what's being reported 
• ​To denote song titles and other works

Character dialogue
Quote marks show that we’re reporting what someone else is saying or said. 

​Each new speaker's dialogue should appear on a new line and include opening and closing quote marks.

To distance the narrator from what's being reported 
The tone of the distancing rendered by the quote marks will depend on narrative intent. Perhaps the voice is sarcastic. Or the author might want the reader to suspend belief by indicating that a character considers a word or phrase unreliable.

Imagine the character is saying so-called or supposed or allegedly before the word in quotes.

A word of caution: Don't be tempted to differentiate distancing terms in the narrative from dialogue by using an alternate style. If there are double speech marks around the dialogue, there should be double marks around the distancing words.

To denote song titles and other works
Quote marks are also used to identify certain published works such as song titles and book chapter titles.

So, for example, if a writer is referring to an album or book title, this is rendered in italic. However, when it comes to a song on an album, or a chapter in a book, it's conventional to use quote marks.

Omitting a closing quote mark in dialogue
There's one occasion where it's acceptable to omit the closing speech mark in dialogue: same speaker, new paragraph.

So, if you want your dialogue to take a new paragraph while retaining the current speaker, use a quotation mark at start of the new line but omit the closing one at the end of the previous paragraph.

​Single versus double quote marks
There’s no rule, just convention.

There are lots of Englishes: US, UK, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, South African, Indian, etc. Each has its own preferences and idiosyncrasies.

Focus on which English your audience will expect, and punctuate your writing accordingly. Whichever style you choose, the main thing is be consistent. 
​

• In the UK, it’s more common to use single quote marks. And if there’s a quote within the quote, that’s a double. You might hear quotes within quotes called nested quotes.
• In US English it’s conventional to use double quote marks with nested singles. 

If you choose double quote marks, use the correct symbol, not two singles.

Straight versus curly quote marks
Curly quote marks are more conventionally known as smart quotes.

​It’s conventional in mainstream publishing to use smart or curly quotation marks, not unidirectional ones.

Changing straight quotes to smart quotes is one of the initial clean-up jobs an editor will carry out when they start work on a file. To prevent the problem occurring from the minute you begin typing:
 

• Go to FILE and select OPTIONS
• Select PROOFING, then click on the AUTOCORRECT OPTIONS button
• Choose the AUTOFORMAT AS YOU TYPE tab
• Make sure there’s a tick in the "STRAIGHT QUOTES" WITH “SMART QUOTES” box
• Click on OK

 
If you’ve pasted material into your book from elsewhere, or you didn’t check autocorrect options before you began typing, there might be some rogue unidirectional marks in your file. To change them quickly, do a global find/replace:
 

• Select CTRL+H on your keyboard to open FIND AND REPLACE
• Type a quotation mark into the FIND WHAT box
• Type the same quotation mark into the REPLACE WITH box
• Click on the REPLACE ALL button

The closing quote mark in relation to other punctuation​
In fiction, punctuation related to dialogue is placed similarly whether you're writing in US or UK style: within the quote marks.

Here are some examples:

​However, there's a difference when it comes to distancing or cited works. Note the different placement of the commas and full stops in the US and UK examples. In US English, the commas come before the closing quotation marks; in UK English, they come after.

When not to use quote marks
There are 2 issues to consider here:

• Thoughts 
• Emphasis

Thoughts
CMOS at section 13.43 says you can use quote marks to indicate thought, imagined dialogue and other internal discourse if you want to. However, I recommend you don't. For one thing, I can’t remember the last time I saw this approach used in commercial fiction coming out of a mainstream publisher’s stable.

But the best reason for not putting thoughts in quote marks is because it might confuse your reader. The beauty of quote marks – or speech marks – is that they indicate speech. Let them do their job!

Emphasis 
It can be tempting to use quote marks in your writing to draw attention to a word or phrase, but it’s rarely necessary and could even have the opposite effect to what you intended. It works instead as a distancing tool, as discussed above.

If you’re tempted to use quote marks for emphasis, imagine saying the sentence out loud, and making air quotes with your fingers as you speak. Would your character/narrator say it like that? If the answer's no, leave out the quote marks. Italic will work better. Or recast your dialogue so that the reader can work out where to place the stress themselves.

Summing up
If in doubt about how to use quote marks for your book, consult a style manual. I recommend the Chicago Manual of Style, the Penguin Guide to Punctuation and New Hart’s Rules, all of which offer industry-standard guidance.

Fancy listening instead?
If you'd prefer to listen to the advice offered here, Denise Cowle (a non-fiction editor) and I chat about how to use quote marks in all types of writing on The Editing Podcast. You can listen right here or via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favourite podcast platform

It doesn’t matter a jot to me which kind of English an author wants to write in. What does matter is their readers' expectations and perceptions, and being consistent.

​This free booklet shows you how to stay on track.

Macros enable us to edit faster and more consistently. For professional editors, that means a higher hourly rate, a more consistent output, and a happier client. If you want to use macros but don’t know where to start, read on.

Which macros, and when and why?
Which macros should you use? How does the Paul Beverley macro suite fit with an application such as PerfectIt? What should you use when?

No one’s the same. We edit different subject/genres, carry out different types of editing, and have different styles of working. There’s no one size fits all.

A conceptual approach, however, can help us decide which tools to use.

Analysis: Tasks versus goals
A task-centred analysis focuses on what we plan to do and deciding what tools will help with these stages. Thus, in the free book, Macros for Editors, I offer smorgasbord of macros that speed up a variety of specific tasks.
 
However, when we look broadly at what we’re trying to achieve, we may discover different ways of working and different tools – new tools, maybe – that can help.
 
One such contribution to this approach is the Alyse suite – analysis-type macros (DocAlyse, HyphenAlyse, etc.) that provide an overview that reports on the likely inconsistencies in a document without our even having to look at the files.

Computer-aided editing: Teamwork
Think of computer-aided editing as teamwork – you and the computer working together, each playing to your own strengths, with a single aim: to improve communication between author and reader.

A computer brings the following to the team:

• It can work tirelessly
• It is consistent
• It is very fast 

On  the downside, it lacks the ability to look beyond the data. It has no idea of meaning, significance, attitude, feelings – only humans can provide that.

Mechanics versus meaning
Editors spend a lot of time eliminating inconsistencies in the following:
​

• spelling errors
• proper nouns
• headings 
• hyphenation
• formatting issues
• figure, table and box captions
• capitalization
• references and citations

This is the mechanical side of editing.

Editors also spend a lot of time focusing on meaning. It matters little how consistent a document is if the meaning is clouded. Obscure the meaning, and communication between the author and reader is impeded.

Using macros and related applications enables the editor to delegate some of the mechanical work to the computer – those mundane data-led tasks – and focus their minds on communication.

A possible workflow
Here’s one way it might look:

Here are the macros you might use in that workflow:
​

1. To gain an overview, use the Alyse macros.
2. To make and record style decisions, combine the client’s brief with your understanding of the overview in (1).
3. To manage the mechanics, FRedit is one option (my preferred), combined with other global macros. Find out more about what FRedit is and how it works via my free book or this video: FRedit for beginners.
4. To manage the meaning and flow, use a range of line-editing macros to speed up the micro-level changes.
5. To double-check after the line edit, rerun some of the Alyse macros to catch previously missed inconsistencies or newly introduced ones.

If you’re a PerfectIt user (see the Intelligent Editing website), you could use that instead at stages (3) and (5). Or continue to use FRedit for (3) but use PerfectIt for (5). 

The latter is a possible best-of-both-worlds approach if you like the idea of having two different tools, each working to spot errors that the other might have missed.

False positives
False positives are to be expected with any computer tool. We can reduce them by refining the FRedit changes list and PerfectIt’s style sheets. 

For best effect with global change macros, apply them to one chapter at a time, making adjustments that will make it more effective in succeeding chapters.
 
Summing up
To access all my line-level and analysis macros, download the free book. You can also watch almost 100 video tutorials on my YouTube channel. And if you want to know more about PerfectIt, visit the Intelligent Editing website.

Please feel free to email me with suggestions and/or questions about macros.

If your characters seem or appear to be doing or feeling something – probably, maybe, perhaps – then you might be using half measures to express a good chunk of that action or emotion. Uncertainty can drag a story down. Here’s how to edit for it at line level.

In fiction, tentative language can lead to the following:

• Flatness: Tension and dynamism are reduced
• Woolliness: The narrative voice can’t make its mind up
• Distance: The reader is pulled away from the story

Authors sometimes introduce tentative language into a novel because:
​

• They’re afraid of dropping viewpoint

• Their narrative voice lacks confidence
• They think it’s appropriate

Tentative language: words to watch out for
I’m not suggesting you remove every tentative word; some might be deliberate and necessary. More likely, you’ll be checking that your prose isn’t rife with them.
​
Still, these little blighters can slip in accidentally and it’s worth taking the time to root them out and decide whether to give them space on your page or remove them.

Here are some of the words (or word groups) to watch out for:

• as if to
• almost as if
• appeared to
• considered
• could
• hoped
• looked as if/looked like
• maybe
• might
• perhaps
• presumably
• probably
• seemed
• thought
• wondered

When there’s a problem, it can sometimes be fixed with a simple deletion, or a stronger verb.

When viewpoint, tension and reader immersion are at stake, more intervention might be required.

How to fix it without dropping viewpoint
I see the likes of seemed, appeared, and looked as if creeping frequently into line editing projects for less experienced authors because they want to hold viewpoint.

Hats off to them – I’ll take a seemed over a head-hop any day of the week! Still, there might be a better fix.

Here’s a framework you can use to recast in a way that removes the uncertainty but keeps the narrative alive.

In the examples below, I’ve used this framework to craft a shown narrative rather than an assumed one. The original text is based on real examples that have been adapted to respect confidentiality.

How to fix an insecure narrative voice
In the examples below, the tentative words have crept in because the authors are still developing the confidence to make every word count.

Useful tools of the trade include deletion, stronger verbs, smoother recasts, and free indirect style. 

The fixes below are suggestions only, offered so you have an idea of what to look out for and how you might tackle the solution. The approach you use will depend on your writing style and the mood of the scene.

When tentative language creates a flat sentence
In these examples, the tentative mood is justified but the sentences are rather flat. We need to inject tension.

When tentative language creates a woolly sentence
In these examples, the tentative words relate to viewpoint characters’ experiences. The uncertainty introduces distance because it pulls the reader out of their experience. It makes us say, ‘Why the lack of commitment? Doesn’t the viewpoint character know?’
​
Once more, I’ve used real examples and adapted them to disguise the originals.

When tentative language works
In these examples, the tentative words work. They show the reader that the viewpoint character is guessing.

​Summing up
As soon as a writer or editor begins line editing fiction, subjectivity comes into play. It’s rare that there’s a right or a wrong way.
​
With that in mind, don’t ban tentative language in your prose; just watch out for it. It may well have the right to be there, though it shouldn’t trump tension or add clunk. 
If removing it messes with viewpoint, use the fixing framework to craft an alternative shown narrative.

Denise and Louise talk to Beth Hamer, a professional proofreader and the Society of Editors and Proofreaders’ conference director. Beth chats about how to organize a successful editorial conference.

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Summary
Find out more about:

• Responding to feedback
• Refining the delegate experience 
• Benefits of attending the annual SfEP conference
• Choosing a venue
• Choosing speakers 
• Programming sessions

Related links and resources

• Beth Hamer, Freelance Proofreader
• Society for Editors and Proofreaders
• SfEP annual conference
• SfEP 2019 speaker: Chris Brookmyre, crime/thriller author, speaker
• SfEP 2019 speaker: Rob Drummond, linguist, writer, lecturer
• SfEP 2019 speaker: David Crystal, linguist, writer, editor, lecturer and broadcaster
  

​
Music credit
‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

You have a choice when it comes to tense in your fiction’s narrative. Here’s an overview of the tenses you’ll most likely be working with, and some guidance on the benefits and challenges of each.

The present tense
Here’s an overview of the present tense, with basic examples:

• Simple present: I write a novel; he writes a novel
• Present progressive (also called present continuous): I am writing a novel; he is writing a novel
• Present perfect: I have written a novel; he has written a novel
• Present perfect progressive: I have been writing a novel; he has been writing a novel

The present is immediate, and that right-nowness forces the reader to stick close to the viewpoint character. We’re in the moment with them. That’s why it appeals to some fiction authors, and why others find it restrictive.
​
With second-person viewpoints, the present tense is intensely voyeuristic, invasive even. Here’s an excerpt from Iain Banks’s Complicity (p. 60). This is a transgressor narrative with a difference – the narrator is anonymous, at least until later in the novel:

And in this example from a later chapter (p. 90), we’re back with the protagonist. Here, the main narrative tense is present. The viewpoint is first-person:

RECOMMENDATION
​The present tense is great if you want to shorten the distance between the reader and the viewpoint character. 

Present tense works particularly well for short fiction because space is limited. I use it often in my own shorts and flashes because it enables me to pack an immersive punch quickly. 

However, it’s tricky to manage if there are multiple viewpoint-character chapters or sections, all operating in the present tense. You’ll need to keep a close eye on the timelines so that the reader’s clear on what ‘now’ really means. If your plot twist hinges on deliberately duping them via your use of tense rather than story craft, you’ll break their trust.

The present tense can also be tiring for readers because it’s emotionally immersive. If you’re writing a novel, you might consider using it only for certain viewpoint characters – your transgressor or victim, for example.

In Let Me Lie, Clare Mackintosh mixes it up: the Anna-viewpoint chapters are set in first-person present; the Murray-viewpoint chapters are third-person past. 

The past tense
Now let’s turn to the past tense, starting with some basic examples:

• Simple past: I wrote a novel; he wrote a novel
• Past progressive: I was writing a novel; he was writing a novel
• Past perfect: I had written a novel; he had written a novel
• Past perfect progressive: I had been writing a novel; he had been writing a novel
• Habitual past: I would write a chapter every week; he would write a chapter every week; I used to write a chapter every week; he used to write a chapter every week

The past tense is the choice of most contemporary commercial fiction writers. What’s interesting is that readers are so used to this style that they can still immerse themselves in a past-tense narrative as though the story is unfolding now.

Here’s an excerpt from T. M. Logan’s 29 Seconds (p. 73). We’re given a past-tense narrative with a third-person limited viewpoint (Sarah’s):

WHEN PAST TENSE FLOPS – UNDERSTANDING PAST PERFECT​
​Less experienced writers can end up in a pickle when referencing events that happened earlier than their novel’s now.

The crucial thing to remember is that when we set a novel in the past tense, anything that happens in the story’s past will likely need the past perfect, at least when the action is introduced.

Here’s an excerpt from The Wife Between Us (p. 57) by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen. This chapter’s primary narrative tense is past (see underlined verb):

When we’re told that ‘She stood’, that’s the novel’s now. But when the narrator recalls events that happened further back in time (bold) – Samantha’s decorating her bed, and the two women’s procuring a rug – these need to be anchored in the past-perfect tense: had, had been.

When authors fail to anchor past events in a novel whose now is already set in the past tense, the reader will be confused.

RENDERING BYGONE ROUTINE – UNDERSTANDING HABITUAL PAST
Now and then, you might want to reference events from your novel’s past that happened routinely or habitually. This is where the habitual past tense comes into play, and the tools are would and used to.

This excerpt from The Templar's Garden by Catherine Clover illustrates the usage. The narrative is set in third-person past but the viewpoint character is recalling regular journeys taken earlier in her life:

And in Time To Win (p. 62), Harry Brett uses the simple past and past progressive for the most part, but then Frank, the viewpoint character, recalls something he’d done habitually in former times:

Like the past perfect, the habitual past acts as an anchor, so that readers don’t mix up the reminiscence of a routine event with the novel’s now. 

To see that confusion in action, replace ‘used to enjoy’ with the simple past: ‘enjoyed’. It reads as if Frank is enjoying driving down South Denes Road right now. 

If you don’t want to use the habitual past, then an alternative anchor is necessary. Here I’ve added an anchoring clause and changed the tense to past perfect (he’d, or he had):
​

• Back in the day, he’d enjoyed driving down [...]

RECOMMENDATION
The past tense is flexible; it’s easier to shift narrative distance (the distance between the reader and the narrator) than is the case with the present tense, though this does increase the risk of flatter writing. Dramatic scenes – fights, escapes, arguments – could end up laboured if the writing isn’t lean and rich.

Still, it’s traditional and readers are used to it. No one will get tired of reading in the past as long as the line craft is strong.

Do take care, however, with rendering events that have taken place in your novel’s past. Use the past perfect or the habitual past when necessary to ensure your readers know what happened when. 

Summing up
Write in the tense you feel most comfortable with, and that you think readers of your genre will be most comfortable reading. The past and the present both have their challenges and their advantages. The most important thing is that readers know where and when they are in the story. 

Cited sources 

• 29 Seconds, T. M. Logan, Zaffre, 2018
• Complicity, Iain Banks, Abacus, 1994
• The Templar’s Garden, Catherine Clover, The Holywell Press, 2017
• The Wife Between Us, Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen, Pan, 2018
• Time to Win, Harry Brett, Corsair, 2017

Round brackets, or parentheses, crop up less frequently than many punctuation symbols in fiction writing, but that doesn’t mean we must ban them. This post explores two ways to make them work effectively.

What are round brackets?
This is what they look like: ( )

They always come in pairs, and act as alternatives to paired dashes or commas in fiction. They have other functions in non-fiction writing but I’ll leave that discussion to a non-fiction editor!

​Compare these examples:

All of the above are grammatically correct, though paired brackets (like dashes) are stronger than commas, and more interruptive to the eye than both commas and dashes, probably because they’re used less frequently and associated more with non-fiction work.
 
Every writer will do well to ask themselves how their choice of parenthetical styling will affect the rhythm and clarity of their prose.

Every writer will also do well to ask themselves whether readers will be annoyed by them. Like serial commas, adverbs and the singular they, round brackets rarely pass a reader or an editor without evoking opinion. More on that later.

Brackets, full points and capitalization
Regardless of which English you’re using – British or American, for example – the rule is the same: 

• If the bracketed information is included as part of a sentence, the full point comes after the closing bracket. The bracketed clause takes a lower-case initial letter unless it starts with a proper noun.

• If the bracketed information stands as a sentence in its own right, the full point comes before the closing bracket. The bracketed sentence takes an initial capital.

Danger, Will Robinson!
Round brackets in fiction garner strong opinion, usually negative. 

The most-cited reason I’ve seen – and it’s a valid one – is that they pull readers out of a story. Given that there’s no reason on earth why you’d want to pull a reader out of a story, tread carefully.

Still, given that they’re not grammatically wrong, it’s only right that we should consider the ways in which round brackets might work in your fiction. The two I’ve seen most often are as follows:

• Satire – narrators poking fun
• Viewpoint shifts – narrators interrupting

Round brackets in fiction: Satire
For an example of how round brackets can be used for satirical purposes, we need look no further than Dickens.

In Our Mutual Friend (Wordsworth Editions, 1997), the viewpoint is omniscient. The scene is an ostentatious banquet hosted by the Veneerings. Dickens uses round brackets to set off narrative asides that poke fun at the guests and show them as the bumptious fools he believes them to be – and wants us to.

Here’s an excerpt from p. 11:

In other words, the crest is a farce.

And one of the diners, a Mr Twemlow, is obsessed over whether he is Veneering’s ‘oldest friend’, though he would never admit to being bothered by such a thing.

​Dickens’s bracketed snipe (p. 12) leaves us in no doubt about the man’s snobbery; it interrupts the dialogue of Lady Tippins, a frightful show-off whose ‘my dear’ sends Twemlow into a tizzy:

This approach is unlikely to find favour with readers who bought your high-octane thriller expecting a rollercoaster ride. The external narrator’s voice is overwhelming, and in most contemporary commercial fiction it will slow readers down, drag them out of the story, and infuriate them.

Round brackets in fiction: Viewpoint shifts
Take a look at this example from Stephen King’s The Outsider (p. 252; Hodder, 2018):

The brackets are effective here precisely because they’re interruptive. The narrative viewpoint in this section is third-person; we see the world as Holly, the private investigator, experiences it.

Given that it’s third-person, our finding out something that Holly hasn’t considered shifts the narrative distance. Such a shift might jar under other circumstances because it yanks us out of Holly’s head.

King, however, is a master of viewpoint, and he writes his characters with a rich immediacy. Still, he finds ways to introduce flexibility seamlessly, and in this case it’s with round brackets to introduce his omniscient narrator.

The parentheses allow an external narrator to enter the story just for a moment – an all-seeing eye that tells us what Holly didn’t think – but that voice is cocooned safely within those round brackets, and is gone as soon as the reader’s eye passes over the closing symbol.

King’s an experienced writer. If you’re not, I recommend holding a single character viewpoint and steering clear of bracketed interruptions from another narrator.

Here are four ways we could recast the King excerpt:

Round brackets in fiction: Dialogue
In Fix Your Damn Book! How to Painlessly Self-Edit Your Novels & Stories (Gift Horse Productions, 2016), James Osiris Baldwin advises never using round brackets in dialogue because they break ‘the fourth wall’.

What’s the fourth wall? It’s originally a theatrical term but in our case refers to ‘The conceptual barrier between any fictional work and its viewers or readers’ (Lexico/Oxford Dictionaries).

It’s good advice. It makes no sense to give an external narrator space inside a character’s speech. That’s why in the earlier Dickens example, the interruption comes between the speech-marked dialogue rather than within it.

Summing up
There’s nothing grammatically wrong with using round brackets. Stylistically, however, they could be a misfire. If you use them in your fiction, think care and rare: understand the impact they have on story and viewpoint, and use them infrequently.

Are your hyphens, en dashes and em dashes giving you the run-around? Here’s a guide to conventional usage in UK and US fiction publishing.

Terminology
Dashes are sometimes referred to as ‘rules’, especially in the UK. Oxford’s New Hart’s Rules (NHR) refers to the ‘en rule’ and the ‘em rule’ whereas The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) discusses ‘en dashes’ and ‘em dashes’.

​Both terms are acceptable but I’ll use ‘dash’ in this article.

A word on exceptions
Take a look at the likes of CMOS and you’ll see plenty of exceptions to the rules, which is why I don’t much like rules when it comes to fiction editing! What I’ve given you here is what I think you’ll need to know most of the time for most of your novel writing.

What do the dashes look like?
There are four dashes you’re most likely to use in fiction:

• Hyphen: -
• En dash: –
• Em dash: —​
  
• 2em dash: ⸺

Dashes that set off text and replace alternative punctuation
The EN DASH and the EM DASH can be used to set off an augmenting or explanatory word or phrase in a sentence that could stand alone without the insertion.
​
Brackets, commas and colons can act as alternative forms of punctuation. Here are some examples that demonstrate how it could be done:

In the UK, it’s conventional to use a SPACED EN DASH. This is not the law, not a rule, not the only way or the right way. It’s just the style that many UK publishers choose, though not all.
​
Here’s an example from my version of Stephen King’s The Outsider (p. 171):

​In the US, it’s conventional to use a CLOSED-UP EM DASH. Again, this is not the law, not a rule, not the only way or the right way. It’s just the style that many US publishers choose, though not all.

Here’s what King’s sentence looks like when amended according to US convention:

Some style guides even ask for SPACED EM DASHES, though I see this usage less frequently:

I recommend you stick to spaced en dashes or closed-up em dashes in fiction because that’s what your readers will be most familiar with. As for which style you should choose, think about:
​

• where your target audience is based
• what they’re used to seeing

If you’re publishing internationally, pick one style and be consistent.

Dashes in number spans
In fiction, number spans are often written out, though again this is convention rather than a rule that must be adhered to. Number ranges might make their way into emails, texts, letters and reports in your story, and they’re perfect for date ranges.
​
A CLOSED-UP EN DASH between number spans is standard in publishing, whether you’re writing in British English or US English:

Note that the en dash means up to and including (or through in US English). 

CMOS and NHR both recommend using EITHER the closed-up en dash in a number range OR a from/to or between/and construction, but not a mixture of the two:

Dashes as alternative speech marks
The CLOSED-UP EM DASH can act as an alternative to speech marks (or quotation marks) in dialogue in both UK English and US English.

Sylvain Neuvel uses this technique in Sleeping Giants and it works because the scenes in which it occurs take place in a secret location with an anonymous (even to the reader) agent running the interrogation. Each speaker’s turn is indicated with an em dash. The agent’s speech is rendered in bold.

​It can be an effective tool for fiction that’s dialogue driven – almost like a screenplay – but it gets messy when there are more than two speakers in a conversation, and becomes unworkable if you want to ground your dialogue in the environment with narrative (action beats, for example). And, of course, the dialogue needs to be standout because that’s all there is.

Dashes that indicate end-of-line interruptions
To indicate that a speaking character has been interrupted, use a CLOSED-UP EM DASH, whether you’re publishing in US or UK English.

Here’s an example from Mick Herron’s Dead Lions (p. 115)::

And another from Linwood Barclay’s Parting Shot (p. 380):

Dashes for dialogue interrupted by narrative description
Dashes offer clarity when dialogue is broken by narrative description and the speaker hasn’t finished talking.
​
Here’s how it could be rendered in US English using CLOSED-UP EM DASHES:

And if you’re following UK English convention, use SPACED EN DASHES:

​
Notice how I’ve also used double quotation marks in the US version and singles for the UK one. Again, this isn’t about being right or obeying a rule; it’s a convention, and one that’s not always adhered to. Consistency is king.

​Dashes that indicate faltering speech
If your character is out of breath, taken aback, caught off guard, frightened, or nervous, you might want to indicate faltering speech with punctuation.
 
There are no absolute rules about how you do this; it depends on the effect you want to achieve.

If you want to denote a staccato rhythm, HYPHENS are a good choice. This works for sharper faltering where the character stammers or stutters.

If the faltering related not to letters but to phrases, you could use a CLOSED-UP EM DASH (US style) or a SPACED EN DASH (UK style).

Ellipses are another option. They're not dashes but they're handy for faltered speech that has a pause in it. You can use these with your dash of choice.

​Dashes as separators
HYPHENS are the tool of choice here. They’re short and sharp, and are perfect in fiction when you want to spell out words or numbers:

Number separation comes in handy when you want to ensure your reader reads the numbers as distinct digits rather than inclusively. Compare 1918 (nineteen eighteen) with 1-9-1-8 (one, nine, one, eight).

Dashes that indicate connection, relation or an alternative
We use EN DASHES in place of to and and/or to show a connection between two words that can stand alone and that together are modifying a noun:

Dashes with adjectival compounds
Either EN DASHES or HYPHENS are used here, regardless of where you live.
​
When one adjective modifies another adjective, these words create a compound. If this compound is placed before a noun, it usually takes a HYPHEN for the purpose of clarity. When the compound comes after the noun and a linking verb, the hyphen can be omitted:

Care should be taken, even in fiction, with regard to weighting. Let’s revisit the example of our polyglot Amir. Consider the differences between the following:

In the first example, with an EN DASH, Amir’s Asianness and Britishness have equal weighting. In the second, with the HYPHEN, ‘Asian’ is modifying ‘British’ and carries less weight. In the third and fourth, where the dashes are omitted, the weighting is ambiguous.

The dash of choice (or its omission) can tell us something about Amir’s identity – how he, or the narrator, or the author perceives this – so it needs to be used purposefully.

Dashes indicating omission
You might want to omit words, fully or partially, because they’re profane, or to indicate that some of the letters are illegible, or to disguise a name.

There are several options for managing omission: em dashes, 2em dashes, en dashes and asterisks. Spacing comes into play. There are different conventions for US and UK style.
​
NHR recommends the following for UK style:

​CMOS recommends the following for US style:

Summing up
Using dashes purposefully, and according to publishing convention, will bring clarity to your fiction writing. Think about your audience and what they’re used to seeing on the page, then choose your style and apply it consistently.

Consider, too, whether your choice of dash will amplify or reduce the significance (or weight) of your words when you’re using dashes as connectors or modifiers.
​
And if you’re still bamboozled, ask a pro editor. We know our dashes!

Denise and Louise discuss how to use quote marks (or speech marks) in writing ... and when not to use them.

​Click to listen to Season 2, Episode 10

Other ways to listen

Summary
Listen to find out more about:

• What quote marks are and how they're used
• Whether to use straight or curly quote marks
• Choosing single or double quote marks
• Where the closing quote mark goes in relation to other punctuation​
• When not to use quote marks

Editing bites

• ‘How to punctuate dialogue in a novel’: (blog) http://bit.ly/2vYflIf
• ‘How to punctuate dialogue in a novel’: (video playlist): http://bit.ly/2ZzUCXG
• ‘Worry-free Writing: how to use quote marks’: http://bit.ly/2ZyTzag

Other resources

• Chicago Manual of Style
• Penguin Guide to Punctuation
• New Hart’s Rules

Ask us a question
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Denise and Louise

• Denise Cowle Editorial Services
• Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor

Music credit
‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.

In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Denise and Louise talk about adverbs, and how to use or remove them purposefully.

​Click to listen to Season 2, Episode 4

​​Can we ask a favour of you? Would you rate and review us on iTunes, please? It would mean a lot to us. Thank you!

Download transcript
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Summary
Listen to find out more about:

• What Stephen King said about adverbs
• Adverb use versus adverb abuse
• Definition of an adverb with examples
• Definition of an adverbial phrase with examples
• Adverb red flag #1: the double tell in narrative
• Adverb red flag #2: the double tell in dialogue
• Adverb red flag #3: the double tell in dialogue tags
• Fixes: using stronger verbs and strengthening dialogue
• Why adverbial phrases don’t solve the problem
• Extent of overuse

Editing bites

• How to Write Dazzling Dialogue by James Scott Bell
• Oxford Guide to Plain English by Martin Cutts

Other resources

• Stephen King on Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King

Ask us a question
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Denise and Louise

• Denise Cowle Editorial Services (non-fiction)
• Louise Harnby | Proofreader & Copyeditor (fiction)

Music credit
‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Denise and Louise discuss four different kinds of writers and how identifying what kind you are can help you work out the kind of editing that’s the best fit for you.

​Click to listen to Season 2, Episode 2

​Can we ask a favour of you? Would you rate and review us on iTunes, please? It would mean a lot to us. Thank you!

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Summary
Listen to find out more about:

• The confident writer
• The nervous writer
• The reluctant writer
• The impatient writer

Editing bites

• ‘How to proofread your own writing – 10 tips to clean up your writing’
• ‘Is proofreading enough? Does Your Reader Dance?’

Ask us a question
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Denise and Louise

• Denise Cowle Editorial Services (non-fiction)
• Louise Harnby | Proofreader & Copyeditor (fiction)

Music credit
‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Denise and Louise discuss how to prepare your book file for editing ... whether you're doing it yourself or working with an editor.

​Click to listen to Season 2, Episode 1

​Can we ask a favour of you? Would you rate and review us on iTunes, please? It would mean a lot to us. Thank you!

Download transcript
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Summary
Listen to find out more about:

​Editing bites

• Editing in Word, 2nd Edition, by Adrienne Montgomerie
• How to Market a Book, by Joanna Penn

Other resources

• Review of Montgomerie’s Editing in Word, 2nd ed. by Louise Harnby (blog post): 
• How to use styles (video tutorial)
• How to use styles (blog post)
• PerfectIt
• The Author’s Proofreading Companion (booklet containing raw-text tidy-up tips)
• Proofreading checklist (PDF)

Ask us a question
The easiest way to ping us a question is via Facebook Messenger: Visit the podcast's Facebook page and click on the SEND MESSAGE button

Denise and Louise

• Denise Cowle Editorial Services (non-fiction)
• Louise Harnby | Proofreader & Copyeditor (fiction)

​
Music credit
‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Are you spending too much time on your novel’s text design? Here’s how to use the Styles function in Microsoft Word to ensure the various elements are formatted consistently.

In this article, I’ll walk you through the following:

• What the Styles tool is
• The properties you can influence
• How to access the Styles tool
• Why it’ll save you time to use styles
• 3 ways to create a style
• 2 ways to modify a style
• How to assign a style to an element of text
• Troubleshooting
• How heading styles help you navigate

What is the Styles tool?
The Styles tool allows you to apply design consistency to the various text elements in your book. In a novel, you might want to create different styles for the following:

• book title
• author
• chapter titles
• subheadings
• indented body text
• full-out paragraphs in new chapters or sections
• displayed matter such as letters, texts, emails, reports

Microsoft Word has a handy suite of on-board styles, though it’s unlikely they’ll match your specific requirements. Modifying these is still a little quicker than creating fresh styles so take a look at the properties and work out what you’ll retain and what you’ll change.

What properties can you influence?
You can influence every property of your text when you assign a style to it. However, in a novel, you’ll most likely focus on the following:

• paragraph indentation
• spacing above and below the text
• font
• size
• colour
• italicization and bolding
• alignment (left, right, centred and justified)
• page flow (widow/orphan control; ensuring headings and corresponding text don’t fall on separate pages; page breaks)

How to access the Styles tool
There are two ways to access the Styles function onscreen:

1. the Styles gallery in the ribbon
2. the Styles pane

The gallery in the ribbon offers a preview of how the style appears. If I’m working with a lot of different text elements in a document, I find these visual clues useful when I want to locate a style quickly.

On smaller screens, less of the Styles gallery will be visible. To access the previews of all the styles in your gallery, click on the MORE arrow (circled).

A new window will appear containing the full gallery.

Why you should format with styles
Using styles gives you control over design, consistency and formatting time.

Time is money, so when you do the job instead of asking other professionals to do it, your book budgets goes further. Perhaps you can invest a little more time or money on cover design, sales and marketing, or learning how to improve writing craft.

Can you format manually? Of course, but you could be making a lot of unnecessary work for yourself.

Scenario 1
You complete the writing, drafting, and editing, and get cracking on designing the layout. Now that there are 85,000 words in place, your thriller’s looking more like a textbook thanks to the font you’ve chosen for your main text: Arial 14. A serif font like Times New Roman would be easier on your reader’s eye.

The problem is, you can’t select all the text in the file with CTRL A and change it in one fell swoop because that would affect the chapter headings and the emails your transgressor is sending to the police, all of which are formatted differently. Instead, you have to work through the file, locate  the main text elements manually, and change the font.

If, however, you’ve assigned a style to your main text, you can modify that font property in just a few clicks. The change will automatically change all the main text, and only that element, to your new font. Further down, I’ll show you how.

Scenario 2
You’ve written 12 additional paragraphs for your book but they’re in another document. You copy and paste the writing into your book file. Now you have to manually format the new sections so that they match the existing work.

If you’ve assigned styles, however, it’s as simple as cut, paste and left-click. Job done.

How to create a style
There are several ways to create a style in Word:

• manually – 2 options
• by updating an existing unused style to match a piece of text you’ve selected or clicked within

1A. Manual method
Open the styles pane and left-click on the A+ button in the bottom-left-hand corner.

A new window will open (CREATE NEW STYLE FROM FORMATTING). Now you can give your style a name (1) and assign properties to the font, paragraph spacing and page flow (2 and 3). 

1B. Manual method B
Alternatively, right-click on a piece of text that’s already formatted according to your preferences. A mini toolbar will appear. Click on the Styles button. 

A new window will appear. Left-click on CREATE A STYLE.

Name your style, modify if you wish, and left-click OK.

2. Updating method
Select a piece of text that’s already formatted according to your preferences. Now head up to the Styles gallery in the ribbon, or the Styles pane, and right-click on an unused style that you’re happy to update. Hover over UPDATE [STYLE] TO MATCH SELECTION, then left-click.

How to modify a style
There are two ways to modify a style in Word: 

1. via the Styles gallery in the ribbon 
2. via the Styles pane

1. Styles gallery 
Go to the Styles gallery in the ribbon and right-click on the style you want to modify.

​Left-click on MODIFY and amend the properties of your style. Note that this will change every piece of text assigned with that style.

​2. Styles pane 
Go to the Styles pane on the right-hand side of your screen and right-click on the style you want to modify.

​Left-click on MODIFY and amend the properties of your style. Again, bear in mind that this will change every piece of text with that style assigned.

How to assign a style to an element of text
If a piece of text isn’t formatted correctly, left-click the cursor on a word or in a paragraph, or select it by double-clicking.

Now head up to the Styles gallery in the ribbon, or the Styles pane, and left-click on the preferred style. Your style will be assigned.

If you’re working on a smaller screen, you’ll probably find it easier to use the Styles gallery in the ribbon because it takes up less space than the Styles pane.

​To close the Styles pane and free up some screen real-estate, left-click on the X in the top-right-hand corner.

​Troubleshooting
Here’s how to fix some of the more common problems that arise when working with styles.

1. Styles gallery or pane isn’t visible
If the Styles gallery isn’t visible, make sure you’re in the HOME tab in the ribbon. 

If the Styles pane isn’t visible, left-click on the small arrow in the Styles gallery.

2. Style not showing in gallery
If you’ve created a style and it’s not showing in gallery, head to the Styles pane and right-click on the missing style. This opens the MODIFY pane. Make sure that the ADD TO THE STYLES GALLERY box is checked.

3. The gallery is cluttered with unused styles
If your gallery is busy with styles you don’t need to access, there are two ways to remove them. The quickest method is to right-click on an unwanted style, then left-click on REMOVE FROM STYLE GALLERY.

An alternative is to right-click on the unwanted style and left-click on MODIFY. Then uncheck the ADD TO THE STYLES GALLERY box.

4. You’ve renamed a style but Word’s default name is still displayed in the pane
If you’re using the Styles pane to apply styles, the list might appear cluttered if Word’s default names are displaying, even though you've modified them. To fix, left-click on the OPTIONS button.

​Check the HIDE BUILT-IN NAME WHEN ALTERNATE EXISTS box, then left-click on OK.

​Your list  will now display with your modified names.

Heading styles and navigating your Word file
One of the advantages of using the Styles tool for a novel is navigation.

​To access the Navigation pane, press CTRL F on a PC. Now, left-click on the HEADINGS tab. Any style based on one of the in-built heading styles will show up in the menu.

I use this function when I’m editing and want to check that chapter headings (and subheadings) are formatted consistently, assigned the correct level of priority, and numbered chronologically.

Headings with arrows next to them indicate lower-level subheadings. You can expand or collapse subheadings by left-clicking on the arrows.

Furthermore, if you want to shift a headed or subheaded section to another position in your document, left-click on the relevant heading and drag up or down the menu.

Summing up
Styles let you focus on your writing rather than fretting about internal text design.

Applying a style to an element of your book file takes a fraction of the time required for manual formatting. And because any style can be tweaked, you get to change your mind as often as you like.
​
If you have any problems with using Word’s Styles gallery and pane, drop me a note in the comments and I’ll do my best to fix the issue.

Fancy watching a video tutorial? Visit my YouTube channel and watch: Self-editing Your fiction in Word: How to Use Styles.

Semi-colons are disliked by some, misused by others, and avoided by many. If you want to keep them out of your writing, that’s fine. In this article, I show you how they work conventionally. That way, you can omit them because that’s your preference, not because you daren’t include them!

What is a semi-colon?
It’s one of these: 

3 ways to use a semi-colon
There are 3 situations in which you’re likely to use a semi-colon in fiction:

Here, I focus on parallelism and clarity, but sentence pacing comes into play too – a useful addition to any fiction writer’s toolbox.
​
A little bit of grammar
Above, I mentioned independent clauses. An independent clause is a group of words that contains a subject and a predicate. In case you don’t know what they are – and many writers know how to write extremely well without knowing grammar terminology so there’s no shame in that – here’s an overview.

Subject
A subject is the thing in a sentence that’s doing something or being something. In the examples below, the subject is in bold.

If you’re not sure what the subject of your sentence is, try this trick: change the subject into a question that you can answer yes/no to, as in the examples below.

​Predicate
A predicate is the part of a sentence that contains a verb and that tells us something about what the subject’s doing or what they are.
​
In the examples below, the predicate is in bold.

If you’re not sure what the predicate is in a sentence that’s a question, turn it into a statement, as in the example below. The result might be clunky but it’ll show you what’s what. The subject is in bold and the predicate in italic.

Independent clauses
Quick recap: an independent clause is a group of words that contains a subject and a predicate. The subject is in bold, the predicate is in italic, and the full independent clause is in red.

​Parallelism and the semi-colon
Take a look at these two independent clauses.

• The FBI agent fell to the ground.
• The gravel dug into her elbows.

The second sentence is related to the first because the gravel that’s digging into the agent’s elbows is what she experiences after falling to the ground. We can therefore use a semi-colon to indicate this relationship, if we wish.

• The FBI agent fell to the ground; the gravel dug into her elbows.

Note that the first word of the clause after the semi-colon does not take an initial capital letter.

Could we use a colon?
A colon is non-standard because colons introduce additional/qualifying information about the first clause, not new information. Think of the information they introduce as subordinate, if it helps.

I recommend avoiding colons to join parts of a sentence that are equally weighted.

Could we use a comma?
A comma is non-standard when joining two independent clauses. Sentences using commas in this way are said to contain comma splices.

​I recommend avoiding this usage.

Clarity and the semi-colon
Heavily punctuated sentences can be confusing and clunky. For the reader, it can mean limping through your prose rather than moving at a pace dictated by narrative intent.

​Take a look at this example from Mick Herron’s Dead Lions, p. 88. There are two semi-colons in the original version, but for this example I’m focusing only on the first (see the section in bold).

​The en dash in the first alternative version looks awkward because we already have two parenthetical en dashes in play.

What happens if we introduce a comma instead? The sentence is already comma-heavy. All we’ve done is bring in yet another to muddy the waters.
​
The semi-colon works best. It effectively links the clauses it connects, but in a way that subdivides the sentence clearly.

​However, pacing comes into place here too. There’s more on pacing below but, for now, compare the original and the version amended with a comma. The creepy voyeurism is starker when set off by the semi-colon.

​More on pacing and the semi-colon
The semi-colon is harder than the comma. It lengthens the pause or increases the distance between two clauses that could have been linked with a comma, making them both stand out.

The semi-colon is softer than the full point. It shortens the pause or reduces the distance between two clauses that could have been linked with a full point, indicating a stronger, more intimate relationship.

Back to Herron for a closer look at the second semi-colon (see the section in bold) and some alternatives we could try:

​In the original, the semi-colon acts as a super-comma, subdividing the whole sentence into two more readable chunks.

However, more marked is the impact on the pace. The semi-colon forces us to slow down. That’s important because the clause that comes after it is about the denial of interrogations. The semi-colon makes us pause a little longer, which makes the sinister information that follows stand out.

Semi-colons and dialogue
Some authors resist the use of semi-colons in dialogue, usually on the grounds that the reader can’t hear the punctuation. Does that mean you shouldn’t use them?

A novel’s dialogue isn’t real-life speech; it’s a representation of it. Speech, like narrative, has rhythm. The writer’s job is to create speech that’s clear and well paced. If a semi-colon helps you to do that, why wouldn’t you use it?

Here’s a great example from David Rosenfelt’s New Tricks, p. 316:

Both versions work but Rosenfelt elects to use a semi-colon because he wants to show the relationship between the two independent clauses. A full point would pull the clauses a little further apart and reduce the intimacy between them.

Should you use semi-colons in your fiction?
Some authors prefer to omit semi-colons for a variety of reasons: they're deemed pretentious, confusing, interruptive or ugly. But I’m not sure we should judge them so harshly:

• They needn’t be pretentious. There’s nothing pompous about Herron and Rosenfelt’s writing. Both authors create compelling modern commercial fiction that keeps their readers on a page, and dying to turn it.
• While not all readers understand the grammatical nuances of the semi-colon, few will be stopped in their tracks if you use it well.
• Are they interruptive? Yes; if you use them too frequently; and your writing lurches; like a driver who’s too heavy on the brakes; too much of anything can grate. And; yes, if; you put them; in the wrong; place. Used purposefully, however, they can affect rhythm and bring clarity to a story.
• As for ugly, well, that’s subjective. I think they’re just lovely!

Further reading and cited works

• Dead Lions, Mick Herron, John Murray, 2013
• Dialogue tags
• How to punctuate dialogue
• How to use adverbs
• How to use apostrophes
• More resources for indie authors
• New Tricks, David Rosenfelt, Grand Central, 2009
• Style sheet template
• Using commas and conjunctions

In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Denise and Louise discuss how long it takes to complete an edit – whether you’re doing it yourself or working with a professional – and how to plan ahead.
​
And check out the cheeky bloopers that Denise included of me messing up my words! I’ll get my revenge!

Click to listen to Episode 12

Can we ask a favour of you? Would you rate and review us on iTunes, please? It would mean a lot to us. Thank you!

Download transcript
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Summary of Episode 12
Listen to find out more about editing time in relation to:Word count

• Complexity of the project
• Level of editing being carried, including referencing, style-guide adherence and fact-checking
• Publishing imperfect written content
• Working with agents
• Collectives and agencies: fast turnaround, high quality
• The length of the editing day
• Scheduling editing in advance, and allowing time to deal with queries

Editing bites

• Self Publishing Journeys (podcast hosted by Paul Teague)
• ELT Teacher 2 Writer

Plus:

• Writing for business. When is good enough, enough?
  
  

Ask us a question
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Other ways to get in touch

• The Editing Podcast on Facebook
• The Editing Podcast on Libsyn
• The Editing Podcast on YouTube

Denise and Louise

• Denise Cowle Editorial Services (non-fiction)
• Louise Harnby | Proofreader & Copyeditor (fiction)

Music credit
‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Denise and Louise discuss location and whether where your editor lives actually matters.

Click to listen to Episode 11

​Can we ask a favour of you? Would you rate and review us on iTunes, please? It would mean a lot to us. Thank you!

Download transcript
Prefer to read rather than listen? No problem. You can download the transcript from the show by clicking on the button below.

Summary of Episode 11
Listen to find out more about:

• Local, regional and national knowledge
• Face-to-face meetings
• University policies
• Spelling, idiomatic and dialectical variance
• Pronunciation problems
• Communicating with global audiences
• Refining searches for editors
• Financial transactions
• The type of editing being carried out
• Times-zone advantages

Editing bites

• Oxford Dictionaries Online
• Urban Dictionary

Ask us a question
The easiest way to ping us a question is via Facebook Messenger: Visit the podcast's Facebook page and click on the SEND MESSAGE button.

Denise and Louise

• Denise Cowle Editorial Services (non-fiction)
• Louise Harnby | Proofreader & Copyeditor (fiction)

​
 Music credit
‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Denise and Louise discuss the order of play for the different levels of editing, and some ideas about how you can keep costs down.

Click to listen to Episode 9

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Summary of Episode 9
Listen to find out more about:

• The different levels of editing
• The order of play – when to do what
• Who else can help – beyond the pro editor
• Planning ahead
• Getting comparative quotations for the job
• Honing story craft
• Manuscript critiques or evaluations
• Learning through example – commissioning mini edits
• Word’s onboard tools, macros and add-ins
• Style sheets

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Editing bites

• PerfectIt (consistency-checking software)
• Proofreading checklist (free PDF booklet)
• Ask A Book Editor (Facebook group)

Other resources

• A nifty little proofreading and editing macro: ProperNounAlyse (blog post)
• Creating your own style sheet (scroll to bottom of blog post)
• Free downloadable style-sheet template (scroll to bottom of blog post)
• How do I find spelling inconsistencies when proofreading and editing? TextSTAT (blog post)
• How Not to Write a Novel (Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman)
• Self-editing your fiction in Word: How to use styles (video tutorial)
• Should a writer hire a freelance editor before submitting to an agent? And should editors accept the work? (blog post)
• The different levels of editing: Proofreading and beyond (blog post)
• The Magic of Fiction (Beth Hill)
• Using proofreading macros: Highlighting confusables with CompareWordList (blog post)
• Write to be Published (Nicola Morgan)

  
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Denise and Louise

• Denise Cowle Editorial Services (non-fiction)
• Louise Harnby | Proofreader & Copyeditor (fiction)

Music credit
‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/