How to manage the grammar police: The Editing Podcast

20/4/2020

In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Louise and Denise discuss the grammar police, how to manage them, and why they're nothing to do with professional editing.

Click to listen to Season 4, Episode 1

Listen to find out more about:

Who are the grammar police?
Social media and the grammar police
Pedantry versus professional editing for style, preference and flow
Writing style: Business, academia, web copy, creative non-fiction, fiction
Conventions and standards versus rules and errors
How and when to tell a writer about an error
Dealing with the grammar police

Editing bites

Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation, by Jane Straus
TextExpander

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

Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.

She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.

2 Comments

Felicia Denise link

21/4/2020 06:45:45 am

I ran across a review on Amazon a few years back that was actually a four-paragraph rant over the ONE instance she found in the book where the author used the wrong spelling for the possessive form of "its." That apostrophe caused her to have a serious meltdown, and she never mentioned one word about the book's contents.

Louise Harnby

21/4/2020 11:52:02 am

That's such a great example, Felicia! The author and proofreader are human and just slipped up. No one, and no book, is perfect. What a waste of that person's time! And with no thought to the story. Such a shame for the author too, though at least they had viewers like you with a sensible head on them.