Editing guide sheet

[Brian G Turner]

Editing sheet from (now-retired) literary agent, Kelly Mortimer, with some good pointers:

Editing Guide

Here's the archive.org link: Editing Guide

 

[Cat's Cradle]

A lot of good stuff in there, thanks Brian!

 

[tinkerdan]

That's pretty useful. Something worth passing to the Beta Readers.
Useful for self editing also; but the wise brain that writ it all likes to play tricks when it reads it back.

 

[Michael M]

Once again, more useful information.

Thanks for all your hard work. It is greatly appreciated.

 

[Old_Man_Steve2016]

Editing sheet from (now-retired) literary agent, Kelly Mortimer, with some good pointers:

Editing Guide

I'm getting a ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT error when I click on the link. As of today, has anyone else here been able to access the link?

 

[Wruter]

I'm getting a ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT error when I click on the link. As of today, has anyone else here been able to access the link?

Nope, can't access the site here either but it is recorded in the wayback machine:

Editing Guide

Not sure if the above link is permanent but anyone can use wayback. Didn't want to paste the guide itself here as is copyrighted.

 

[cyprus7]

Nope, can't access the site here either but it is recorded in the wayback machine:

Editing Guide

Not sure if the above link is permanent but anyone can use wayback. Didn't want to paste the guide itself here as is copyrighted.

It worked for me 10 mins ago.

 

[BDFiala]

Useful stuff. Especially the part about colors! (the link works fine, btw.)

 

[Brian G Turner]

I presume the site's server may have been overloaded before.

 

[Gonk the Insane]

I'm a little confused by the entry on dashes - and I'm wondering whether I'm spectacularly wrong, or whether there's room for interpretation (i.e. it's a stylistic choice).

D – Dash – Don’t overuse. No spaces before or after a dash. (1) Placed at the end of dialogue, a dash shows interruption. (2) Can replace commas, but be consistent. Use either two commas, or two dashes. Incorrect: “Jane loved the soup, as it tasted great—but what if her friends hated it?”

I thought that it was common - certainly in current times - to place a space on either side of a dash when used in a sentence like this. That's how I've been writing, and I'm pretty sure that more than a few of the books I've read lately have a similar style. Is this some grievous faux pas?

For interrupted speech in dialogue I've been using the longer em-dash, which I can't seem to find right now so I've used 2 regular dashes: "so that it just stops like--"

Right, wrong, or a matter of style?

 

[Brian G Turner]

I thought that it was common - certainly in current times - to place a space on either side of a dash when used in a sentence like this.

AFAIK, in British English that's the norm - without spaces is the American English form.

 

[Gonk the Insane]

Ah, that explains it. Thanks, Brian.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

I missed this thread the first time around, and only saw it now because it's linked from another thread, but I'd like to add a bit about the spaces.

Spaces around dashes are a more modern usage, I believe, and while Chicago Manual does not have anything (that I've found) to say on the matter (it looks like no spaces, in the examples they use, but they don't say), I've found that it makes a positive difference in e-book formatting. It didn't really matter, and probably looked nicer, to have no spaces around dashes when things were being permanently printed, but with e-book formatting the lines are rearranged according to the reader's preference in font and size and device. If you have two words combined with a dash in the middle, e-formatting treats it all as one word for line spacing, and it looks funny sometimes. If you spread them out, it's three words, and the break is cleaner when it goes to a new line in the middle of them somewhere.

So that's why I space them out. Word — word. (Thanks to VinceK for the alt-formatting to let me do that. )

 

[HareBrain]

It didn't really matter, and probably looked nicer, to have no spaces around dashes when things were being permanently printed, but with e-book formatting the lines are rearranged according to the reader's preference in font and size and device. If you have two words combined with a dash in the middle, e-formatting treats it all as one word for line spacing, and it looks funny sometimes.

Oh, ********************! I ummed and ahhed about whether to have spaces around em-dashes, and in the end decided not. Clearly now the wrong decision. But I can't just do find/replace with a space either side, because some are at the beginning or end of a line.

I foresee a happy couple of hours ahead ...

 

[Brian G Turner]

I can't just do find/replace with a space either side, because some are at the beginning or end of a line.

I've not found a space at the end of a line to usually be a big problem.

 

[HareBrain]

Probably it wouldn't be -- but with ebook formatting, I'd rather leave nothing to chance. (And I am pernickety like that.)

 

[TheDustyZebra]

Oh, ********************! I ummed and ahhed about whether to have spaces around em-dashes, and in the end decided not. Clearly now the wrong decision. But I can't just do find/replace with a space either side, because some are at the beginning or end of a line.

I foresee a happy couple of hours ahead ...

Well, you might ask your publisher about it. They may not feel it's a problem just because I do. (People are funny that way.)

 

[HareBrain]

But I can't just do find/replace with a space either side, because some are at the beginning or end of a line.

Turns out this was easy, since ^p in the find/replace box means a paragraph break. So I replaced all the em-dashes (^+) with [space]^+[space] (to remove the potential ebook formatting issue TDZ mentioned), then removed any extra spaces at the beginnings of paragraphs by replacing ^p[space]^+ with ^p^+, etc.

 

[Steve S]

Just found this thread - many thanks for the link, Brian, this could come in very handy!

 

[prizzley]

Thanks very much, Brian. There's a lot here that (do I need that?) wouldn't have occurred to me.