Last week, I wrote about the benefits of using Styles in your word processing program to make your writing more consistent, efficient and professional. This week, I explain some of the resulting efficiencies that come from understanding how to use Styles. I am using Microsoft Word as the example, but the same concepts apply to […]
Want to publish your writing more efficiently? Make sure you use the Styles function built into your word processor when you write your manuscript. I have just finished editing or proofreading two manuscripts by fellow authors in Independent Authors International. And while both are excellent novels, both were just typed in, with all formatting applied […]
Last week, someone wrote racist comments under a story on the Ottawa Citizen’s online edition, about the death of Inuk artist Annie Pootoogook. Charles Bordeleau, Ottawa’s Chief of Police, called the comments “inappropriate.” “I can tell you that the comments are inappropriate. They don’t reflect the values of the members of the Ottawa Police Service, […]
For my first post of 2016, I’m going to ask all of you to subscribe to get the Written Words blog by mail. All you have to do is fill in the box to the right with your email address. Why subscribe? You’ll still be able to read it in your Web browser, but with […]
Someone must have said that using lists makes your writing better. I say that because I see a lot of lists online and in print. It’s true that lists can make your message easier to understand. They help readers grasp not only information, but relationships between facts. But this improvement is often diminished by writers […]
My job as editor means I read unedited writing. Most of the time, the writer has tried to self-edit, with varying success. I don’t mind that. Unfortunately, I have read a few novels lately that seem as if no one has even tried to correct the text, beyond using the spelling checker in the word […]
I have been reading a lot of self-published books lately. Some are excellent, some are terrible. One of the characteristics of a terrible self-published novel is a misunderstanding of how to use quotation marks properly. Fixing the quotation marks won’t turn a bad book into a good one, but a this kind of error detracts […]