Posts Tagged proofreading
What I Learned From the Copyedit and Proofread (plus a poetry competition)
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Competitions, Poetry, Writing on October 17, 2023
My second novel for ChocLit (an imprint of Joffe Books) will be released into the big wide world in a few months. The cover design and marketing plan are underway. Structural edits, copyedit and proofreading have all been done – and each one of these stages has been an education.
On a ‘Happy Walk’ with my daughter’s dog, Sam.
I thought I was pretty good at grammar, punctuation etc. but I’ve realised: I’m not! For example:
- The school subject ‘geography’ starts with a small ‘g’ rather than a capital ‘G’.
- There is no hyphen in armpit (I have habit of putting hyphens where they’re not needed).
- The novel mentions the wedding of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson. I was asked to change this to the ‘royal wedding’ to avoid referring to Andrew.
- Monetary values, such as £30, should be written in full, e.g., thirty pounds.
- “I’m alright.” Should be: “I’m all right.”
The points above are just a few of the corrections. There were a lot more!
Then there were the continuity mistakes which got picked up (thank goodness). For example, there is a cat in the story called Tibby and halfway through I had inadvertently changed its sex from female to male. I mention that one of the characters will have a birthday in a fortnight but a far greater timespan elapses before the birthday celebration takes place.
Needless to say, I am very grateful to all these professional people who have read the manuscript and stopped me from making a public fool of myself!
I’ll say a bit more about the book’s actual story when I have a front cover to show you. For now I’ll tell you that, like Little Museum of Hope, it falls into the ‘uplit’ genre of literature, i.e., by the end of it you will (should!) feel uplifted and positive.
If positively improving your mental wellbeing appeals to you, you might fancy entering this FREE poetry competition from Happiful magazine:
The magazine is looking for “poems that explore the topic of mental health and wellbeing in relatable, original, and empowering ways”. The winner will receive £100, and four shortlisted poets will receive a £25 National Book Token. All five poems will be published in Happiful. Closing date is Monday 20 November 2023. There are some useful tips on how to get started with poetry on the Happiful website.
Stay happy and positive everyone!
Proofreading and How to Send Documents to the Kindle
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Computers & Technical, Resources, Self-publishing, Writing on April 24, 2014
Does anyone else use their Kindle for proofreading?
I find this very helpful if I’m writing something longer than just an ordinary short story. It means I don’t have to sit staring at my computer screen for ages whilst I work my way through the whole manuscript and nor do I use large amounts of paper and ink printing the thing off time and time again (although I do use this method when I think I’m almost there).
Proofreading on the Kindle means I can curl up in an armchair with a mug of coffee and pretend I’m reading a ‘proper’ book. I find it lets me judge my writing in a different way and I’m less likely to skip over words.
The disadvantage is that I can’t edit as I go along and I can’t scribble and cross things out either. But depending on what stage you’re at, this can be a good thing because it forces you to read the whole manuscript from beginning to end without wasting time trying to perfect a single sentence. This makes it easier to see the whole story arc and judge whether or not it works.
But in order to be able to proofread in this way, the manuscript needs to be sent from PC to Kindle. There are a couple of ways this can be done. You can either email the document to the Kindle (yes, every Kindle has its own email address!) or plug the Kindle into the PC and ‘drag and drop’ the file across.
There are detailed instructions on how to use both of these methods over on Molly Greene’s Blog so I won’t repeat it all again here. In her post Molly doesn’t specifically mention that Word documents can be sent in this way but I know from experience that they can and there are comments at the end of the post which confirm this. Molly also gives some instructions for the iPad too (I’m not lucky enough to own one of those).
This method of sending stuff to the Kindle can also be used for PDF documents – but I’ve never worked out how to increase the font size of a PDF when it’s on the Kindle and so end up having to use my reading glasses.
And it’s useful to be able to transfer files in this way if you’re ever asked to beta read someone’s work before publication or if you get sent an early review copy.
Please do let me know if you’ve got any proofreading tips or experience of sending stuff to the Kindle.
Sally Jenkins 