proofreading

Quick Link: 4 Simple Tips To Catch More Errors When Proofreading

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Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

I am always so jealous of people who can edit their own work, quickly. That is why this article written by from Stand Out Books caught my attention. Even if you are one of those clever people who can edit on the fly, you still might find something worth reading.

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4 Simple Tips To Catch More Errors When Proofreading

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Proofreading will make your story better. There are few guarantees anyone can give about art – even fewer that apply to every individual – but that’s one of them. Proofreading, in fact, is the single most effective way to make your story better; a magic bullet that can transform a piece of writing from unpublishable to unbelievable.

It’s a shame, then, that it’s something from which our brains seem inherently repulsed. If you’re an author, you’ve probably had the experience of sitting down to proofread a piece of work and ending up doing anything else. Writer’s block is a piece of cake next to proofer’s block. What’s more, our brains hate proofreading so much that they’ll even convince us we can’t do it, or that it doesn’t need doing, or that it doesn’t need doing yet – anything to avoid carrying out this onerous, completely necessary task.

As an editor who has proofread many different works, I’ve got some experience in convincing my brain to stop complaining and get to work. Some of that is training, some is experience, and some is minor tips and tricks that make the whole endeavor easier to pull off. In this article, I’ll be sharing four of those basic tips and explaining how they can make your proofreading easier, more effective, and more likely to happen in the first place. Before that, though, I need to clear something up.

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If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

How to Treat Geological and Astronomical Terms

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This post by Mark Nichol originally appeared on Daily Writing Tips.

Determining whether to refer to geological and astronomical terms with initial uppercase or lowercase letters can be a challenge, because various publications and publishers differ on capitalization style. The following guidelines, however, appear to predominate:

 

Names of geological time spans are capitalized, but the terms for the magnitude of duration (eons, eras, periods, epochs, and stages, in descending order of length), are not; in scientific and nonscientific prose alike, these terms can be omitted:

“The Mesozoic is also known as the Age of Dinosaurs.”

“Mrs. Wattle has been teaching Freshman Composition since the Mesozoic.”

 

Whether modifying terms such as early, middle, and late are capitalized depends on whether they are themselves modified:

“Tyrannosaurus rex lived during the Late Cretaceous.”

“The Deccan Traps erupted in the very late Cretaceous.”

“Ice age” is considered a generic term because multiple such events have occurred.

 

Click here to read the full post on Daily Writing Tips.

 

3 Techniques to Proofread Your Story

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This post, by Andre Cruz, originally appeared on his The Word blog on 10/3/13.

After I complete a story, I just want to be done. Don’t you? I mean, to develop a story from mind to paper takes time and after spending a lot of it you want to kick your feet up and move on. You figure to have someone else proofread your story, since you’ve heard that it is better to have a fresh pair of eyes look at your manuscript.

In the beginning of my writing career, I felt that way. I figured that once I completed a story I needed someone else to look at it for proofreading. I thought that proofreading my own story was not only a waste of time, but toxic to my story’s overall success.

That is not the case. In fact, I have found that it is the complete opposite. No matter who you find to proofread your story. Even if they offer some of the best proofreading services, nothing beats you reading through your manuscript yourself for errors before you send it to a proofreader.

Think about it. No one knows your story as well as you do. So when proofreading your own manuscript, you are more capable of finding things that should be there, but aren’t, such as certain dialogue and narrative. A proofreader will only be able to correct what is there and if they are capable enough to feel something is missing in the manuscript, will they be able to correct it as well as you would? I don’t think so.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on The Word.