It is my pleasure today to turn my blog over to Heidi Hormel. She is just as entertaining in person and in her writing as she is in this blog post. Enjoy!
List. My Kingdom for a List.
I’m a guilty list lover so for that reason, I thought
I’d share my list (in no particular order) of the Five Blunders I regularly spy
with my editorial eye (I know this now opens me up for everyone checking my
books for these).
The
Classics: Its for it’s and their for there or even they’re.
But what about rode and road or to/too/two. English is riddled with homophones
(words that sound the same but do not mean the same thing). The contractions
are easy to figure out. It’s or its easy? Can you say it is? If so, then it’s
it’s.
 |
| Available now |
Quote
Marks Run Amok: Just as air quotes are over used and
have become their own joke, placing quotes around a word
does not emphasize it. That’s what italics, bold, and all caps are for. Quote
marks around a word, unless it is a direct quote, is to show a word is being
used in a NEW and DIFFERENT way.
Semicolons:
Nope. When used to connect two thoughts, it’s just better to break the sentence
into two rather than use the semicolon.
By the way, semicolons prove nothing except you’ve had a grammar class
somewhere along the way. They do not class up a story.
Buzz
Wordery: Get thee to a nunnery. (I’m on a Shakespeare roll
today.) No paradigm
shifting or thinking
outside the box or even freemiums.
The only way to go is to use language that was NOT created by marketers, public
relations folk, or corporate communicators. These linguistic tidbits may even
be worse than clichés—and you know to not use those, right?!
Commas:
Writers either hate commas and only use them when placed there by an editor OR
put commas everywhere, like the bling of the English language. There are hard
and fast rules about comma usage, but their use can also be very nuanced and
less black and white (cliché alert). Figure out your style and comma accordingly
(and, yes, I purposely verbed a noun—and just did it again). I won’t get into
the Oxford
comma which has been known to cause armed conflicts among
Wordies.
 |
| Coming in August |
Bonus
Item—For
proofreading help, checkout Word’s text
to speech function. It has made my proofreading 50 times*
better (*Not scientifically proven).
Finally, remember spellcheck and all of those other
nifty tools are not editors. An editor is the person who makes a story its best
because she (or he) understands the unwritten rules of language, the expectations
of readers, and the voice of the writer. Ain’t no machine can do that.
A former innkeeper and radio talk show host,
Heidi Hormel has always been a writer. She spent years as a small-town
newspaper reporter and as a PR flunky before settling happily into penning
romances with a wink and a wiggle.
Her first two (published) novels are from Harlequin American Romance: THE SURGEON AND THE
COWGIRL
(Book #1, out June 1) and THE CONVENIENT COWBOY (Book #2, out Aug. 4). Visit her
online: HeidiHormel.net;
Facebook, Heidi Hormel, Author; Twitter, @HeidiHormel;
and follow her on Goodreads, Heidi Hormel.
Heidi hit some of my favorites. I had an editor once who wanted to change my sentence structure and use semicolons all over the place. Does it drive you crazy to see the homophones mixed up so often? Do you let buzz words sneak into your writing? Love or hate commas?
Don't forget, this Wednesday is the monthly posting for IWSG. Are you ready to share something this month?
Don't forget, this Wednesday is the monthly posting for IWSG. Are you ready to share something this month?
