Consistency is a big part of polish. Manuscripts with inconsistency issues will look sloppy and careless no matter how well they’re written. Not only do they make more work for a publisher, but they also suggest to publishers and agents that you aren’t serious enough to pay careful attention to your writing.
I recommend doing a quick “find” for these common issues before you send your manuscript out the door. I don’t recommend a global, automatic “find/replace all” — it’s quick enough to do a “find” on the one you don’t want and fix the few instances that come up. That way you can be confident that you’re not changing anything you don’t intend to change.
Spelling:
It’s common to see these spellings used interchangeably within the same manuscript. In the interest of polishing your work, pick the one appropriate for your region and make sure it’s used consistently.
* gray (US English) / grey (UK English)
* blond (male) / blonde (female)
* all right (standard and correct) / alright (technically not correct anywhere, but allowable in UK English)
* toward (US English) / towards (UK English)
* OK or okay (either is acceptable, as long as you’re consistent) /O.K. (only if you mean the Corral)
* practice (noun and verb) (US English) / practice (noun) and practise (verb) (UK English)
* Out loud / aloud. The former is more common in the US, the latter is more common in the UK. I tend to make my recommendation based on time period, too — for something medieval in flavor I’ll recommend aloud because it sounds more formal; for something modern-day I’ll recommend out loud. Either way, I recommend choosing one to use consistently through the book. The only exception is in dialogue, and then only in a case where one character speaks notably more formally/informally than the rest.
* Compound words. Is it innkeeper, inn-keeper or inn keeper? Voicemail, voice-mail or voice mail? Be aware of your usage and make it consistent. Even better, take a moment to look these up instead of guessing.
* Add your character names, place names and invented “foreign” words to your word processor’s dictionary so that misspellings will stand out to you, then run a spellcheck.
* Also be alert for these words to watch out for, from a previous post. From studying and editing your own writing, you will quickly get a sense of which of these common misspellings you fall prey to, so that you know what to watch for in the future.
Mechanics:
* Standardize dashes. Whether you use em dashes or double hyphens, whether there are spaces around them or not, pick a standard and stick with it.
(Em dashes at the beginning or end of dialogue can confuse your quotation marks and make curly or “smart” quotes curl the wrong way. While you’re checking your dashes, keep an eye out for this, too.)
* Capitalization can sometimes depend on context. Titles like Mother, Father, Captain, King, Mayor, etc. are captialized when they’re used in place of (or with) someone’s name, but not when they refer to someone by their position (my mother, your father, the captain).
* Some words are trademarks or based on places and should always be capitalized, like Dumpster and Technicolor, and the O in Oxford shirt.
* Original places and concepts are often capitalized irregularly. If you’ve got a Great Hall or Dreamwalking or anything like that, make sure you’re consistent with it, too. And likewise if you use italics for original concepts.
* Make sure your manuscript doesn’t shift font or color. Especially make sure that it doesn’t do this several times. “Select all”, and then you can set a font and size and set the ink to black.
Last, But Not Least
This is very important. Start at the beginning of your document and do a find for the word “Chapter.” Make sure all your chapter numbers are in order, with no repetition and no skips. If you haven’t used the word “chapter” to denote your chapters, this will take a little more doing and concentration, but it’s still just as vital. If you’ve skipped a number, duplicated, or otherwise gotten out of sync, or if you reached “eight” and stopped breaking out new chapters altogether, it’s better if you find it than if someone else does.
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{ 4 comments }
Awesome advice, and very helpful! I’m going to be editing a manuscript soon, and this is great stuff to keep in my mind while going through it. Thanks for the post! Oh yeah, and I liked “Swimming Lessons” on P.G. Holyfield’s Tales of the Children, great stuff.
This post is dearly after my own heart. I can’t tell you how frustrated I get editing manuscript after manuscript in which the author can’t keep straight the names of his/her own characters; the use of the same word in three different forms (compound, open, and hyphenated); “OK” and “okay” and “alright” and “all right” — all used in the same story; capitalizing titles and “mother” and “father” when they are not used in place of names or as part of direct address; en-dashes and em-dashes, sometimes with a space before and after, or just before, or just after, or no spaces at all; same goes for ellipses. AARRGGHH!! And I’m not talking just novice writers here either; I’m talking about “big name” award-winning authors, too.
Even if the author is writing it incorrectly, at least be bloody consistent throughout the entire manuscript! Consistency, consistency, consistency… Should be tattooed backwards on every writer’s forehead so that they can see it correctly whenever they look in the mirror.
Marty Halpern
Consistency, consistency, consistency… Should be tattooed backwards on every writer’s forehead so that they can see it correctly whenever they look in the mirror.
It absolutely should! Now, how do we keep them from spelling it three different ways?
:)
Now, how do we keep them from spelling it three different ways?
ROTFLMAO!
- marty
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