Revising, revising, revising (and blowing my nose).
It never fails. Deadline or revisions/copy-edits? I get a massive kick-my-ass-and-call-me-Sally head cold.
This is what pulled me out of it long enough to blog: Oscar Wilde kicks ass in a Jonah Hex comic. Totally surreal.
The revisions/copy-edits have to go out on Tuesday, so I should be alive again then. I have a guest blog tomorrow at Jacquelyn Frank’s, and another later this week at bam’s, and I have no idea yet what I’ll be doing for either of them, but there will probably be a free book involved. Then I’ve had two ARCs to talk about that I thought I would be able to before the revisions landed on my doorstep, so I’ll finally get to those, too. I also answered a questionnaire for an upcoming ATBF column, but I’m not sure any of my responses were actually coherent, due to revisions/DayQuil (no matter what it says about being non-drowsy, I get woozy.)
Things I have learned from recent copy-edits:
I’ve been spelling ‘draught’ (as in a deep gulping swallow) the British way. It should be ‘draft’ instead. It doesn’t look right to me, but according to Bartelby.com, it’s true. I blame it on the Harlequins I read growing up.
I still use too many semi-colons. I still can’t remember if ‘semi-colon’ should have a hyphen in it or not. Or if, when I set off ‘semi-colon’ to point out that it is a word functioning as a word, if it should have single quotation marks or double. I think it’s supposed to be double.
I knew this, but I have a really hard time doing it (because it looks stupid): putting an internal quotation mark outside the sentence punctuation. This is correct:
“What you don’t know,” Jane said, “is that Manny told her, ‘You’re fat.’”
But I want it to be,
“What you don’t know,” Jane said, “is that Manny told her, ‘You’re fat’.”
Microsoft Word is retarded. I can’t count how many times a line of dialogue ended with a dash (or rather, two hyphens) and it closed the line with an open quotation mark. All of them had to be flipped around, *sigh*. Does anyone know of a way to create an auto-text thingy that will override the MS Word default, and force it to use close-quotation marks after a dash/double-hyphen?
I use a lot of dashes.
I love the semi-colon. It’s a sexy punctuation mark, but I don’t admit that to many people.
As for the curly quotes, you can do a find/replace of all quotation marks when you’re done with your draft. MS Word should match them up properly then. Of course, this doesn’t help if you’re tracking changes electronically in revision because every single quotation mark will come up as a change.
BTW, I just read Demon Angel and Demon Moon and I loved them both. Just thought I’d mention that.
I hate Word. You could go into Auto Correct and uncheck everything. Also go into Auto Format As You Type and uncheck everything, which will be the same “everything,” but Word, being the efficient beast that it is, has to have it twice to make your life more exciting.
I typed my last ms in WordPerfect and then converted it to Word. Talk about screwing up the quotation marks, and there was no search-and-replace because it turned all the opening quotation marks to A’s. Replacing every “A” in the story with ” really was not what I had in mind, so I had to manually redo all the quotes, during which I decided I write waaaaaay too much dialogue.
Smart Quotes are the work of the devil. Kill them wherever you can. (Yeah, WordPress, I’m talking to you!)
(I love dashes too. Don’t know if I’m using them correctly half the time, but use them I do!)
(((Meljean)))
There’s nothing worst than getting sick when one’s in the middle of edits and writing. Ugh! I understand your pain. Hope you’re feeling better.
Ug. Must be the time of year. Seems like every other sentence I type I have to sneeze or go through half a box of tissue. I HATE having a cold. But then I think it’s better than having the flu .
As for Microsoft Word :brickwall: Although it takes another second longer, I just close my quotation and then go back a space and then insert the dash after. After numerous glitches with the add/replace key I detest using it unless I’m desperate.
Oh, Meljean, I have to always type the close quotation mark first, then use the mouse to go back in again and type the em dash.
Really slows down the typing speed! And drives me crazy!
*raises hand on the em dash close quotes issue* Argh. Hate that.
Do you need some vicks? Nyquil is like liquid crack, take one shot and you are down for the night! I too have the sniffles and for some reason I never have a tissue handy. Part of me wants to revert back to childhood and just wipe my nose on my sleeve. :boggle:
I don’t know why and when I should use a semi colon either! And commas, ugh I don’t like tham either!
i’m sick too *sniffle, sneez, HACK* so I’ll raise my DayQuil for a commiserating toast (as I bounce off my cubicle walls :boggle:). And as for the hyphen…I’ve always thought it’s a random ‘that looks about right’ attitude these days, especially since no one really knows where it goes anymore so people just run around sticking hyphens around wherever. And to that end, I just read this article on Friday that I just thought of when I read your post. ENJOY! and feel better
http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSHAR15384620070921
All of these suggestions were fantastic — I did the search/replace to fix the old manuscript, and find that as I’m typing, it’s been simple enough to go back and add in the hyphens. A pain, but still better than the open quote at the end.