Tag: Self-publishing

Chicago Manual of Style comes to PerfectIt 5

I honestly didn’t see how PerfectIt 4 could be improved upon. I’ve been using it since it came out. And I used PerfectIt 3 before that. I love, love, love this program.

Believe me when I say that Daniel Heuman and the team at Intelligent Editing have found a way to improve upon it.

When you get PerfectIt 5, you’re not only getting the kind of proofreading/copy editing support you’ve become accustomed to in the past, but if you have a subscription to CMOS online, then you’re also getting real-time support via the site (chicagomanualofstyle.org). When PerfectIt5 highlights stylistic problem areas, it also provides you with a live link to CMOS guidance.

If it’s something you already know and are comfortable with, something you’re sure about, of course you can ignore it and keep on trucking. However, if it’s something that makes you wonder whether you know what you thought you knew (and it happens to all of us!), just click on the link and you’ll see the “chapter and verse” about the issue. For example: “The term half brother is usually open. See more from CMOS 7.89”. Clicking the “see more” line brings up the relevant text directly from the CMOS site, with the numerals in bright red bold type.

For editors who are still learning the Chicago style, I’ll say this is nigh unto invaluable. No more wondering whether you’ve gotten it right. No more second-guessing yourself. And best of all, you’ll find you’re looking up fewer issues. Even for those of us used to using the online version, this is an improvement. The information will come up when we need it, at the precise point in our document where we need it. NB: This addition does not include the entirety of the CMOS database. There will still be times you’ll need to go to the book or the online version on your own.

The usual caveats apply as they do with any “checker” program. It’s better to be cautious and check each instance individually than cavalierly “fix all.” (Only when I can see “all” right there in one place do I ever even consider doing that.)

I say all of this as an editor who works only with fiction. I don’t have to think about heading hierarchies, tables, figures, footnotes, bibliography entries, and so on. If you do, I feel safe saying you will find this a godsend. The guidance will pop up immediately, right on your screen. No hunting through a print copy, no searching the website. It’s right there, and it will expand at the click of your mouse.

Congratulations, Daniel and team! You found a way to improve something I thought was already perfect.

[Disclaimer: I received a free one-year extension to my subscription for this review.]

Eaglefriends and Em Dashes

If you click on this link, you’ll see much of what I did for the month of January. My main project was editing A Facet for the Gem, the first in a series by Charles L. Murray.

Within a few hours of my returning the edited file to him, Charles made a lovely public post about the process of working with me and the kinds of things I found, which of course I’d find for any of my clients. (It’s what I pride myself on. It’s not only about grammar and usage and mechanics. It’s about style and facts and physics and history and culture and yeah.)

I linked to that collection back in December as “Clients in the Hot Seat,” but these posts weren’t there yet. Charles is so pleased, and I had such a good time working with him, I wanted to be sure to share this for those of you who might still be wondering what it’s like to work with me. (You can get a feel for how it would be to work with any professional editor, to a point, but keep in mind we all have our own methods, strengths, and weaknesses.)

Fair warning: I’m quickly filling every open slot left on my schedule. Don’t hesitate to ask, but be ready for an “I’m sorry.” If your project is over 80,000 words, I probably won’t have time this year.

And I do mean “this year,” as in 2016. I went from not knowing what I’d be working on after June to ZOMG WAT WAIT in the space of 24 hours last week.

Still, it’s always worth asking.

I’m still here.

It’s been ten days since my last post. (I swear, I’m not Catholic. I was raised Dutch Reformed. I’ve never been to confession, but I know how it goes from tv and movies and stuff.)

I’ve been working like a fiend on concurrent projects since the beginning of July. Being busy is wonderful, but not being able to make time for blogging is a drag. So, I’m tossing this up here quickly to say “I’m still here.”

One debut novel edited and returned, topping out at nearly 76,000 words.

One installment in a series edited and returned, about 35,000 words or so (I honestly don’t recall, but it’s a rip-roaring story just like the others before it!). If you want to know, it’s Harry Gets Her Wings by Steve Turnbull, the third book in the IRON PEGASUS series.

One memoir edited and returned. I haven’t a clue how many words. It was a very moving experience, though, touching the life of a WWII vet in that manner.

And now, I’ve started another debut piece, AND I’ve done a sample edit for a potential client, AND I’ve penciled in the fourth book in a series (THE MINUS FACTION by Rick Wayne, for anyone who might be interested) on my calendar for later this fall.

Busy, busy, busy. There should be a proper blog post coming next week, if all goes anywhere near as I have planned. Maybe even another Superannuated Syntax post.

Who knows?

I bought PerfectIt 3.

This is no spelling checker. It’s no grammar checker, either. It’s a proofreading program, and it’s amazing.

Here’s a link to the first how-to video for the program. Yes, I will be watching all of them. I may not need to know everything, as I don’t do much technical editing with charts and tables and figures, but I’ll watch them anyway.

For all the times you’ve seen me rant about the uselessness of “editing software,” you should be able to tell this is NOT like any of those other programs I’ve poked at. This one is worth the money. No kidding. It’s a proofreading program. It will ask you about inconsistencies. “This word is spelled this way 4 times and this other way 10 times. Should I change any of them?” You MUST verify every instance; not all of them will be wrong, and indeed perhaps none of them are. The program simply alerts you to the fact that, for instance, you used both “run in” and “run-in,” and asks you if all the occurrences are correct or if some need to be changed. It will catch usages of abbreviations and ask about defining them. You get to decide. Nothing happens without your approval until you get to the automatic stuff like “change two spaces to one following terminal punctuation.” (And you don’t even have to tell it to do that, if you don’t want it to. Just don’t click the radio button, and click on “Exit.”)

AND, it’s customizable. For example: I can enter a unique term from something I’m editing, and tell PerfectIt I want that term to always be italicized, or italicized on the first use only, or never italicized. If one slips through my eyes and fingers, the program will catch it and flag it for me. No more worries about “did I style those all the same?” PerfectIt will know, and will alert me to any variations.

Here’s a link to the Intelligent Editing site, so you can download a trial for yourself. It’s free for 30 days; you can purchase/register it at any time (for $99US) during the trial, or get it afterward.

Spam, Spam, Books, and Spam

Have you read Thirty-Five Shades of Grey? How about I Am the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo? How about Steve Jobs—no, not the biography by Walter Isaacson, but the version by a guy named Isaac Worthington? The one that looks like it was cribbed from Wikipedia?

If you try to buy a popular best-seller from Amazon, double-check your purchase before clicking all the way through. It seems that the website sells books that have titles and author names that are deliberately similar to genuine best-sellers. That’s because they’re “written” (and I wish I could imply even more sarcasm than mere quotation marks will allow) by “authors” (there I go again) who are trying to jump on the self-publishing bandwagon.

Worse, they use CreateSpace, an Amazon service that makes it easy—apparently far too easy—to write and publish your book on the website with an air of legitimacy. The product details list CreateSpace as the publisher, so customers who aren’t paying attention might miss this clue that the books are, in fact, self published. (Amazon has removed the knock-off books listed above from the site, probably due to the bad publicity stirred up by articles like this one from Fortune, but you can still find them for sale elsewhere on the web.)

As I’ve said before, self-publishing is great, but not if it bypasses an editor. At the very least, a good editor can stop you from making an absolute fool of yourself as you try to dupe people into buying your book by accident.

Then again, maybe I’m missing the boat here. According to the Fortune article, Karen Peebles, the “author” of I Am the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, claims to have used CreateSpace to publish 10,000 books. Yes, ten thousand. (You can see some of them here, if you dare.)

If I hurry, I might be able to get I’m Not the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo up for sale by dinner.