I hesitate to post anything so controversial as this, but it's a triumph of usage over rules.
Alicia
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Romance University Now Features Theresa in a Monthly Column! Click the Picture for Details
Got Editing Questions?
If you have an editing question you'd like us to address, feel free to send it to rasley at gmail dot com. We like reader questions because they save us from having to think up post topics on our own. ;)
Readers' Choice for Top Ten Blog Posts
- 1. Top Ten Reasons the Editor Doesn't Love What Your Critique Group Loves
- 2. How to Put It Together Into One Neat Tweet
- 3. Marks of the Amateur - Starting a List
- 4. When Unnamed Characters Speak
- 5. Character-Driven/Plot-Driven
- 6. The Words Not Spoken, the Steps Not Taken
- 7. This Was in the Comments, But It's a Great Question, So Let's Discuss--
- 8. Dialogue Tags
- 9. Enjambment in Fiction
- 10. Thoughts on Pacing - Nothing Brilliant
Readers' Choice for Best Series by Alicia
Readers' Choice for Best Series by Theresa
Readers' Choice for Best Series by Both Editors
Ask An Editor
Romance University Now Features Theresa in a Monthly Column! Click the Picture for Details
Our Promise to Authors
Every day we work with writers to shape their manuscripts for publication. We also evaluate submissions, read our friends’ pages, give second opinions to other editors -- in short, we confront a whole lot of manuscript pages for a whole lot of reasons. But here’s what we don’t do. We don’t -- and we never will -- pull examples directly from any of these manuscripts. The editor-author relationship depends on mutual trust and respect, and we won’t ever compromise that. We might get ideas for blog posts in the course of our interaction with writers and manuscripts, but all examples are ours, with the occasional exception of literary sources.
Theresa's Dubious Honor
Useful Sites for Writers
- AAR
- Alicia's Writer's Corner
- Brian's Common Errors Site
- Internet-Resources (Killer Collection of Links for Writers)
- Merriam Webster Online
- Poets & Writers Online
- Purdue's OWL Grammar Handouts
- Schoolhouse Rock Grammar Rock Lyrics
- The Chicago Manual of Style online
- Theresa Stevens, Editor
- U. of Chicago's Excellent Collection of Grammar References
- Vision Index: A Review Site for Books About Writing
Blog Archive
-
▼
2012
(143)
-
▼
April
(14)
- Want to be an editor when you grow up? :)
- Exchanging slackitude for attitude
- R.U.E.
- Editing a Sample at RU
- AP allows "hopefully"
- Precision increases plausibility
- Antitrust law suit against publishers/Apple for pr...
- "Pre-published"
- Spark
- Question from the mailbag
- Taking tone OUT
- Things we have trouble doing
- More about the ending and resolution of conflicts
- Wandering eyes... and other body parts
-
▼
April
(14)
When Theresa's not reading manuscripts, she's reading:
Labels
- action (26)
- active prose (12)
- acts (1)
- adjectives (10)
- advanced stuff (1)
- advanced training (1)
- adverbs (10)
- advice (2)
- agents (4)
- agreement (3)
- alliteration (1)
- American vs. British English (2)
- antagonist (3)
- antiheroes (12)
- art (1)
- audiobooks (1)
- author (2)
- author rights (1)
- authorial negation (3)
- authority (2)
- backstory (7)
- body parts (7)
- books (1)
- books we read (37)
- call to action (1)
- causation (4)
- chapters (2)
- character (81)
- characters (3)
- classes (2)
- classics (3)
- clauses (10)
- climax (2)
- coherence (1)
- coincidence (1)
- comedy (8)
- commas (10)
- concrete (1)
- conferences (20)
- conflict (18)
- conjunctions (5)
- contests (33)
- contracts (1)
- copy editing (9)
- Critique (1)
- Critique groups (7)
- danglers (7)
- deep pov (28)
- deep stuff (25)
- denouement (1)
- description (22)
- detail (4)
- details (1)
- deuteragonist (1)
- dialect (4)
- dialogue (38)
- dialogue beats (7)
- dialogue tags (6)
- direct publishing (9)
- double negatives (1)
- ebooks (3)
- editing (24)
- editors (24)
- electronic reading (1)
- ellipses (3)
- emotion (27)
- endings (15)
- epilogues (2)
- ETIQUETTE (1)
- examples (62)
- excerpts (1)
- exercises (23)
- exposition (13)
- eyes (2)
- fairy tale (1)
- feedback (1)
- film (13)
- first person pov (5)
- first sentence (1)
- flashback (4)
- foils (6)
- foreshadowing (1)
- formatting (1)
- frames (1)
- freewriting (2)
- fun stuff (5)
- future of story (2)
- genre (6)
- gerunds (1)
- goals (1)
- grammar (52)
- guest post (5)
- headhopping (2)
- hero (9)
- hooks (1)
- horror (1)
- horror books (1)
- hyphens (3)
- idea (1)
- inciting incident (1)
- innovation (2)
- interior monologue (9)
- internal conflict (1)
- irish (1)
- irony (3)
- Kindle (4)
- life (3)
- line editing (63)
- links (36)
- lists (4)
- log lines (16)
- manuscript (1)
- mark of the amateur (11)
- melodrama (1)
- metafiction (1)
- metaphor (4)
- middle (1)
- modals (1)
- modifiers (14)
- motif (9)
- motivation (7)
- multiple POV (4)
- mystery (4)
- names (4)
- nano (2)
- narration (1)
- narrative (8)
- narrative summary (6)
- new media (1)
- nouns (5)
- omniscient (2)
- openings (60)
- ordinary world (7)
- other (42)
- outline (2)
- pacing (12)
- paragraphs (37)
- participial phrases (23)
- participles (3)
- passive voice (9)
- past participles (3)
- Pen Olympics (18)
- pennames (1)
- perception (1)
- personal (7)
- phrases (1)
- pitching (28)
- plot (64)
- plotting (3)
- poetry (16)
- poetry plotting deep thoughts (1)
- polls (2)
- possessive (1)
- POV (51)
- POV contest (11)
- PR (14)
- predicates (5)
- prepositions (8)
- principles (1)
- productivity (14)
- progressive verbs (1)
- prologue (5)
- promotion (3)
- pronouns (11)
- proofreading (2)
- prose (5)
- protagonist (12)
- publishing (1)
- publishing industry (93)
- punchlines (1)
- punctuation (33)
- query letters (15)
- quotations (1)
- quotes from writers (1)
- read and revise like an editor (2)
- reader expectations (5)
- readers (2)
- redlines (12)
- reinventing (4)
- rejections (4)
- relative clauses (3)
- reversals (6)
- reviews (2)
- revising (8)
- revision (5)
- revision letters (8)
- romance (8)
- rule (1)
- rules (4)
- scene (3)
- scene charts (1)
- scenes (58)
- scenes pov setting emotion character (1)
- secondary characters (4)
- self-publishing (2)
- semicolons (2)
- sense of smell (4)
- sentence combining (5)
- sentence construction (2)
- sentence fragments (10)
- sentence structure (37)
- sentences (89)
- sequels (3)
- sequence (2)
- series - Alicia's sample line edits (45)
- series - Johnny and Drago (8)
- series- ongoing rants on PPPs (9)
- setting (31)
- settings (1)
- short stories (1)
- short stories Plot structure (1)
- show don't tell (5)
- simile (1)
- slang (1)
- smart stuff (2)
- sound (1)
- stephen king (1)
- story (7)
- stream of consciousness (2)
- structure (33)
- style (7)
- subject/verb agreement (2)
- submissions (57)
- subordinate clauses (4)
- subplots (3)
- subtext (10)
- symbolism (1)
- synopsis (11)
- syntax (2)
- teaching (1)
- tech (1)
- technique (1)
- tense (5)
- tension (3)
- terms (1)
- theme (24)
- thought (1)
- thought tags (1)
- three acts (1)
- tone (1)
- topic sentences (1)
- transitions (6)
- tritagonist (1)
- turning points (1)
- TV shows (23)
- typography (5)
- usage (10)
- verbs (27)
- villains (3)
- vocabulary (2)
- voice (50)
- word choice (1)
- words (41)
- workshop (5)
- worldview (2)
- writer control (1)
- writer's block (3)
- writers (3)
- writing advice (1)
- writing process (3)
Posts
7 comments:
Never!
I will go to the barricades against 'alright' or using 'impact' as a verb. I will cheer every time I read affect and effect used correctly.
Sigh. All those years of pounding correct English into the offspring - please don't tell my children about this.
ABE
It's very scary when we look to the newspapers for proper grammar, punctuation, and usage. They're notorious for being badly written and edited.
What's next - irregardless?
Ugh, I hate "impact" as a verb, too. It's one of those business-speak bits of jargon that makes me cringe, right up there with utilize, paradigm, and damned near every other B-school buzzword.
Hopefully, though -- that one, I think I can live with.
Theresa
Oh, NO!!!! but it's terrible grammar. I have, in my old age, forced myself to be more fliexible with grammar. Hopefully, I won't have to use that.
What's wrong with utilize? I ask this sincerely. The dictionary I consulted indicated the verb has been used since 1800.
Anon, I agree-- but my mother-in-law the city editor will get mad at me. :)
"Alright" drives me NUTS. I mean, really, how much more space does the L take?
"impact" as a verb gets me... but I can't think of a good substitute. "affect" is too mild. Other verbs?
A
Post a Comment