Manuscript errors

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Wow.  That was direct, however constructive criticism is always good.  I always have a problem with capitalization.  I suppose that has something to do with German where all nouns are capitalized.

There are some differences in punctuation for media as opposed to books.  For one thing, media says no commas unless absolutely necessary to make it clear.  Capitalization, however, is consistent for both.  I really didn't know how to punctuate '70s and the correct way looks wrong. 

Some perfectionists do sound snarky with their "constructive criticism" though I can't quibble with the accuracy of what was said.  However, she was not asked to edit...yet, I am glad for the issues she pointed out.

I have told writers that I could not review their works because the number of errors were too distracting - so, I guess it's coming back to me.

It's so much easier to find someone else's errors than it is our own. I, for one, tend to "see" what I had intended to say rather than what I actually typed.

When I was editing my friend's book last year, I could see what her publisher's editor had told her needed fixing. She is an excellent writer, and has a strong voice, which came through most of the time. Occasionally, though, her statements would be a little off. Deciding how to change it to make it more "consistent with her natural voice" was easy for me, being an objective reader.

The very best writers will invariably need an outsider to read and find those little things.

I'm looking for another author to write a cover blurb (since I doubt I get hers....).  Anyone here willing to read the manuscript?  It's 102 pages, 63,000 words and is a little adventure and a little romance - and sets the back story for Ghost Orchid.

Loved Ghost Orchid. Would enjoy learning the back story.

Thanks.  I sent a PM

Id' waas welling two rite a blerb has nit a bettur ritter volunteired. Fortinutelly four yew; Annie volenteired furst. Berry fortinutelly I be tinking.

Victor, maybe you and DK should both hire the editor who proof read DK's first page. Reading between the lines, the said editor seemed to be hinting that the request should have been for editing services instead of a book cover blurb.

By the way, apparently, as long as the first and last letters of a word are correct, we can read passages of text (which proves how easy it is to miss typos!).

"I cnduo't bvleiee taht I culod aulaclty uesdtannrd waht I was rdnaieg. Unisg the icndeblire pweor of the hmuan mnid, aocdcrnig to rseecrah at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mttaer in waht oderr the lterets in a wrod are, the olny irpoamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rhgit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whoutit a pboerlm. Tihs is bucseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey ltteer by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Aaznmig, huh? Yaeh and I awlyas tghhuot slelinpg was ipmorantt! See if yuor fdreins can raed tihs too."

... oh, and don't rely on your "spell chequer":

Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a quay and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
It's rare lea ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
It's letter perfect awl the weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.

Actually, that happened in Ghost Orchid.  The spell check turned the Barred owl to a barrel owl and everyone missed it - it went into print.  There is a barrel owl, just not at Corkscrew so most people would not have noticed it.  One who did gave me a 3.5 review and mentioned the two errors in the entire 166 pages, one an owl, the other a flower.

A reviewer of one of my short stories complained that there were typos and random symbols all over the place. These were introduced by the Amazon automated software that turns our Word files to Kindle-readable text. I don't own a Kindle and did not notice the errors on the on-screen preview after the file conversions. I downloaded the file and, sure enough, some quotation marks were replaced by various ASCII symbols during the translation process. They were not in my original document, but they were on the Kindle file. I did a search and replace of all quotation marks in the original file (replacing them with quotation marks, of course) and then uploaded the file again. Problem solved. Fortunately the reader still gave the story 3 stars even with the complaints about it being marred by the "typos" and random symbols, and I'm sure nobody ever noticed my comment thanking him and explaining the cause, since it does not show with the review unless you look for it.

I don't own a dedicated book reader and my Smashwords editions are in all the major eBook formats. I don't want to think what else may be lurking there, including formatting changes over which I have no control no matter how many times I redo and upload some files on the "screen preview" mode. I have more than my fair share of real errors in my published works--more than DK, no doubt, including using 70's rather than '70s. Errors introduced by translation software that fails to recognize a particular font and refuses to format text according to the original Word document are especially annoying and sometimes especially difficult to detect.