smokingboot: (Default)
smokingboot ([personal profile] smokingboot) wrote2005-04-26 01:44 pm

Editing

Editing is such fun.

Let's start with Capital Letters used for the Start of every Sentence and of course for every Proper Name, and let's include the Pseudo-Shakespearian/Medieval habit of giving Every Important Thing a Capital Letter; and then let's not forget dear old colons for ones'* list: comma overuse, abuse, and underuse, in a very long sentence that could do with breaking up only when you do break it up it makes no sense anyway; and thank heavens for semi-colons; without them, my ellipses would get so lonely...

The good thing is that dealing with these tiny matters help me to ignore greater arse-biscuiterie, such as story, continuity, and dialogue.

I have been staring at this thing so long I'm virtually cross-eyed. Englang, my Englang, don't you wuv me any more?

*Dare I even mention apostrophe catastrophe?

[identity profile] caddyman.livejournal.com 2005-04-26 01:38 pm (UTC)(link)
Do you ever use hyphens in loco parentheses?

[identity profile] oldnick.livejournal.com 2005-04-26 01:41 pm (UTC)(link)
Far too often - and in place of commas.

[identity profile] oldnick.livejournal.com 2005-04-26 01:43 pm (UTC)(link)
The common cause of over-capitalisation here seems to be the German-Americans with which Fnord, as a company, is populated.

[identity profile] tink-rachel.livejournal.com 2005-04-26 02:15 pm (UTC)(link)
I know the feeling, at present commas do seem to be something to sprinkle liberally over everything (!)

[identity profile] smokingboot.livejournal.com 2005-04-27 08:27 am (UTC)(link)
My crimes against the semi-colon are many and unforgivable; to me, no paragraph ever seems complete without at least three; I stack them up like chairs in a church hall (and then I indulge in awful imagery to describe it!)