"WORDS ARE, IN MY NOT-SO-HUMBLE OPINION, OUR MOST INEXHAUSTIBLE SOURCE OF MAGIC. CAPABLE OF BOTH INFLICTING INJURY, AND REMEDYING IT." ~ALBUS DUMBLEDORE

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Something NOT To Do.


Sara: Oh crap! I'm FINALLY finished with this round of edits, but now my MS formatting is weird because I used two different programs while writing it. Half of my stupid em dashes reverted to regular old dashes.


*ponders*


Sara: Duh! I'll just do a replace all and change the dashes back to em dashes! 


*replaces all dashes with em dashes*


Sara: Problem SOLVED! Man, I amaze myself with how smart I am sometimes...


*sends MS to CPs*


You may be wondering why NOT to do what I did (though if you're less blonde than I am, you already know). Well, it's because there are these things called hyphenated words. So when a fabulous CP goes through your draft, they get to see LOTS of words like high—pitched, instead of high-pitched. Like self—conscious, instead of self-conscious; star—crossed, instead of star-crossed; hip—hop, instead of hip-hop.

Yeah, I definitely did that before sending my last draft to Alexandra and Carol. Now that I've finished going through their notes, I'm surprised they're still even speaking with me.

*begs forgiveness*



In other news, I finished this round of revisions and *think* I only have one (and possibly a half) more before I'm ready to skydive from that great query plane in the sky...


*dies of nervousness*


PS. Image, and more information about dashes & em dashes found here.


♥ Sara

22 comments:

  1. Yikes. That is good advice. I didn't even think about that when I was reading the first part of the blog post but when I got to the other half I was like "D'oh". That is definitely a "d'oh" moment.

    Could have been worse at least. Good luck with your manuscript. *takes notes from lesson learned*

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  2. oh, that's too funny. Funny b/c I probably would've done exactly the same thing, in exactly the same order.

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  3. Congrats on getting through with your edits. Tha's got to feel good.

    Oh, replace all, how we love you. Yep, I think every writer's done something silly with that function, at least once. Or, in my case, probably more than once.

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  4. Haha...Fine and Replace is the bane of my existence. They really should make it more specific, like when this grouping of letters appears ALONE, replace it. *sigh*

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  5. Oh, dashes and em dashes. So evil. That's why, when I use the "find and replace" feature, I never choose "replace all." I always view them one at a time. You'd be surprised how the one word you want to replace is sometimes hidden in a bigger word.

    Also, yay for being almost done!

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  6. Too funny! I can barely ever get Word to make an em dash for me.

    You know if you put a space before and after the - it won't replace hyphens that are in the middle of words.

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  7. Oh man, there's a difference? Yikes, I have a long way to go ;o) That search/find deal can get ya in to trouble every time! Glad the query days are upon you ;o)

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  8. Overlooking emdashes is not enough to make me upset about getting to read something so fabulous :)

    I have a feeling it probably wouldn't be enough to make an agent say no, either, if they loved the ms enough. But it's always good to appear professional. :-P Fortunately for you, me and C don't care if you appear professional, or in your underwear.

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  9. LOL! That settles it - now I KNOW we were separated at birth! You are so...me! :-)

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  10. i made the "find" and "replace all" mistake once.
    Never again...

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  11. Haha, yes I've done that a few times too! Once I wanted to change mother to mum, so I did the whole find and replace thing and instead of smother, I got smum, and mother tongue, I got mum tongue. hmmmm ...

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  12. Oops! Heh. I accidentally un-indented the paragraphs on 40,000 words once. D'oh!

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  13. I so feel your pain! I had a hero named Matt and halfway through I changed his name. Like you, I found and replaced. Mattered, mattress, etc all ended up as weird hybrid words. It took FOREVER to fix.

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  14. I've made a couple of bloopers with the find and replace tool as well. Oops! I'm sure they still love you anyway :)

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  15. lol. That's kind of funny At least you didn't send it agents that way. ;)

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  16. The good news is you understand dashes in the first place :) That puts you worlds ahead!
    Good luck with they querying!

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  17. That is HILARIOUS! And, a great reminder! Good luck with your querying!

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  18. That was an epically—funny post, good lady. One of the better belly—laughs I’ve had in a while. And now I’m just looking for excuses to use em dashes. Can I find any more randomly—gratuitous, not—particularly—relevant, excessively—hyphenated words to drop in my comment? Apparently so. Huh.

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  19. Awesome job on finishing the edits. :)

    And good luck with the query thing. It can be nerve-wracking for sure, but only way to find out if you can fly is to jump out of the plane. ;-)

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  20. Haha! You silly. Okay, so I had no idea why all your en dashes were em dashes. The find and replace option never occurred to me. I thought maybe your en dash on your software or your keyboard was wonky, or maybe that they had a funny way of teaching punctuation in Virginia--that's how ridiculous I am. So, yeah, all is forgiven. I really didn't mind. I think I stopped marking them after the first twenty pages or so :P How lovely it must have seen to see the same thing marked over and over. Ha! We're even.

    Query time soon, sweetie peetie...dun dun dunnnnn.

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Yay! I love when you have things to add :)