As a writer you’ve probably noticed that the way we write and the way we speak are often very different. And one of the ways our written language differs from our spoken language lies in the completeness of our thoughts.

When we speak, we rarely take the time to make sure all of our sentences are complete and grammatical. Quite often, we throw out related fragments of ideas and expect our listeners to combine those with context, vocal intonation, facial expressions, and gestures to reconstruct our meaning.

However, when we write, all we have to communicate with readers are our words, so we’re much more careful to form complete and complex sentences. But is there a place for sentence fragments in our writing?

​As with most other questions relating to writing, it depends.
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We often think of the search for gender-neutral pronouns as a modern development, a result of the emerging public recognition of multiple genders and the difficulty with keeping up with terminology that seems to change daily. However, writers have been working at this problem for far longer.

Aside from the growing number of genders people identify as, there are instances when gender is unknown. For instance, an unidentified thief could be a man or a woman, but if we use he to refer to the thief, we run the risk of creating unintentional bias and missing the true culprit.

​If you pay attention to the conversations around you, you may notice that most of us default to using they as both singular and plural, much the same way we do with you. Unfortunately, when it comes to writing, things aren’t so simple.
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If you’ve ever worked with an editor before, you’ve probably noticed an annoying tendency. We don’t care about your fancy formatting or the polish and look you worked so hard on achieving with your manuscript. In fact, the prettier and fancier your document, the more we seem to be annoyed by it.

The reason is that all of the layout and design work should be done after the words are edited and ready for print. You don’t varnish a table before you finish putting it together and sanding out the imperfections.

That means don’t bother with pasting all of your extra material, like tables, graphs, charts, photos, and drawings, into the document, because the actual text could change dramatically in the course of editing.

Also, it just plain gets in the way. And one of the first things your editor will do when you send them your beautifully arranged manuscript is to pull out all of that visual material.

​It creates visual clutter and makes the file size large and unwieldy. Many word processors and computers balk at opening large files and can get glitchy and unpredictable when you try to work with files that are too big.
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Several weeks ago, I talked about how to get useful feedback on your writing from others. Some of those others are likely authors from your writing group, and if you’re asking for their reviews on your work, it’s only fair that you return the favor.
Here are a few suggestions on making sure your peer reviews are actually useful.

Besides, reading and thinking critically about the work of others will serve to make you a better writer as well.
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None of us writes in a vacuum. Everything we hear, see, and read influences what we write. And sometimes, it’s helpful to reference other people’s ideas and words in our own work.

However, it has to be done right. That means giving proper attribution and signaling when you’ve departed from the exact wording but kept the core idea.

​We’ll deal more extensively with proper attribution (giving credit to the originator of an idea and pointing readers to the original document) another day. At the moment, we’ll take a look at three ways writers incorporate another person’s words and ideas into their own work: quotes, excerpts, and paraphrases.
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So, you’ve written your masterpiece and think you’re ready to start your search for an editor? Great! But there’s a little prep work you can do ahead of time to make that process a little smoother.
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When you contact your potential new editor, there are a few things they’ll need to know to get an idea of how best to serve you. You can save yourself and your editor a lot of time and trouble by thinking through and having answers ready for the following questions.
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I’m sure there was some point in your elementary school English classes when your teacher went over the absolute rules for what words you capitalize and what words you don’t.

If you’ve been reading my blog for long, I doubt you’ll be surprised by what I have to say to that. The rules aren’t as cut and dried as your English teacher told you.

To be fair, the rules they taught you are generally true. For example, the names of people, cities, states, and countries are usually considered proper nouns and capitalized, even when used as an adjective.

​However, there are exceptions to every rule, and that’s where style comes in.
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Last week I wrote about dialogue tags. They’re a pretty simple device used to keep straight who’s saying what.

But what about punctuation? Is there a comma? No comma? Where does the comma go?

Punctuation can be a sticking point for many writers because it feels too technical, like science to an artistic mind. So, here are a few simple guidelines for punctuating your dialogue tags.
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If you’re going the traditional-publishing route, this question probably won’t come up. The publisher arranges all of the steps of the publishing process, and your book will go through the proofreading process.
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However, if you’re self-publishing, you’re probably looking for ways to cut out any unnecessary costs. A professional copyeditor has already done a thorough cleanup of your manuscript, and the book may have even gone through a designer. So, is another step really necessary?
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Several months ago, I posted a list of commonly misspelled words most spelling checkers don’t flag because the misspellings are legitimate words themselves. They’re just not the word you were going for.

Recently, an online discussion among my fellow editors provided me with a wealth of new words to add to that list. So, with my thanks to my colleagues around the world, I’ve listed the new additions here for everyone to access freely. Enjoy.
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*At the bottom of this post, I’ve included links to download the PDF versions of the list of these new additions, the original list, and a combined list of all of the words I’ve gathered so far.