Total Pageviews

Thursday, August 15, 2013

Not Only Typos...

I was just reading a blog by Elaine Viets (it's posted on www.killzoneauthors.blogspot.com ) and I have to agree with her. I've been a copyeditor for over twelve years, and yes, typos aren't easy to pick out. It takes going over your work several times to find all those little mistakes and even then there's a tendency to miss things like 'ot' instead of 'to'. Transposing letters isn't the only problem missed. There's another problem I've noticed that I haven't heard any comments about.

That's the tendency to leave out words.

Like most writers, I read. A lot. Realizing there are words missing irks me to no end. Too many times I've had to go back and reread a sentence before it makes sense. That can pull you right out of the story. Not good. Again, it's the little words like 'going the store' or 'jumping conclusions'. It isn't always 'to' that's left out. There are other words that get dropped and I have to wonder why.

At first I thought it might be a print typo. Those are bound to happen no matter how many times you go over a manuscript. It almost seems as if some words are left out to avoid hyphenating a word at the end of a line. (When was the last time you saw a hyphen at the end of a line?) Or the words are stretched out on a line so they fit margin to margin. Okay, so maybe you need a shorter word in the sentence to avoid the hyphen, or maybe a couple longer words will keep that last word in one piece or send it to the next line while preventing spaces from becoming elongated.

I realize there are set margins when it comes to print but wouldn't it be better to find another word to fit the sentence/space? Think of it as a vocabulary challenge ... a word builder. A brain game. Stretch your imagination to come up with different ways to say what you want so it fits the print set-up and keeps the work intact.

The challenge can help us keep going as writers, but it can also keep readers coming back for more.