Testimonials

Reba is one of the best editors I have worked with. Her work is thorough, reliable and efficient. She is always a pleasure to work with. I would recommend her to even the pickiest of authors.

– Lora Gallagher, Production Manager Outskirts Press

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WHY WRITERS HIRE EDITORS

It’s clear why writers should use an editor if they’re planning to self-publish a book. If they don’t have their manuscripts edited, their work will be published as is—typos and all. Writers who plan to self-publish can either hire an independent editor, purchase the...

Seven Bar Jokes Involving Grammar and Punctuation

Thanks to Eric K. Auld... 1. A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves. 2. A dangling modifier walks into a bar. After finishing a drink, the bartender asks it to leave. 3. A question mark walks into a bar? 4. Two quotation marks “walk into” a...

Dialogue Tags

One of the joys of reading short stories or novels is being transported into a different life, a different country, a different perspective. But when an author inadvertently makes his or her presence suddenly known, it’s jolting for the reader to be jerked back into...

The Realities Of Freelancing: Is It The “Free” Or The “Lance”?

Many people go into freelance work with wide-eyed optimism. Freelancing. Emphasis on the free. They imagine the freedom of setting their own hours, grabbing the laptop and jaunting off to work in a trendy coffee shop, being their own boss, enjoying more leisure time,...

MAKING TIME TO WRITE WHEN YOU HAVE KIDS

Making time to write is hard when you're a stay-home parent. My own kids are teenagers—busy, busy teenagers with jobs and social lives and cell phones and their own agendas. If I wanted to work on a novel, they’d probably be thrilled to have me out of their hair. But...

COMMA SPLICING AND RUN-ON SENTENCES

One of the most common errors I see in manuscripts is comma splicing (also called run-on sentences)—a grammatical no-no. Comma splicing is the use of a comma to join two independent, complete sentences that can stand on their own. (I wrote a sentence, I used a comma splice, it became a run-on sentence.)

Here’s an example of a run-on sentence, along with four ways to fix it:

Joann bought a one-way ticket to San Diego, she vowed to leave her crazy family far behind.

First, you could break it up into two sentences:

Joann bought a one-way ticket to San Diego. She vowed to leave her crazy family far behind.

Or use a semicolon:

Joann bought a one-way ticket to San Diego; she vowed to leave her crazy family far behind.

Or use a coordinating conjunction:

Joann bought a one-way ticket to San Diego, and she vowed to leave her crazy family far behind.

Or use a subordinate clause (rendering the second complete sentence as an incomplete sentence or clause):

Joann bought a one-way ticket to San Diego, vowing to leave her crazy family far behind.

Remember, a comma just isn’t tough enough to take on two full, complete sentences. You’ll need the power of more industrial-strength punctuation if you want to avoid run-on sentences.

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