chicago style workout 70: verb tenses
verb tenses are all about establishing the time that something happened: past, present, or future. they can also specify whether an action has been completed or is ongoing.
does your novel need a copyeditor before submission?
in the writers’ groups where i hang out online, these queries are evergreen: how do i know if i need a copyeditor before i submit my work to an agent or editor? how do i find a good copyeditor? how much does copyediting cost?
a few exceptions worth noting
even the most straightforward rule will be subject to an exception sooner or later. that’s why cmos qualifies so many of its rules with usually or generally. but some exceptions are so common that they deserve to be called rules themselves.
chicago style workout 69: name that symbol
most editors encounter at least the occasional symbol in the documents they edit, so it’s good to know a little bit about them. thanks to unicode, it’s easy to find out a symbol’s name—which can help you figure out whether it’s the right one in the right context.
ellen jovin talks about rebel with a clause
ellen jovin is a cofounder of syntaxis, a communication skills training firm based in new york city. the author of several books for business professionals, she has a ba in german studies from harvard and an ma in comparative literature from ucla.
should your novel have chapter numbers or chapter titles?
earlier this year, fiction+ considered whether a novel should have a table of contents. although it might seem to be a matter of personal preference, there are strong practical reasons for including or not including a toc, depending on a book’s genre and format.
chicago style workout 68: publishing terminology
people who work in publishing have their own vocabulary, including many terms related to printing, typesetting, and design. you’ll find some of these terms in the glossary at the back of cmos. how many do you know?
when your novel quotes a real source
careless quoting is a writing crime. fiction or nonfiction, a writer must be scrupulous in quoting words precisely and crediting their source. most publishing contracts hold the author liable for misrepresentations and plagiarism, but even without that legal pressure, a writer, of all people, should naturally respect the intellectual property of others.
chicago style workout 67: quotation marks
quotation marks, or “quotes” for short, like to work in pairs. but they’re not all the same. they can be double or single, left or right, curly or straight. part of an editor’s job is to know which marks to use in which context—and to make sure they’ve been used consistently.
“erg, no kidding?” interjections in creative writing
not all fictional characters are meant to be smooth-tongued and lyrical in their speech. rather, just like us, they sometimes mumble or stumble. giving a character flawed speech is a way to make dialogue more realistic. and this very human kind of talking often involves the use of interjections.
