by Lora Doncea Here is an intriguing fact. The human brain is instantly stimulated when we read action verbs—more than any other words. We unconsciously react to “jumped” and “ran” more than verbs such as “went” or “pondered.” We respond even less to nouns. Too many non-visual words can slow our reading and comprehension. Here…
In my work as an editor of Christian nonfiction, I encounter many clients who are or have been pastors. While some pastors have a natural ability to transition from public speaking to writing, many struggle to do so. Sometimes pastors adapt a sermon series that their congregation has found meaningful, working it into a book…
by Iola Goulton The comma is one punctuation mark which even editors don’t agree on. In my last post, I introduced two basic rules of commas, and looked at how we use a comma in a compound sentence. Today we’re discussing the Oxford comma (also known as the serial comma) and other problem commas. What’s…
It takes a team to produce a well written and well edited book! And because the Christian Editor Connection wants to honor the teams behind such books, we are proud to host our fourth annual Excellence in Editing Award. This award celebrates books released in 2018 that were superbly written, well edited, and published by…
by Lora Doncea One of the most prevalent problems I see in fiction is that writers forget that readers are blind and deaf to the worlds the writer envisions. Readers have to create the scenes using only the words they read, and writers often give them very little to work with. Example of first lines…
by Karin Beery As professional editors, we know that each level of editing requires a special skill set. The same is true for editing fiction or nonfiction; what works in a novel won’t necessarily work in a Bible study. The same is also true for business or promotional material. With many authors self-publishing, why not…
By Pamela Cosel A rule of thumb for resumes is to keep its length at two pages overall whenever possible. That can be a challenge to edit if the client provides you with a much longer document to work with. Some companies will expect just a simple one-page resume, and the difficulty here will be…
by Lora Doncea After two decades of computer programming and college teaching, I switched careers to be a freelance book editor. When I did, I was excited to discover all of the opportunities available. I jumped into content editing, copy editing, proofreading, book formatting, graphics, creating websites, and mentoring novice writers. Whew! I had training…
by Iola Goulton The comma is one punctuation mark which even editors don’t agree on, and it’s one of the areas I most often discuss in my editorial letters. Today I’m going to introduce two basic rules of commas. I will also look at how we use a comma in a compound sentence. There are…
by Sue A. Fairchild “Would you be willing to look over my manuscript quickly—it only has a hundred thousand words—and let me know if there is anything I’d need to fix?” These are the words editors cringe to hear from their writing friends. Yet, all too often we’re faced with this dilemma. After all, our…
