I'm Baaack...
When my editor, the fab Mistress of Multi-Tasking Angela
Kelly, pointed out that my manuscript had a few double spaces between words, I
investigated. And was appalled.
In my *completed* and *polished* ms, there was way over a
hundred double spaces.
It was easy to figure out how it happened. No doubt, I had
misplaced the cursor when moving a line or paragraph.
Other concerns arose however.
- Sentences that magically jumped down a line or two that
needed re-attached or pulled up.
- Hidden Text, the cockroach of the word processing world.
- The mechanics of em dashes and en dashes. I know where to
place them and the difference but Word program sometimes twiddles its digital fingers,
dithers around, and creates the wrong symbol.
Now that I am hyperaware of these problems, fixing them is
easy but time consuming.
! Note: before
attempting these fixes, copy your manuscript and practice on it rather than the
original!
Inserted Lines. There
are two ways to find formatting symbols in Word program. Hit the formatting
symbol ¶ at the top center of your screen. Or click on the Window icon at the
top left, click on Word options then hit Display. This will show the
formatting.
The Fix. After you
click on the formatting tools, all kinds of things will pop up. The paragraph
symbol is ¶. If you hit enter twice or inserted a section from another ms, you
will see where the sentences jumped or lines inserted in the text and can edit
them.
Hidden text. Faint
dots underlining the word represent hidden text. This became a problem when my
editor and I exchanged the ms back and forth, converting it from Word to Word
Perfect and inserting comments as we went. Remove them by using Find and
Replace.
The Fix. Hit Find.
Under format, click on Font. Click on Hidden then OK. Highlight All and work
your magic.
Em Dashes. When
my Word program didn’t convert the dashes to em dashes, it meant I had to
physically do this.
The Fix. Click on
Find, Special and (in my case) en dash. Replace with em dash. This does the
job, but since Word placed spaces before and after the dash, I used a different
technique for most of them.
Try this. Where you want the em dash, type the word. Then
hold down on the Alt key and type 0151 then the next word. This places the
correct symbol—in that spot. No spaces before and after. And no double dashes
to muck up the format.
Double spaces.
These are represented by two or more dots. I committed this sin not only in
the middle of text but at the beginning of some paragraphs as well. It is easy
to fix in the sentences. Not so much at the beginning of a paragraph.
The Fix. Hit the
formatting symbol ¶ or Word options to see them. Use the Find/Replace by
hitting the space bar twice then Highlight All. Replace All with a single
space.
The spaces before the paragraphs required more labor, a page-by-page
inspection.
Dig out these formatting errors since who knows?
Maybe a
prospective agent is looking for these goof ups in your manuscript and using that as a
guide.
Got any more horror stories?
