Saturday, June 30, 2012

The Joys of Editing



Recently, while working on editing the manuscript to my latest project, I remembered a problem the last editor I worked with had pointed out. It seemed I had a tendency to over use the word "that". So keeping that in mind, I decided it might be a good idea to see if it still held true. So using the "find" function in word 2007, I had it do a "highlight all" of the word "that".

Then I watched my document light up like a Christmas tree.

Yeah.

Therefore, lately my job has been herding kids and squashing "that"s. As of now, over seven hundred of the pesky four letter words have been sent to that giant word bin in the sky. Maybe somebody else can use them. But at least the first pass of THAT project is done. Trust me, going through a ninety-five thousand word manuscript just ferreting out and squashing one word is a chore. I still expect to squash a couple of hundred more in the next pass. Then I guess I'll do a pass paying closer attention to the passive voice.

So yeah, editors are those people you never miss until you miss them. But I guess I would have still had to squash the word myself anyways.

Oh well, that is enough of that.

2 comments:

  1. I really want to read the end! I am so curious! Word-edits are a pain, but they will pay off. Nothing like noticing that an author favors a phrase, than having it pop out at you on every page. Keep up the tough-good work!

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  2. Yep. Even worse, is when you figure out that you as an author tends to favor a word or phrase and then go overboard in removing them. I've discovered that some "that"s are necessary :P

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