Editing

Karin Cather

By Karin Cather

Science Fiction: Realism Required

Science Fiction: Realism Required

I had a conversation recently with an author about realism and genre. Their book was a police procedural, so there was a murder and detectives and even a search warrant, but it also took place on another planet. The author wanted to know why they should care about...

Literally Figurative

Literally Figurative

A common task for editors is to make sure that the manuscript in front of them conforms to the rules of English spelling, grammar, usage, and punctuation. For instance, when I encounter the confusion of you and I and you and me, I fix it. (You and I are going to the...

Literally Figurative

In Defense of Copyrights

Recently, a colleague of mine stumbled upon a Facebook page on which the owners had uploaded an entire book. The whole thing. The book was a parody of another book, which mattered to the owners of the Facebook page, but is irrelevant for purposes of uploading an...

Is This Alphabet Soup?

Is This Alphabet Soup?

Recently I read something that, at one point, used four different abbreviations[1] repeatedly on a single page. I was taken aback until I read further and saw that there were seven. In fact, the more I read, the more abbreviations I found. Every time the author used a...

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