I forgot to mention my 66 point edit list yesterday. Well, it’s now a 68 point edit list.
This morning, I’ve been checking the ellipses. Should they have two dots? .. Three? … Four or more? ……… What about when we tease towards a question or exclamation mark….? ..? ……..!
The answer is three. Always three. Luckily, the ctrl-f, find-and-replace function is my friend, though I might have missed some. The next read-through will hopefully pick them up.
I’ve also been checking my ‘single’ and “double” quotes, my “ok”s from my “okay”s (Okay, always okay – in England, anyway) and my “hmm”s from my “hmmmmm”s. (Just the two m’s, every time.)
I don’t know for sure whether I’m getting these rules exactly right. Grammaticians disagree with each other all the time. But I do know – for my own peace of mind, if nothing else – that I need to pick a rule and make it consistent throughout.
Hopefully, the editing process will be easier, with my next book, because I’ll write the right rules in, the first time!