Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Love Ya Like a Sister--revisions and reflections for chapters

Just past page fifty, and 170 to go on Love Ya Like a Sister!

(I'm working this read-through in Adobe InDesign, rather than the usual Microsoft Word.)

Notes for myself after having read the first two chapters:
  • Words are hyphenated at the ends of lines. How do I fix that?
  • I need to change double hyphens to a single-lined dash.
  • I need to fix straight quotation marks to curled quotation marks.
  • Some pages have a random space at the bottom of the page.
  • Does a sentence that ends with an ellipsis end with three periods or four?
It sounds to me that even as I am reading for story, I'm also beginning to use my publisher's eye.

I've rewritten very little--just some unneeded words removed, some change of word order, and minor changes in dialogue. I expect to add more later in the book.

Addendum:
  • Figured out how to make double hyphens into dashes.
  • It appears from research that an ellipsis at the end of a sentence to denote a trailing off of speech or thought ends with the ellipsis and a period...hmmmm....
  • InDesign is an incredibly versatile program, but that also makes its complex. Thank God I've got someone who knows the program and who will teach me if I take him out to the local internet cafe. 
Copyright 2010 by Thomas L. Kepler, all rights reserved

1 comment:

  1. LOL Yah. At a conference bootcamp, the conclusion was that the "..." indicated a trailing off of speech and the "--" (pertaining to dialog) indicated someone being interrupted. :) but i've never seen it done with four.

    as for your other questions, i'm not sure about the hyphns on the end of lines. i'd have to see what you meant, but it seemed you've already got a techy friend to figure it out :D And, my first thought about the quotation-marks (curled vs straight) is that you're using a particular font choice that is doing that. ?? Try using a different standard font?

    OH, and way cool pages! I'm so gonna cruse around for a spell.

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