Very Long Sentences in Fiction
Recently, I was listening to the audiobook of James McBride’s Deacon King Kong, and at some point it struck me that we’d been in the middle of a sentence for quite a while. But it wasn’t just long—it was lyrical…
Writer, Editor, Helper
(The Subversive Copy Editor)
Writer, Editor, Helper
(The Subversive Copy Editor)
Category Language and Grammar
Gender-Neutral Pronouns in Creative Writing
People sometimes worry about honoring the personal pronouns of those who don’t identify with the gender binary. They’re concerned that using (for instance) “they/them” in place of “he/him” or “she/her” will be complicated or confusing. Some aren’t sure about the…
How Grammar “Goofs” Work in Creative Writing
I’ve written before to caution copyeditors against scrubbing voice and character out of fiction manuscripts by adhering too closely to a style manual. Each novel or story is unique, of course. Some feature dialect and colloquialisms, and others pretty much…
Commas between Adjectives in Creative Writing
Do you sometimes dither over whether to put a comma between two or more adjectives? a polished, spherical stone or a polished spherical stone? a nice, big check or a nice big check? Although the guidelines for deciding at CMOS 5.91 and CMOS 6.36–37 work…
Style and Grammar in Promotional Copy
Anyone familiar with the grammar and style rules and guidelines in CMOS knows they come with a lot of qualifiers: normally, in most cases, in running text, in regular prose, depending on the context—I could go on and on. In life, very few rules are meant to…
Who Gets Capitalized in a Novel?
I gave Detective MacSwain $200 and a diamond ring worth $1,000 to keep quiet and make it look like suicide. (Dashiell Hammett, Red Harvest, 81) “That’s nice,” the gray-mustached sleuth on my left said. He didn’t sound sincere. . .…
“Had had”? Flashbacks and the Past Perfect
Novelists are sometimes urged to eliminate the past-perfect tense from their sentences, and copyeditors are sometimes trained to search out those auxiliary “hads” and lop them off from their verbs. What exactly is the past perfect? And what’s wrong with…
Sure, You Got A’s in English—But Do You Know Where Commas Go?
A few months ago in a conference session, a group of novelists digressed into good-natured complaints about being copyedited. One writer drew a lot of laughs saying, “I mean, I got A’s in English! I know where the freaking commas go!”* Others nodded in recognition and comradery. I bit my tongue.
“Hazel and I’s puppy”? When Fiction Meets Bad Grammar
“Hazel and I’s Puppy. The. Cutest. Ever.” In editing formal prose, we fix nonstandard English without hesitation. But in editing creative works, we often need to throw out the stylebook so a narrator or character in a novel or play…
Fiction+ for Creative Writers and Their Editors
Although I officially retired from my work at the Chicago Manual in December, I couldn’t say no to an opportunity to continue hanging around the CMOS Online Shop Talk blog when Russell Harper—the new editor—invited me to share a new…