5 ways to drive your editor batty

Every editor has a few pet peeves, things that irritate them when they see them. But we editors suffer in silence, correcting those issues and moving on to the next page of the manuscript. But there are editors like me who happily turn those pet peeves into blog posts, showing the world how irritating they can be.

Today's post dives into some of the things that writers do that can drive an editor to the coo-coo train.

(Now, watch, some of my writing buddies will turn this into a challenge to see if they can work all of these things into their next writing piece that they share with me.)

1) Add in commas just because you can and miss out on others for the sake of it.

Many editors will agree that commas, or the lack thereof, seems to be a common problem among writers. With the introduction of text language, commas seem to have become a thing of the past. However, one little comma can change the entire meaning of a sentence.

Consider the following sentence:

"I like cooking dogs and kids."

Well… A statement like that stirs up interesting connotations for a thriller or horror story, maybe even a story about witches and their potbelly cauldron. However, if your story is a simple romance, where a boy meets his future bride, then you might want to use something like this:

"I like cooking, dogs, and kids."

There are a lot of articles on the internet about how to use commas correctly and the only comma that even editors can't agree on is the Oxford comma, except to say to be consistent on whether you use it or not.

But if you really struggle to work out where a comma goes (or if a sentence needs one), read the sentence aloud. If you hear yourself take a slight pause, the odds are that is where a comma or some other punctuation belongs.

Writers, if you are serious about making a career of writing, I would eventually take the time to at least try to understand proper comma placement, but don't panic. As long as you deal with the comma issue described above, you're all good. Any copyeditor worth their salt will fix your comma mess, even if they continually grumble under their breath.

2) Use a lot of adverbs. In fact, place them throughout your prose, generously.

Okay… Don't do this. Some editors hate adverbs with a passion. They will go out of their way to hunt them down and kill them.

I encountered one of these adverb haters myself once. They were so determined to kill all of my adverbs that they even insisted that I get rid of the word only from my manuscript, too. I just rolled my eyes and moved on.

As for myself, I believe that a well-placed adverb can add to the imagery of a scene, e.g., lifted a sword deftly. However, when you use an adverb in almost every sentence, even I will start to growl.

In general, if you're not sure if you can get away with an adverb in that particular line or not, find another word.

3) I have a word that I feel like Capitalizing.

Okay… This one has me in two minds.

If there is a reason for the random capitalization, such as defining a magic system within a fantasy story, or defining a title of office for a character, then I'm all good. However, if you are doing it for the sake of doing it, you better be prepared to have your editor question your choice.

While we're on the topic of random capitalization, every writer using any word-processing program with auto-correct enabled needs to keep an eye on those dialogue lines that end with a question mark or exclamation point followed by tagging.

For example:

"Are you sure?" he said.

Note the lower case "he". This is part of the same sentence.

The question mark should be treated as a comma within your editing process. However, sometimes MS Word, Scrivener, and other word-processing programs insist on capitalizing the "he". When this happens, you have to manually change it back.

4) Use a hyphen instead of an em-dash, and an en-dash instead of a hyphen, and forget about the hyphen completely. And to confuse things, because we can, let's just throw in an ellipsis for good measure.

This particular one is one of my pet peeves. Whenever I critique someone's work and see a hyphen instead of an em-dash, I want to cringe. I can accept the use of an en-dash instead of an em-dash, mainly because they do look similar, but a hyphen?

And yes, peeps, there is a difference.

Hyphen -

En-dash –

Em-dash —

Notice the difference in length?

I will grant you that it is rare to see an en-dash used in fiction, but the real issue with this is that many writers don't know how to automatically generate the em-dash while typing.

Most word-processing systems will auto-correct a double hyphen as an em-dash. In other words, type "--" and your word-processor will take care of the rest.

If you use Scrivener, the replacement will be as soon as you type another character or space. If you use MS Word or OpenOffice, the replacement will occur after you hit the next space after the next word. (Be advised that MS Word replaces the double hyphen with an en-dash if you have spaces around the double hyphen, but replaces the double hyphen with an em-dash if you don't.)

However, sometimes, we actually do want to use a hyphen, especially if you want to impress that eighty-year-old Grammar-Nazi.

Now the ellipsis… Within fiction, an ellipsis is only three dots. Not four. Not five. Not two. Only three. I will grant you that within nonfiction, you might find a four-dot ellipsis, but this has a very special meaning that you'll never see in fiction, so…

The auto-correct features in word-processing programs automatically replace the three dots with an ellipsis special character: just type three fullstops (or periods, if that's what you call them) and keep typing.

There are a ton of articles about when one should use a hyphen, an en-dash, an em-dash, or an ellipse — I even wrote one myself some time back. That goes for all punctuation. While there are some variations between US and UK English, the bulk of punctuation usage is the same between them. If you are serious about writing, you should take the time to get to know what the rules are. Your editor will love you for it.

5) Have your characters use the other characters' names—repeatedly.

"I have some important news for you, Bob."

"Really, Sally? Do tell."

"Well, Bob, every time I use your name, I get this feeling inside."

"Which is, Sally?"

"That I want to kill the writer, Bob."

Gah! No. Please no. Just stop it now! This is worse than what I affectionately call the he-said-she-said fest, because no one talks like that—constantly repeating another person's name—unless they want to be super-annoying.

I can forgive the he-said-she-said fest, when a writer uses an excessive amount of dialogue tagging. This is a common issue among writers who are just getting their heads around how to write good dialogue and still working out how to deal with tagging.

But the repeated name thing in dialogue… Nope. Don't do it… not unless you want me to reach my hand through the monitor to slap you silly.

If you want to learn more about why excessive dialogue tagging is an issue, check out the post on Billy said… Diana said… or A Classic Story with a Classic Writing Flaw.

There are many other ways to drive your editor a little batty too, but for the moment, I think these five things are enough. I don't want to give my writing buddies too much fodder to play with, deliberately trying to make me give them the evil eye.