E-books: Editing and Proofreading

Table of contents

Editing and Proofreading

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    1.     Introduction    1
    1.1    What do editors and proofreaders do?    1
    1.2    Why it's not easy being an editor    4
    1.3    From prescriptivism to descriptivism    6
    1.4    Style manuals    7
    1.5    Style sheets    10
    1.6    Dictionaries    12

    2.     Marking up    13
    2.1    Marking up printed publications    13
    2.2    Marking up electronic publications    15
    3.    Capitalisation    17

    3.1     A brief anecdote    17
    3.2    When should I use initial capitals?    17
    3.3    Should I use full capitals?    19

    4.     Shortened forms    24
    4.1    Who should I believe?    24
    4.2    Abbreviations versus contractions    25
    4.3    Symbols    26
    4.4    Acronyms    29
    4.5    Using fewer acronyms    32

    5.     Hyphenation    35
    5.1    Overview    35
    5.2    Hyphenating prefixes    35
    5.3    Hyphenating fractions and numbers    36
    5.4    Breaking long words with a hyphen    37
    5.5    Hyphenating compound nouns    37
    5.6    Hyphenating compound adjectives    38

    6.     Choosing legible fonts    42
    6.1    Why is the right font important?    42
    6.2    Which fonts are most legible?    44

    7.     Heading hierarchies    49
    7.1    Why are headings important?    49
    7.2    What are heading hierarchies?    49
    7.3    How should I format headings?    53

    8.     Plain English    55
    8.1    What is it?    55
    8.2    Use one word, not several    56
    8.3    Avoid pompous, pretentious writing    59
    8.4    Eliminate buzzwords and unnecessary jargon    61
    8.5    Use short sentences    64
    8.6    Use short paragraphs    65
    8.7    Use the active voice    67
    8.8    Tone: personal pronouns and contractions    68
    8.9    Latin has to go: avoiding i.e. and e.g.    71

    9.     Punctuation    72
    9.1    Why should I care about punctuation?    72
    9.2    Full stops    73
    9.3    Colons (:)    75
    9.4    Semicolons (;)    78
    9.5    Commas    80
    9.6    Apostrophes    87
    9.7    En dashes and em dashes    90
    9.8    Brackets, braces and parentheses    93
    9.9    Ellipsis    96
    9.10    Question marks and exclamation marks    97

    10.     Bulleted and numbered lists    99
    10.1    How should I format a list?    99
    10.2    How should I punctuate a list?    101
    10.3    What is parallel structure?    103


    

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TESTIMONIAL

"I enjoyed reading your book and will certainly recommend it to colleagues interested in writing skills. I think it very lucidly gives an overview of everything anybody needs to know really about the skill.

I especially like its practical approach, e.g. the very down-to-earth tips on what to do (or not, as the case might be)."

Hans Mol