White Space

[dr_mabeuse]

I just learned a great trick for people who are submitting their stories for editing/critiquing: white space.

If you provide a lot of blank space in your story--double space, quadruple between paragraphs--it's much easier for the editor to insert comments and suggestions.

This has always held in hard-copy editing, but with word-processors we tend to get pretty dense blocks of prose with no room to insert comments. It's tedious for the editor to have to reformat the piece. It should be done by the author before the piece is given to the editor, and then reformatted by the author before being submitted.

---dr.M.

 

[Rainbow Skin]

Though on a word-processor you don't need the space, because you can add it as needed. And it's only useful for writing-in: it looks terrible for reading.

My technique is to make in-line comments about the changes that should be made. (I haven't edited for Literotica, but elsewhere.) If I just change their commas to semicolons and fix spelings spellings they won't benefit by it. I give them the choices and the reasoning. New para here? And in-line comments force them to go through removing them, so they have to proof the whole thing and clean it up, and know what they're doing.

 

[snooper]

... My technique is to make in-line comments about the changes that should be made. (I haven't edited for Literotica, but elsewhere.) If I just change their commas to semicolons and fix spelings spellings they won't benefit by it. I give them the choices and the reasoning. New para here? And in-line comments force them to go through removing them, so they have to proof the whole thing and clean it up, and know what they're doing.

I do much the same but use three colours one for speeling and trypographic errors one for continuity errors (like why did his name change from Tom to Dick?) and one for literary comments, (like excessive use of and instead of full stops).

 

[MlledeLaPlumeBleu]

For anyone who doesn't use this function already: If you use Word, you can use the "track changes" function, which will strike through any edited sections so they are still visible and highlight changes in red. Any comments made are flagged with a small number, which corresponds with a comment that you post in a separate window, footnote style. This is by far the best method I've found to edit people's writing.

mlle

 

[snooper]

For anyone who doesn't use this function already: If you use Word, you can use the "track changes" function, which will strike through any edited sections so they are still visible and highlight changes in red. Any comments made are flagged with a small number, which corresponds with a comment that you post in a separate window, footnote style. This is by far the best method I've found to edit people's writing.

mlle

I use Track Changes but I find the comment function too cumbersome, so I put the comments inline. Since, as above, I use colours, the victim (author) can delete these very simply with replace all command.

 

[MlledeLaPlumeBleu]

My comments are often stupidly verbose and specific, with long detailed footnotes and barely relevant analogies. I require annotation...*laugh*

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I use the track changes and the comments, even footnotes, but I still love those white open spaces.

Track changes is a very valuable tool, but it can make the edited document hard to read.

For colored text, will that formatting show up on all word processing aps? I know you lose it when you go to HTML, but then you lose everything when you go to HTML.

There's another thing I'd like to know about the formatting on a document submitted for editing, namely, just how should it be formatted? I think this deserves its own thread though.

Which I'm off to start now.


---dr.M.

 

[Sultan Mad Cat]

Heck Why not?

Just change the text color for your own comments that way....... the Author sees the comment and....... can decide what to do about it. and its easily edited out later

 

[Weird Harold]

For colored text, will that formatting show up on all word processing aps? I know you lose it when you go to HTML, but then you lose everything when you go to HTML.

When editing for Mac users, I've found that using fotnotes saving the document as an HTML file from Word produces a file that the client can follow the changes and comments easily as an addendum to the edited file without comments in TXT (ASCII-7) or RTF format for them to resume work on.

HTML is the one format that everyone at Lit is guaranteed to be able to handle that can show colored text and linked footnotes for comments, and crating one From MS Word or WordPerfect is as simple as selecting "save as HTML" on the file menu.

The Accept/Reject/Find Change capabilities ofWord's reviewing tools is preferable where editor and client have the compatibility required, but HTML is the "least common denominator" we all share (else we wouldn't be able to share our comments here on an HTML based Forum.)