We are, hopefully on the last edit before submitting. With each change of grammar and punctuation (which I have owned up to many times, is not one of my strengths) Word is now finding new things to underline. This time it asking me to remove phrases and replace with a single word, which to be honest reads fine, but, yep the big but (not the American terminology for bum, the proper meaning) will it detract from my "voice". I spoke with an editor some months ago, (an old colleague) who said now you have to remove about fifty percent of your words! A lot if I do, it wouldn't even be a novela. anyway here is as an example of the changes Word wants me to make...
"It would seem that the much mentioned “shock” was the only thing that knew exactly what it was doing."
To... The shock was the only thing that new what it was doing.
Do I listen to technology or the way I want to write it, in my head my way says much more you see.
Any comments will be listened to and thought hard over before I change things.
As ever Paul.
No, you don't automatically listen to the technology, Paul! It isn't always right. It objects to partial sentences, for example - the kind you use in dialogue. I've just done the final edit on my novel after moving it from Scrivener, and Word underlined several things that were actually correct. The problem is that it's not designed for novel-writers: it's not capable of coping with the more natural speech that we use.
In that sentence, I mis-typed just, capable, and more: it picked up jsut and capble, but not mroe. See? You can't rely on it. It doesn't like mis-typed, either: it offers mus-typed,
mos-typed, mid-typed, mi-typed and ms-typed. Jibberish, in other words! (It doesn't like jibberish either, but let's not go there.)
From MS Answers: (all spelling mistakes their own! How could someone type this without responding to the underlinings?)
'Red for flagged spelling errors (or words that MS Word doesn't know).' [Note that bit in brackets!]
'Green for flagged gramatical errors, such a subj/verb aggreement.' [They aren't necessarily right.]
'Blue for flagged contextual errors. A word spelled correctly but used out of context. I "no" you "no" what that means.' [Again, check: don't automatically agree]
With all due respect, Paul, I think you should get this properly edited before submitting it anywhere. If you don't know the rules you really can't self-edit. I'd avoid the man who said you had to remove 50%: that's a sort of 'rule' that really doesn't apply universally. It depends on the quality and relevance of the content.
Lorraine