Translating Editor Language...

I'm exactly half way through my NIGHTSHADE CITY edits. When I first saw all those funky editor symbols on the page, I'm not embarrassed to say, I had no clue what several of them meant! Hey, I'm not an editor, so how would I know? We don't know things until we know them! So, I did a little searching and quickly figured things out. I Googled it! Yes indeedy!

I found a great resource on the University of Colorado at Boulder website. It demystified all those mysterious marks, making something that resembled ancient Egyptian into plain English! The symbol that confused me the most looks like a simple fraction with an I on top and an M on the bottom. I had no idea what it meant. I thought semi-colon, colon? I had no clue. Found out it's an em-dash. "Ah-ha!" I said! Now it makes sense. Long story short, you may want to bookmark the link below. It spells out all the symbols in simple language that even I can understand and I'm blond! Ha, ha!

One symbol that is not on there is "AQ". If you see an "AQ" in the margins, that stands for "Author Query". It's a marked off area of the MS that needs clarification of some sort. Your editor will send along separate notes with corresponding page numbers to the AQ. My editor sent 4 pages of AQ to me and I'm about 75% through them, yay! The tricky part is making sure when you clarify or change the specific AQ segment, that you do it throughout the entire MS. I recently changed a character completely. He went from a short and quiet rat, to a tall and jovial fellow, who likes to crack jokes. So, clearly, I have to carry that through the whole MS or things will make no sense! My rats aren't shape shifters after all!

Without further ado, here is the link for the Proofreader’s and Editor’s Symbols guide on the University of Colorado at Boulder website.

http://www.colorado.edu/Publications/styleguide/symbols.html

Hope it helps!

xoxo -- Hilary