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Lucy Silag - Book Country Community Manager
Posted: Monday, November 3, 2014 11:44 AM
Joined: 6/7/2013
Posts: 1356


Random House copy chief Benjamin Dreyer has an AWESOME post on Medium clarifying some common mistakes he finds in manuscripts. You must read this; I learned so much from it!

 

 


Russell Giles
Posted: Monday, November 3, 2014 4:55 PM
Joined: 3/4/2014
Posts: 19


Rather embarrassing  how many of those mistakes I commit on a daily basis. nospeak

 

Good resource to have; I'm sure I'll be referring to it on a daily basis this NaNo.


Elizabeth Moon
Posted: Wednesday, November 5, 2014 6:18 PM
Joined: 6/14/2012
Posts: 194


Saw another one pointed out today on Twitter by Elspeth Cooper:   muscles can be corded, but not chorded.  (Although we then had a lively consideration of bioengineered muscles that emitted electrical signals you could turn into sounds and thus produce chords...love it when mistakes suggest story ideas.)
Elizabeth Moon
Posted: Wednesday, November 5, 2014 6:23 PM
Joined: 6/14/2012
Posts: 194


And I forgot to mention one that infuriates me: a confusion between reins (what you hold when riding a horse) and reigns (3rd person present singular of verb "to reign", to rule.)   I see too many books and posts in which someone talks about how someone holds the "reigns." 

 

And what about "lede" which is now apparently the fashionable spelling for "lead"--the way it was taught in journalism class in high school (mumble-mumble) years ago.   In the old days (she quavers)  people who worked around newspapers had no trouble distinguishing lead as -first-sentence-of-article from lead-as-that-metal-letter-shapes-were-made-of-for-printing. 

 

 


Charles J. Barone
Posted: Sunday, January 4, 2015 2:39 PM
Joined: 7/18/2014
Posts: 121


One of my biggest complaints, and I see it daily in various forums and on Facebook posts - the misuse of 'than' and 'then.' I also notice, these days, that people simply cannot spell anymore, and haven't a clue about grammar, punctuation or what constitutes a sentence. They'll ram several thoughts into a long string of words that would normally be two or even three sentences. These are all basic rules I learned in grammar school from the Nuns.
 

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