Deanna Hoak

So I have a long post planned on why, again, I so much prefer manuscripts to be set in Courier New rather than in Times Roman. I’ll make it as soon as I can do so without ranting, which might yet be a while.
However, let’s start here: In which of these do you think it’s [...]

I think everyone who’s done any writing at all knows how incredibly difficult it is to edit your own work. The problem is particularly vexing for editors, copyeditors, and proofreaders because we damn well know what’s right, but we’re no more immune from making typos or leaving out words or letters than anyone else is. [...]

Alexis Glynn Latner was nice enough to contact me through my website last week to let me know how much she appreciated the job I did on her novel Hurricane Moon (which is wonderful hard SF with a romantic twist):
I e-mailed the MSS back today, much improved, thanks to you! I attached a cover [...]

I’ve been neglecting my blog lately (I’ve been neglecting your blogs lately, too, so if you have something you’d like me to know, please by all means drop me a note). I wanted to make up for that by providing some actual content. :-)
Thus let’s talk about the Americanization of novels written by UK authors. [...]

I found out this morning that About.com has several of my articles on copyediting linked. That’s cool. I thought for a moment that maybe they had discovered my website when I sent them a correction regarding their article on Colt revolvers several months ago–they have the patent date (which was 1836) wrong by an entire [...]

I’m astounded at the things being developed these days. Here’s a nifty one: a T-shirt that senses your air guitar strumming and turns it into music.
On the copyediting front, for those LJ users who might have missed it over the weekend, you might be interested in checking out my post “Copyediting, Illustrated.” It was a [...]

An author friend of mine noted to me that a lot of writers might not understand the copyediting marks on their manuscripts, and I thought a post detailing some of the most common marks might be helpful.
Even the cleanest manuscript will come back marked up. Individually designed elements such as chapter numbers and titles need [...]

Well, my notion to have people post good and bad copyediting stories flopped like a fish a few feet from the water, didn’t it? As a blogger, you wonder why something like that doesn’t work better. Because I asked for specifics? Because people don’t have both kinds of stories? Because people only want to share [...]

I know, without a doubt, that authors differ in what they want in a copyedit. I think the primary reason I’ve been able to make a living freelancing for so long is because I do a decent job, overall, at analyzing the style of each author whose work I get and determining what that author [...]

In a very good way.
I’ve been very lucky in having a lot of authors express their thanks to me for my work on their books, but Fiona’s is particularly wonderful for suggesting that copyeditors and other “invisibles” in the process deserve recognition for their contributions. For those who don’t click links, here’s some of what [...]