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Why overindulging in the exclamation mark is bad for your writing's health

Why overindulging in the exclamation mark is bad for your writing's health

For my recent 50th birthday my wife gave me (at my request) an electronic drum kit. My daughters rolled their eyes. “Mid-life crisis” they said loudly, without having to say anything at all. (There was general acknowledgement that alternative mid-life crisis choices could have been far worse.)

Anyway, to come to the point. As I work my way through a couple of drumming books and numerous YouTube clips, there’s one message that comes through time and time again. It’s that good drumming isn’t about lots of fancy stuff. It’s about keeping a good steady beat most of the time and stepping it up with a flourish once in a while. The art is less about complexity and more about timing – knowing precisely when to break out for maximum impact.

All of this came to mind when I was chatting to editor Heather Kelly the other day. Heather has years of editing experience and has always been an advocate for very sparse use of exclamation marks (or ‘exclamation points’ as they are called in the US). It is a very lucky exclamation mark indeed that survives Heather’s red pen.

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Quote me on this: using single and double quotation marks

Quote me on this: using single and double quotation marks

This is a small thing but being aware of it will help your writing appear more professional.

I’ve written in the past about the need to have a consistent writing style. Nothing shouts ‘amateur’ more than a mixture of American and British spellings on a website, the same word spelt in different ways or, worse still, a variable treatment of the way you spell your own company’s name. (It does happen.)

A common area for written content to become unkempt is in the use of quotation marks to mark speech and to emphasise words. I see this most often in blog posts. So let’s go to school on that.

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Write and publish your book in a year – Step 7: Copyedit

Write and publish your book in a year – Step 7: Copyedit

By the time you’ve drafted your book, rewritten it once or twice and then given it a good polish, it would seem reasonable to think that you are just about done with it. And you are … sort of.

The good news is that once your manuscript has reached this point you are getting very close to the end. However, there is a very important step to undertake: the copyedit. This means going over of your text with a fine-toothed comb to correct ‘typos’ – like spelling mistakes and grammatical errors – and to ensure consistency of presentation.

Without exception I recommend that this task is given to a professional editor who has the skills, knowledge and experience, including an incredible eye for detail, needed for the job. Don’t give it to a well-meaning friend (unless they have that qualification) and never, ever try to copyedit your own work.

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Write and publish your book in a year – Step 5: Re-write

Write and publish your book in a year – Step 5: Re-write

Perhaps the best kept secret of the book-writing fraternity is that – contrary to the belief of many non-writers – the vast majority of finished books are not written in just one draft. Few authors, including the best of them, have a ‘gift of the gab’ that allows them to churn out golden words like the mint churns out golden coins. It doesn’t work like that.

What makes a ‘good start’ into a ‘good book’ is the re-writing. This is where you take your draft – your rough piece of clay – and shape it into something beautiful.

The task of re-writing is easier than you might think. It is so much simpler to work with a draft than it was to work with a blank page.

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What's your style? (Don't tell me you don't have one!)

Recently our family has been watching the new TV dramatisation of the 1979 novel Puberty Blues. The girls watch the girls and notice how little has changed; my wife and I watch the fashions and are very pleased that some things, namely shorts and hairstyles, have changed. The show reminds me of one of the nice ironies of school uniforms: that no matter how ‘uniform’ a school wants its pupils to look, the kids will always find a way to add a touch of their own style to their ‘look’.

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