writing
Printers for Self-publishing The publishing world has experienced an explosion of new books, many of them from indie authors. According to Bowker more than 725,000 self-published works were registered in 2015. That should give you an idea of the number of books being published by indies. Most of those people will need printers for self-publishing […]
Compound Word List Compound words stymie people all the time. And I don’t mean just regular people whose profession is not writing. I know of many writers who struggle with when to use one word and when to use two, or when to hyphenate. This list of compound words should help. This is not a […]
Dialogue Tags What Are Dialogue Tags and When Is It Best to Use Them? People, meaning writers, seem to mess up dialogue tags a whole lot. In an attempt to sound “writerly” or make it appear as if they are experience authors, they use ridiculous dialogue tags when they shouldn’t. What do I mean? The […]
Capitalizing Dialogue You’ve already learned about dialogue tags—I hope. Now learn how capitalizing dialogue is easy. Read on to find out how to capitalize dialogue—when to do it and when not to. Capitalizing Dialogue Capitalizing dialogue is one of the areas that makes authors stumble, especially new authors. Don’t let it. It’s not that difficult. […]
Are Pre Words Redundant? Pre is a prefix that means before. It’s fairly easy to understand and everyone I know of uses pre in one way or another. But are pre words redundant? preorder preboard preview prerecord pre-announce pre-arrange These are but a few of the pre words. There are many more. The problem I have with […]
Absolutely Is Absolutely Wrong It’s a well-known fact that absolutely is absolutely wrong. Well, for some people it is. And what makes it worse, is that people often use it as an intensifier for another absolute. I wrote about absolutes before. You can read about them here. Even the dictionaries have succumbed to popular and […]
The Best Mystery Book What makes the best mystery book? Ask ten people and you’ll likely get some overlap, but I’d be willing to bet you’d get at least 7 different opinions. Some might say it’s the dialogue that keeps them turning pages; others would swear it’s the character development; while a few may proclaim […]
Am I Grateful or Thankful I’ve had several people write to me about whether to use grateful or thankful, wondering when to use each word. My typical response of verifying my thoughts with a good dictionary and then presenting those people with answers didn’t work, mostly because the dictionaries seemed as confused as those people […]
How Other Languages Affect Ours If you’ve ever wondered how other languages affect ours—wonder no more. All you have to do is look at a calendar, or think about it when you wonder “Where do the months of the year names come from?” Did you ever wonder where we got the names for the months […]
Using Vellum and Pronoun to Sell More Books All authors are continually on the lookout for ways to sell more books. The bad news is that it’s damn difficult. The good news is that there are clever and innovative people looking for new ways to make it easier to sell more books. I’m not referring […]
Mike Landis
Giacomo Giammatteo
Mona Curington
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