A US Copy Editor's Perspective: Reference and Style Guides

Here in the States, if you are writing fiction and nonfiction alike for readers here, then The Chicago Manual of Style, Sixteenth Edition (16CMS), is the preferred grammar and reference guide, while Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition (Web11), is the preferred US spelling reference.

However, if you are publishing to newspapers, the Associated Press Stylebook (AP) is preferred for that medium—not to be confused with the APA style used for the American Psychological Association. There is also the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, which is self-explanatory, and the Christian Writer's Manual of Style based on these particular subject matters and intended audiences. Just naming these specialized alternatives shows you the pool of reference materials you have to choose from.

So pick one. Use it. Refer to it. Study it. Confirm, and defend, your style choices made.

If your home base is not America, then your country of residence has its own particular guides. Or even if you are within the United States but want one edition of your book specifically targeting your readers in Britain, then accommodate that readership by embracing the rules of that land. Hence for England, I believe the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) seems to be the spelling reference book while the companion New Oxford Style Manual appears to be the UK's grammar guide.

Best wishes all!

Denise Barker, author + blogger + copy editor

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Unless It Moves the Human Heart: The Craft and Art of Writing by Roger Rosenblatt

I went to my local library two Wednesdays ago to get a replacement library card. And picked up six books while I was there (five nonfiction  about the craft of writing and one J. D. Robb novel).

So of course many deadlines from within and without have surfaced to keep me from reading them before the two-week return date.

Still, I have managed a workable pace.

The first (and shortest at 155 pages) of them was the book mentioned in this post title. Rosenblatt has a wonderful sense of humor. He teaches how learning to write essays, short stories and poems helps us to write novels as well as enhancing each of the aforementioned written forms.

Out of my four double-sided college-ruled pages of notes, here are some highlights:

• Eventually, they will discover that their writing validates their lives (p. 42).
• Subject matter determines voice (p. 58).
• We write to change the world (p. 58).
• Your ending lies within your beginning (p. 61).
• You're Virgil, not Dante. It's their adventure (p. 115).
• [Authors are] observers of the world (p. 129).
• ...an evolutionary tending on the part of the species to be useful (per Lewis Thomas) (pp. 148, 149).

I recommend this book for authors new or established.

Read something fun or enlightening or both today!

Denise Barker, author + blogger + copy editor

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"Theory of Mind" - Reading Fiction Improves Our Human Interactions

Just read a great post by author Annie Murphy Paul to The Opinion Pages of The New York Times Sunday Review.  Read it here:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/opinion/sunday/the-neuroscience-of-your-brain-on-fiction.html?pagewanted=2&_r=2.

As you have probably heard before, the mind cannot distinguish between a dream and reality.  Thus explaining how repeated mental affirmations and mind movies can influence our real life.

Just like enacting with your child the conversation where s/he turns down the drug dealer, or the ride from a drunk friend, or to have unprotected sex, reading fiction accomplishes the same.  It is mental rehearsals for real-life occurrences.

The couple studies referred to in this NYT article detail findings from MRI studies.  One:  fiction narratives can prepare our readers for real life.  Two:  the use of our different senses lights up different portions of our brains, even to the extent that a perceived arm movement lights up a separate part of our brain from our leg movements.  Pretty cool, huh?

Smells light up a specific brain area, whereas "chair" or "key" did not.

Cliched phrases caused no brain reaction.

The sense of touch brought activity to another section of our wonderful mind.  Metaphors using our senses are pleasing to our brains.  Hence use more descriptive terms, like "leathery" instead of "strong." or "velvet" instead of "pleasing."

All things we have been reminded of in many a writing class or book, right?

Reading fiction gets us into the heads of others so that we learn about their thoughts and feelings, making us more empathetic, and labeled "theory of mind" which phrase I totally love and will now be using all the time forever--ha!  Akin to a simulator teaching a pilot to fly a plane before he ever enters a real working cockpit.

Love this . . . the merging of science and emotions.