I recently heard someone say that if a business only provides a service, it doesn’t have any lasting impact. That one hit me hard. While not a secret, I don’t say this often: I’m terrified of ending up like Eleanor Rigby. I don’t expect to be in the history books (unless as a possible author… Continue Reading
I keep thinking about writing a blog on self-publishing, then I get a different idea. Today, my self-publishing research became sidetracked by the Book Editing Services page on the BookBaby website. BookBaby seems to be the Full-Service Self-Publishing company of choice these days. I’m sure there are others, but my searches, random readings, and the… Continue Reading
With plenty of variations on the theme, I see four general categories of authors who self-publish. They just want to publish something for their close friends and family. They have a story to tell, a message to share, that they hope will go beyond just their social media connections. Their book is a marketing piece… Continue Reading
This question used to drive me nuts. Most folks know that my “formal” training in putting words together is fairly minimal, so for a long time I didn’t know that there were different types of editors, let alone what they were called. Editing was just the process of making written text better – I didn’t… Continue Reading
As a ghost blogger, I frequently write about the 7 this and 5 that. Everyone, even people who don’t like numbers, seems to love numbers in blog headlines. The number tells the reader how much they will learn in that post. Well, I am not part of the “everyone.” Mostly because, as a ghost blogger,… Continue Reading
I believe that a person with a basic understanding of the language ought to be able to understand content published for the general population – even if they encounter a word they haven’t seen before. Obviously, text books, scientific articles, philosophical debates, and the such are likely to contain words that will send the reader… Continue Reading
This blog originally started as a guest blog for my friend Elizabeth Bachman; lately, however, I’ve been wanting to refer to the content, so I thought I’d spin it for myself. While I’d rather write a presentation than give one, I sit through them with some regularity. And I’ve sat through some really BAD presentations.… Continue Reading
In a blog that I don’t think I’ll publish, I discussed the importance of proper pronunciation. That rant focused on how commonly people drop Rs from words such as “library” and “February.” And while I do find that tendency annoying, the blog itself was just a little too pissy – even for me. That said,… Continue Reading
Last time, I talked about 2 of the 7 bogus grammar ‘errors’ you don’t need to worry about as explained by author Ben Yagoda. I was having a day of Latin grammar references that needed attention, so I skipped the so-called rules that I couldn’t directly connect to Latin. However, I’m so pleased that someone… Continue Reading
A recent Grammarly blog included a great sign that actually had very little to do with the blog itself. The sign reads, “What do you do when you realize that Latin grammar makes more sense than English grammar?” I’ve never actually studied Latin, so I don’t know for sure that it makes more sense grammatically,… Continue Reading