Including dialogue in your memoir is a great way to bring those pages to life and add authenticity to your account. While the topic of memory and conversations in memoir is important to consider, this post focuses solely on the mechanics of punctuation in the dialogue, covering the basics to get you started. Where does the comma go? When do you use capital letters? What’s a dialogue tag? You’ll have the answer to these very questions by the end of this post! Certainly one t

When most people say something needs proofreading, they often mean editing. Proofreading is a very specific part of the publishing process: the final quality check. Editing, on the other hand, is the time for your writing to be improved, to raise queries and hone your particular style. In a recent poll on both LinkedIn and Instagram, I asked my followers to vote on this question: When you’re writing (or have written) your book and you know you need a professional to go th

The world of publishing can be completely overwhelming when you first enter it: from all the unique terms (‘what is copyediting?') to the different job titles used in the editorial business, it’s no wonder most first-time authors just don’t know where to start, or how long it takes to edit and self-publish a book. Knowing what’s involved in each stage of the editing process and how long each one takes means you can plan for them and allow enough time for each part of the edit

Spellcheck, Grammarly, and other editing programs can be incredibly useful. Professional copyeditors and proofreaders use at least one proofreading program when working with written content (often two or more). Certainly, it’s best to run your written content through one or more of these programs before you press ‘publish’, as they will catch errors that would otherwise have been missed. However, editors and proofreaders don’t rely on JUST those programs. We allow for the won