Fresh eyes and formatting

I am currently buried under an enormous pile of proofreading at my paying job, but I thought I'd pop over here with a recent insight from the experience.

Changing page layout will make a text read differently. I am always, always finding new errors when I proofread digest-sized pages of material that I'd already proofread on letter-sized pages. This is partly because the eye tracks differently on shorter lines. I've also noticed that some spatially-related issues like paragraphing (specifically, overly long blocks of text) are much more apparent on smaller pages.

I highly recommend that you do your final manuscript proofreading in a size other than letter size to give yourself fresh eyes. It's pretty simple to do this. Go to the "page layout" menu in Word, select "paper size" and choose "A5"--which is roughly digest size. When you're ready to print, open the print menu, go to the "pages per sheet" drop down menu in the bottom right, and select "2 pages."

You'll be surprised how different your manuscript looks--and how many errors slipped past you when you always saw pages in the same size draft after draft.

What other tricks do you have to give yourself a fresh perspective?

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And then...derailment at Conjunction Junction

Dear Editor-on-call,

Why doesn't MS Word like the word "then" after a comma?
For example: I juggled a fish and fire batons, then fell off the tightrope.

Sincerely,
Then Pecked
a.k.a. Stephanie Thornton


Dear Pecked,

Word flags this because you're asking "then" to function in a way that's ungrammatical. "Then" is not a coordinating conjunction, that is, a linking word in the FANBOYS family: "for," "and," "nor," "but," "or," "yet," "so." Word has been programmed to want the coordinating conjunction "and" inserted between the comma and "then" to make the sentence grammatically correct.

Your sentence should read like this:
I juggled a fish and fire batons, and then fell off the tightrope.

(Side note: "Then" functions like a conjunction only in "If..., then..." constructions like this:
If I juggle fire batons, then I will fall off the tightrope.)

What is "then"?
"Then" is usually labeled as a type of adverb. Notice that you could feasibly move "then" around in your sentence and it would still make sense:

I juggled a fish and fire batons, and then fell off the tightrope.
I juggled a fish and fire batons, and fell off the tightrope then.
I juggled a fish and fire batons, and fell, then, off the tightrope.

You can't attempt the same trick with the "and." That mobility is a signal that "then" is functioning as a modifier, in this case clarifying when the subject fell.

What about my style?
Here's the rub--you might feel that the addition of "and" to your sentence feels clunky and wrecks your fiction style. You might argue that the comma is functioning in place of the "and," or that the "and" is understood and can be omitted, like the "you" in commands like "Come here!" Perhaps your character voice is deliberately ungrammatical.

If any of these lines of reasoning apply, and you're sick and tired of Word nagging you to add conjunctions you don't want, you can customize your grammar check function. Here's a very helpful tutorial: Customize the Word grammar checker to match your style.

For more details on the types of conjunctions and how they function, click HERE.

What else does Word's grammar checker flag that puzzles you? How might you customize your grammar checker?

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