Grammar Girl: How to Write Numbers & Rescue Cats

The reason people get confused about how to write numbers is that different style guides make different recommendations, so it’s easy to hear different rules from different people.

In general, the Chicago Manual of Style wants you to write out the words for more numbers than other style guides. For example, the Associated Press and the British newspaper the Guardian both recommend that their writers use the words for numbers less than 10 and the numeral for anything bigger:  Today, firefighters rescued nine cats from trees. Yesterday, firefighters rescued 11 cats from trees.

But the Chicago Manual of Style recommends recommends using the words for all whole numbers 100 and lower, and also for big round numbers such as one thousand and twenty thousand:  Yesterday, local firefighters rescued eleven cats from trees. Last year in the US, firefighters rescued 728 cats from trees.

There are a huge number of exceptions to these rules. If questions about numbers come up a lot for you, you really need to get a style guide and look it up. The Chicago Manual of Style has a whole chapter just on numbers.

These and more useful grammar tips can be found on http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/

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Hyper Smash

 

5 Steps to Edit Your Book Before Publication

Many first-time authors offer a poor product when they fail to let their books professionally edit. Editing and quality management is not raising profits, so almost all book printers and e-book distributors will print exactly what they are given—mistakes and all – same with electronic books.

Authors have to make sure their work is copyright protected, has the proper bar coding and ISBN registration. Failure to do this result in a work that looks unprofessional, is easily plagiarized, and whose distribution and sales numbers are limited by its amateurish presentation.

Content Editor & Copy Editor
No online bookseller, such as Amazon, Apple or Sony are editing any of the files that are downloaded at their sites – it is the authors responsibility as the independent self-publisher to hire a professional content editor (content, character, consistency), a copy editor (formatting, grammar, typos), a book lay-outer and for e-books a professional formatter.

Poor editing is the #1 complaint from readers and literature customers of self-published titles.
No matter, how many editors worked on your book, let single chapters read by friends or family – and then read it once more before submitting as e-book – or if you let your book print on paper and receive the proofs, read it once more.

Tools to use BEFORE submitting to your content and copy editor:

• The Chicago Manual of Style – online
  https://press-booksweb.uchicago.edu/CMS/FreeTrial.aspx
• Grammarly, an automated proofreader
  http://www.grammarly.com
• Crash course in grammar basics
  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003LBS7OQ/ref=rdr_kindle_ext_tmb

Using these three online tools and having your book proofed by a) content editor and b) copy editor will give you some peace of mind. And if you ask some people that are not involved in the book, they might even find more bugs that have been overseen.

Read the entire book once more. While you are reading, you’ll be checking for typos and inconsistencies. Books last a very long time, and so do the typographical and other errors that sneak into them. Don’t forget to carefully proofread the copy on the back cover. 

 

Snippets from booknotselling.blogspot.com

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