Common editing quirks

• .”/not “. – in other words, the quotation mark comes AFTER the period or comma.
• % -- unless you are writing an annual report or financial document, where the
numbers need to stand out, spell out as either percent or per cent, but be
consistent.
• Mom, my mom – Mom is a name, like Mary; if you are talking about “my mom or
your mom or their mom,” it is lower case
• Twenty-four – the second word is lower case regardless of how weird it looks in a
title
• Language consistency – pick a language, either U.S. English, Canadian English,
or Oxford English and be consistent throughout the text; don’t spell humor in one
chapter and humour in another
• Tense consistency – keep aware of tenses – it’s common to mix them up
• Spacing after period (one) – while they may still be teaching it in school, in
publishing, it is only ONE space after punctuation. The two spaces went out the
way of the typewriter.
• Consistency in spelling – Hilary/Hillary – sometimes we don’t write a name the
same way
• Explanations if terms are vague (i.e. Cold War) – don’t assume the reader knows
something, such as Cold War (particularly younger readers); there are many
desk encyclopedias or Wikipedia with simple explanations to help you pen a
small blurb to describe
• Redundancy – if you see the same word, like report, three for four times in a
paragraph or sentence, find a replacement word or rewrite the paragraph so you
don’t have to keep using that word
• Numbering consistency – if you’re spelling out numbers over 10, spell all of them;
all numbers under ten are usually spelled out
• Commas (serial comma) – red, white, and blue – not red, white and blue;
commas clarify meaning; for example, saying Joe’s father, mother, wife, and
brother means something different than Joe’s father, mother, wife and brother; is
it Joe’s brother or his wife’s brother?
• Punctuation – use a stylebook; when in doubt, look it up; commas in particular
can change the whole meaning of a sentence
• Abbreviations (spell out – don’t assume others know them) – never assume the
reader knows even what you may think is a common abbreviation; CPR in the
U.S. may mean something different than CPR in Canada; spell it out the first time
you use it with the (abbreviation) after, then you can continue using the
abbreviation and the reader should be able to identify the meaning