Publishing Ebooks on Smashwords

Most of my readers know I’m a big fan of ebooks. I read on a Kindle, but I believe in making my books and my clients’ books available for a variety of ebook devices. The easiest way to accomplish this is to publish on Smashwords, a platform that allows anyone to publish their work as an ebook for free. Currently I have eight titles available on the Smashwords website and in its Premium Catalog.

• Trapped by Love, a free novelette that has been downloaded more than 5000 times on Smashwords and has five 5-star reviews
• Dream or Destiny, a romantic mystery with a paranormal touch and a theme of domestic violence
• Stroke of Luck, a contemporary romance, five-star rated, featuring a disabled heroine
• Fern’s Fancies, a humorous contemporary romance with four 5-star reviews
• The Secrets of Fantastic Houseplants, an indoor plant care guide based on a small booklet I wrote for customers in my plant shop many years ago
• Finding the Information You Need: Research Tips for Your Family, Business, or Personal Pursuits, a short how-to guide to research, useful for writers as well as individuals and families
• Preserving Memories: How to Write a Family History, tips for writing a family history or memoir to share with family or to publish
• Creating Fictional Characters, my newest offering, based on a series on my blog—at least three of the posts rank among the top 10 in Google for the keywords “creating fictional characters” as well as among my most popular posts

All except Dream of Destiny and Stroke of Luck, which are published by a small press, are self-published and available only as ebooks through Smashwords. All my self-published ebooks sell for $1.99. In addition to my own books, my associate and I have published a dozen ebooks on Smashwords for clients, so I’ve been through the process enough to share a few words of advice.

The magic of Smashwords is the Meatgrinder, the system that takes a Word document and converts it to a variety of ebook formats for sale on Smashwords and other retailers across the Internet. Books in the Premium Catalog are distributed to Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo, Apple, Diesel, and Scrollmotion and will be distributed to Amazon when the two companies complete technical integration. While authors can upload ebooks directly to most of these stores, letting the Meatgrinder do the conversions and Smashwords do the distribution saves a lot of time and frustration.

Preparing a manuscript for Smashwords takes some time and occasionally causes some frustration, but when it does, the simple solution is to follow the Smashwords Style Guide. Mark Coker, Smashwords’ founder, has spelled out in detail exactly how to prepare your Word document (be sure to use .doc, not .docx) to make the AutoVetter (the technology that Smashwords uses to check your manuscript for formatting errors) happy. In my experience, when a file has been rejected by the AutoVetter, the reason is failing to follow the Style Guide exactly.

You don’t have to learn from your own mistakes when it comes to Smashwords. I’ll share my mistakes with you so you can learn from them. The following tips suggest things to do and not do—for details see the Style Guide.

• Do remove all formatting—even the hidden formatting you don’t know is there. Mark explains how to find and remove the formatting and how to normalize your text. When the Style Guide says to remove all formatting, believe it. Don’t think you can get by using that fancy font that you love so much. Stick with Times New Roman, Garamond, or Arial.
• Don’t mix a lot of different styles. Start with everything in Normal paragraph style, then add the variations you need for headers and font attributes such as bold and italics, but keep styles to a minimum. Elaborate formatting doesn’t translate well to most ebook formats.
• Don’t use tabs, paragraph returns to create blank lines between paragraphs, tables, columns, or text boxes. Instead use paragraph indents and set the “space after” to 6 point in your Normal paragraph style; convert tables, columns, and text boxes to plain text.
• Don’t use Word’s AutoCorrect, AutoFormat, or automatic table of contents creator. All of these features are apt to put garbage into your ebook. You may think it takes a little longer to create the table of contents manually, but, believe me, if you corrupt your file with an automatic table of contents, you’ll wish you had spent a little extra time initially.
• One simple rule for success: Do follow the instructions in the Style Guide. Mark Coker has provided step-by-step instructions that work if you follow them exactly. And if you still get AutoVetter errors after following the instructions, fall back on the “nuclear option” and paste your text into Notepad to remove whatever hidden formatting or corruption is causing the problem. Then start over following the Style Guide instructions.

Anyone can publish anything on Smashwords. As an editor, I have one piece of advice that isn’t a “how-to” but a “what-to.” Ensure that your book is ready for publication before you start formatting. Hire a professional editor or find a knowledgeable friend who can edit your book for you. Smashwords will produce a lovely ebook in nearly a dozen formats. Make sure the quality of the content is commensurate with the quality of the formatting.

Guest Post from Randall Davidson: Ten Proofreading Tips You Cannot Afford to Ignore

No matter how skilled of a writer you are, it is easy to submit work that is filled with errors. Even the best writers often miss the mark when it comes to proofreading. However, correcting errors in your work can give you the edge over the competition, making the following 10 proofreading tips of the utmost importance:

1. Use fresh eyes. Proofreading after a break from writing can help you see your work with fresh eyes and catch things that need to be fixed. Try proofreading all the work completed in one day the next morning. If time is of the essence, read something else before returning to your own composition.
2. Know your weaknesses. Most writers have errors that frequently pop up in their work. Keep a list of the common errors that you are prone to and check specifically for those items when proofreading.
3. Watch for little things. Small words that are misspelled or misused are commonly missed when proofreading. For example, keep a close eye on words like “it” and “is.”
4. Know the style. Different publications and editors adhere to different style guides. Decide which style you prefer and adjust your writing to meet those guidelines. AP style, for example, may support different punctuation and grammar preferences than the Chicago Manual of Style.
5. Vocalize your work. Read your piece out loud to yourself. Hearing your writing vocalized can help you access different areas of your brain than writing and reading, making it easier to pick up on the mistakes.
6. Find a friend. A fresh set of eyes is often one of the best ways to ensure error-free writing. Have someone read the work and point out the errors that they notice. A new reader may also be able to offer new proofreading tips.
7. Split the tasks. There are numerous types of errors that can be present in your writing. Focus separately on each type of mistake. Use one read-through to look for spelling issues and a separate proofreading session for things like grammar and style mistakes.
8. Change it up. Reading the text in a way that is not intended can make errors more obvious. For example, read your work from bottom to top or from right to left. This separates each word from the larger context and makes it easier to spot errors.
9. Watch the lighting. Subtle nuances can impact your success at finding and correcting errors. For example, fluorescent lights make it harder to see small mistakes in your work. It is better to proofread under natural lighting.
10. Check the obvious. Don’t assume that you are infallible to mistakes in any particular area. Overconfidence can hurt your finished product. Double-check headings and boilerplate text, and regularly review grammar rules that you are unsure about.

Using these proofreading tips can improve your writing and help you accomplish your goals as an author.

About the author: Randall Davidson is a cofounder of ProofreadingServices.Us, a proofreading service that offers book proofreading. Randall enjoys discussing proofreading and editing tips and best practices with other writers.

Are You an Editing Geek or a Word Nerd?

A while back someone sent me an email suggesting I share a blog post with my readers: Word Nerds Rejoice: Top 25 Blogs For Editing Geeks. I reviewed the list and even subscribed to several of the blogs. Some of the listed blogs deal in editing minutiae, but there are several funny ones as well.

I love words, and I love editing words to make the stories or advice or information a pleasure to read. One editor described me as “the pickiest person I know!” I am a fanatic about misspelled or misused words, awkward and convoluted verbiage, and grammar errors that interfere with readers’ enjoyment or understanding. However, I don’t believe in being a slave to rules. Looking over this list of editing blogs made me think of a post I wrote in November 2006. Since most of you weren’t reading my blog back then (actually, I don’t think anyone was reading my blog then!), I decided to share it again.

Rules or Artistic License?

I’ve been following a discussion on a writers e-mail list. Must writers follow all the rules of grammar, spelling, and punctuation, or do the rules stifle the writer’s creativity?

Some writers consider themselves artists who can’t be restricted by rules, while others consider themselves craftsmen bound by conventions.

I fall in the middle—as noted in a previous post, a publisher has called me ”the pickiest person she knows.” As an editor, I have to know and follow grammar rules or I wouldn’t have any customers. On the other hand, my writing style is informal and simple, and I usually don’t worry about all the rules that may be used in formal writing. For example, I don’t mind ending a sentence with preposition. Often it sounds more natural and understandable to do so.

In my view, there are several critical elements to good writing:

• The reader must understand it. Using the right word is essential. Using it’s when you mean its or using their or they’re when you mean there can confuse your meaning. Punctuation to show when sentences start and end is critical. Writers must follow some rules to ensure that their readers know what the writer is saying.
• The writing must be consistent. Some style guides call for serial commas (the comma before “and” in a series of three or more: bell, book, and candle). Other style guides say to leave out the last comma if the meaning is clear (bell, book and candle). If you’re writing an academic paper or a newspaper article, you need to follow the appropriate style guide. But if you’re writing a blog entry or an article for your Web site, you can take your choice of using or not serial commas. But whichever you choose, do it throughout the document. Writing “bell, book, and candle” in the first paragraph and “boys, girls and parents” in the second paragraph won’t work.
• The style of the writing must be appropriate to the subject and the situation. I’ve been editing an academic paper for a doctoral student—that paper is more formal and uses more “big” words than I use in my blog posts. An academic paper should demonstrate that the student has the vocabulary and the formal writing skill appropriate to the level of education. Depending on the purpose of the blog, posts should generally convey the message in a way that is easy and enjoyable for the reader.
• Dialogue should reflect the education and personality of the character speaking. An uneducated laborer shouldn’t sound like a college professor. But even if dialogue contains improper grammar, it should be punctuated correctly so it is easy for the reader to understand what is being said. And if a character speaks in a dialect, just enough of the dialectal spelling should be used to convey the impression without making it difficult for the reader to decipher what the character is saying.

Understanding the rules and knowing when you can break them is one of the hallmarks of a good writer.

Of course, since even good writers (and editors) are human, sometimes we all break the rules without intending to. Most editors say we can find everyone’s errors but our own. So if you see me breaking the rules … maybe I did it on purpose, and maybe I just goofed!

Would You Perform Surgery on Yourself?

Someone left a comment on one my posts about freelance editing rates basically saying he didn’t need to know about editing rates because he would never pay anyone for editing—he does his own editing.

Of course, everyone should self-edit his or her own work. I’ve written several articles on self-editing, including Ten Tips for Self-Editing, Editing: Turning Dreck into Prose, and a seven-part series on editing that is focused on editing your own work.

If it’s not critically important that your work reflect a level of excellence, editing yourself is fine. I edit my own casual writing, including blog posts. No one needs to hire an editor to edit an email—unless the email is important to closing a sale or resolving a problem for an angry client or preventing adverse consequences in a critical situation.

Self-editing alone is not enough when it is important that your work be the very best it can be. For books or important articles, I use an outside editor. Even though I am a professional editor myself (and a very good one, if I say so myself!), I don’t catch my own mistakes as effectively as I catch the errors of others.

There are several reasons most of us find it difficult to be the sole editor on our own work:

• As writers, we know what we meant, and we tend to read what we meant, not what we actually wrote. I’m notorious for leaving out the words “no” and “not,” saying exactly the opposite of what I mean. When I read my own work, though, I tend to read the words that aren’t there—because I know they’re supposed to be there.
• None of us knows everything, so we will miss errors that we don’t know are errors. Perhaps we have a wrong understanding of what a word means or how it should be used, or maybe we’re confused on when to use an ellipsis and when to use an em dash.
• We read from the perspective of someone who is an expert in the subject matter, not from the point of view of our target audience, who may not be familiar with jargon we use or who may not understand what we write because they lack background knowledge.
• The way we express ourselves makes perfect sense to us, but sometimes what we’re saying is not so clear to others. Our sentence structure may be awkward or our word usage confusing to others, but we will never recognize those problems.

A professional editor can give you a different perspective that can make the difference between a mediocre article and a great one. Even asking someone else who isn’t a professional editor to read and give you feedback is better than trusting your own editing.

There’s a saying among editors, “I can catch everyone’s mistakes but my own.” Editing yourself on a major work is like being your own doctor when you need surgery.
photo credit: Sutherland85.

Writer’s Worth Week

Lori Widmer over at Words on the Page is celebrating Writer’s Worth Week.

I encourage you to visit Lori’s blog and follow her blog tour this week to help writers recognize their own worth.

Guest Post from Mariana Ashley: Freelancer Etiquette When It Comes to Criticism

Like it or not, criticism is a part of the freelancing profession. Every freelance writer will come across someone who is not happy with their work at least once during the span of their career, though knowing that it is inevitable does not make the situation any easier to stomach. This is why all freelancers should have an idea of how to properly handle criticism, whether it is given from an anonymous reader or from a client.

Knowing the fundamentals of freelancer etiquette when it comes to criticism can make the entire episode much easier to manage, and it can also showcase to others including possible future clients that the freelancer is mature and respectful, and therefore someone worth working with.

Do not take criticism too personally.

It is easy to see why criticism can be so hurtful, as many freelance writers exert a tremendous amount of effort into putting together well-researched and well-written pieces. However, keep in mind to not take any criticism too personally, even if you do feel attached to the piece you have written. After all, when you work with clients such as individuals or publications, you are essentially writing a piece for them and not solely for yourself. This means that the client does have a right to look over your work and offer their opinion on it, whether it is a positive one or not. Likewise, whenever you publish anything, there is bound to be someone who does not like it due to the sheer number of differences between readers. Do not become too caught up in what some people have to say about your work and let it get under your skin.

Vent your frustrations privately.

When you do feel frustrated by criticism, release your frustrations privately. Talk about it with your close friends and family, but never attack your client or air your grievances to the public. After all, a future client could be watching or reading what you have to say, so you want to present yourself as someone who is professional, not bitter. If you behave unprofessionally online or through another public forum, you risk losing future project opportunities.

If you do address your critics, do so in a calm and collected manner.

There is nothing wrong with reaching out to your critics. In fact, it could even be a great learning experience if they have notes on what they think could have improved your writing. Just make sure that if you do send a message to your critics to do so politely and calmly. It may even be a good idea to wait for a day before responding to allow yourself sufficient time to detach emotionally from the criticism. Remain professional, and address your concerns in a rational manner without resorting to personal attacks or foul language. Perhaps you feel that a client unjustly mistreated your piece, or that a reader missed the entire point of one of your articles, but you should still take the higher ground. Chances are that if you approach a critic respectfully, you will receive a respectful response in return. Even if you do not receive a respectful response, you will have the advantage of remaining professional while the critic is cast in a negative light for reacting poorly.

Do not draw unnecessary attention to pointless criticism or blatant disrespect.

Hopefully, no freelancer will ever have to work for a client who is insulting, but if you do find yourself in that situation, do not add fuel to the fire. Respectfully thank the client for their time, retract the article if you need to, and disengage yourself from that individual or publication. If you feel that your case was particularly mistreated, it could be a good idea to report the critic’s behavior to the publication’s human resources department so that they may handle the situation. On the other hand, if you notice a particularly unfounded and disrespectful insult from a reader in your e-mail inbox or on a website, simply ignore it. You do not need to draw any more attention to that individual, as he or she has nothing of value to offer and is only interested in making you aggravated.

It is undoubtedly difficult to deal with criticism, but if you focus only on what is being said and not how it is being said, you could gain valuable insight into what makes your writing work and what holds it back. In addition, it is imperative to remain professional no matter what and to ignore those who just want to get a few personal jabs at you. This way, your readers and future clients will know that you handle criticism and praise respectfully and admirably, making you a better candidate for future freelance writing projects.

By-line:

Mariana Ashley is a freelance writer who particularly enjoys writing about online college. She loves receiving reader feedback, which can be directed to mariana.ashley031 @gmail.com.

Other posts you might enjoy:
Every “No” Is Just One Step Closer to a “Yes”
Rejected? You’re in Good Company
Rejection: Keep Looking for the Right Address
Rejection: Your baby is ugly!
What I Learned from Rejection

Guest Post at Getting It Write for You

Lisa Vella at Getting It Write for You has been publishing a series on publishing options. Today I have contributed a guest post: Subsidy Publishing? Self-Publishing? It’s All Beginning to Blur.

If you are a writer wanting to better understand your publishing options, visit Lisa’s blog and read the entire series. They are all linked from my post.

In my Self-Publishing Primer, I differentiate between subsidy publishing and self-publishing, but recently the distinctions between the two are beginning to blur. Find out in the latest in my guest post.

Why Give a Sample Edit?

In a comment on a post about freelance rates, Chad asked, “Can you recommend an alternative to providing samples to prospective clients? Would a resume be a good substitute?”

In my reply to Chad’s comment, I explained why I think a sample edit is good for both the freelance editor and the potential client for several reasons.

Clarification added 3/1/11: Note that the sentence above says freelance editor. I thought it was obvious that I was talking about a professional editor providing a sample edit of a few pages of the client’s manuscript. Somehow, one commenter thought I was advocating sending the original draft and edits of a writing project to the client. That is not what I wrote, and that it not something I would recommend.

First, it’s how I determine how much to charge. All editing jobs are not created equal. Some writers are much better than others, and some writers require extensive editing. I never charge by the page or the word because the good writer overpays and the bad writer underpays (and I’m the one who doesn’t get the money I should!). I ask the prospective client to send me an excerpt from the manuscript for me to edit. The time I spend on the sample guides me in determining the time I estimate for the entire project. My quote includes the proviso that the price is based on the assumption that the entire manuscript is self-edited to the same degree as the sample. The fee will be adjusted if the excerpt submitted for the sample edit has been polished, but the rest of the manuscript submitted for editing is very rough.

Editing a sample also helps me to feel comfortable that I’m a good fit to the manuscript. I don’t edit erotica or stories with extreme levels of violence, and I simply am not familiar enough with the conventions of some genres to do them justice. I also have to find the story intriguing—it would be an injustice to edit something that I don’t completely believe in. There’s no better way to determine that I will enjoy editing the manuscript than actually doing it.

The sample also gives me an understanding of what the client wants—writers have different expectations. Some just want an editor to tell them their words are golden. It’s much better to spend a few minutes doing a sample and find out they don’t like your work than to take on the job and have an unhappy client.

Years ago, I was listed as a freelance editor on the website of the one of the “self-publishing” companies. Since then the companies all started offering in-house editing, but in the beginning, this company provided a list of approved editors rather than offering the service in-house. I never did any work for authors publishing with that company because they all wanted to do it their way. Now, having control over the finished product is one of the great benefits of self-publishing, but a serious writer will take advice from other professionals. I don’t expect clients to accept every suggestion I make, but I expect them to consider my ideas and use some, even most, of them. If the client is going to tell you it’s her story and she wants a spy being recruited in public at a random meeting in a bar and it doesn’t matter if that’s realistic or not because it’s fiction … I don’t want to edit that book.

A free sample also gives the prospective client a level of comfort that you can handle the job and that you will be easy to work with, always a good start to a working relationship. I am currently talking with a writer from another part of the world. He told me that he had quotes from two other editors that were considerably less than the price I quoted. However, I was the only editor who gave him a sample edit, and what he saw gave him confidence that the work would be done to his satisfaction. Although the other editors would charge less, he wasn’t confident that he would be happy with their work. In fact, they may do an excellent job, but he feels that he is taking a risk because he hasn’t seen anything to show him what he would get.

I always give a fair amount of detail on my suggestions in the sample edit, as you can see in the screen shot above of a few lines of an actual sample edit (blurred for privacy). Whether the writer agrees with my recommendations or not, he will understand my rationale. The writer can also tell me he doesn’t want me to change something—for example, I may point out that Chicago Manual of Style (usually used for books) calls for serial commas. However, if the writer says he prefers not to use serial commas, I will respect that and edit for no serial commas.

Most of us have common errors that we make repeatedly. Newer writers frequently haven’t discovered their common errors—possibly because they don’t even know what they are doing is wrong. For example, some of the writers I work with don’t know how to punctuate and paragraph dialogue, so every bit of dialogue in the manuscript has to be corrected. I point this out in the sample edit and often suggest that the writer make those corrections before submitting the manuscript to me for editing. That will cut down my editing time and their cost, and it will also help the writer hone his skill. Even if the writer ultimately chooses another editor, I hope that he learns something from the sample edit.

Of course, a sample edit isn’t appropriate for a very small project. But for a book-length manuscript from a first-time client, I insist on doing a sample edit—for my benefit and the benefit of the prospective client.

Using Style Sheets

In the first and second posts in this series, I talked about style guides. Today we’ll discuss style sheets. A comment from author Dawn Colclasure gave me the idea for the post.

You might call style sheets mini style guides that you prepare yourself, often as supplement to a style guide. There are always things, such as industry jargon and names, that apply to a specific manuscript that aren’t covered in the style guide you’re using. In some cases, there may be a reason for deviating from the style guide, such as using a spelling that is common in the industry even though it’s different from your selected style guide.

The book I’m currently editing is a resource for veterans and soldiers with PTSD. In different sources, the full name of the disease is spelled Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, post traumatic stress disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder–and about a dozen more variations. I told the authors they had to decide which one they preferred, and I would ensure it was spelled that way throughout the book.  They chose the spelling used in the American Psychiatric Association’s manual of psychiatric disorders. That spelling was one of many items included in the style sheet–for my use during editing and for the use of the proofreader I had to review the manuscript.

A style sheet can be as simple or as complex as needed. In its most basic form, it should include the preferred style guide and dictionary, then list additions and deviations, such as the example excerpted below.

Style Guide: Chicago Manual of Style
Dictionary: Merriam-Webster Online
Treatment of specific words and phrases:
amygdalae
flight-or-fight response and flight-fight-freeze (hyphenated)
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (per DSM-IV)

You can include formatting instructions in the style sheet. For example, in the PTSD book, the co-authors wanted their words set apart in different fonts so it would be easy for readers to recognize whether the psychotherapist or the chaplain/psychotherapist was talking. Of course, we identified the author at the beginning of the section, but since some sections extended over several pages, the different fonts provide a visual cue.

In What are style guides and why do I need them?, I talked about more extensive information guides. An information guide for a novel might include details about characters and setting as well as the spelling of names and hyphenation of words. When you write a book over months or even years, it’s easy to forget what you wrote 200 pages ago.

An information guide is helpful to you as the writer, and it’s also important for your editor to ensure consistency throughout the manuscript. Without a style sheet, the editor won’t know if your character’s name is Susanne or Suzanne or if she lives in Harveytown or Harvey Town.

Style sheets make it easier for everyone involved in producing a book, article, or other document, and the resulting consistency makes it easier for your reader to get your message without getting confused or bogged down in discrepancies.

Do you use style sheets? What advice would you give about using style sheets effectively?

   photo credit: Jo Naylor

Changing Styles

We all know styles change. What’s fashionable today—in clothing fashion, home decor, and even writing—is passe tomorrow.

Most of us would agree that some of the great classics of all time probably wouldn’t be published today because the writing style is too different from what publishers like now.

But did you know that you might have to change the way you write, depending on the preferred style of the publication? If you write for a newspaper, for example, you will probably be required to use AP (Associated Press) style for your article or column.

Students writing academic papers will use specific style guides assigned by their school. The APA Publication Manual from the American Psychological Association is used in the social and behavior sciences, along with education. The Modern Language Association Handbook is often required for papers in humanities classes.

And in the book publishing industry, the style guide used most often is the Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS), published by the University of Chicago Press. As you might imagine, this is the style I generally use since most of my work is with books.

You’ll find more about style guides in What are style guides and why do I need them?

A few months ago, the 16th Edition of the CMOS was released simultaneously in hardcover and as an online subscription. Since then, I find myself referring to the online manual far more often than I did before to make sure I’m following the current style.

The purpose of using a style guide is to ensure consistency in written documents. Do you use a serial comma (the comma before the last item in a series)? If you using AP Style, you don’t use the serial comma unless the meaning is unclear without it (red, white and blue). If you’re using Chicago style or most of the academic styles, you always use the serial comma (red, white, and blue).

Consistency is threatened when the style guidelines change. For example, Chicago used to spell Web site as two words, with Web capitalized. In the 16th Edition, the preferred spelling is website (one word, all lowercase). However, web page is two words, all lowercase. The abbreviation for United States is now US, not U.S.

Maintaining consistency in  a book or similar publication is easy when styles changes. Just stick with a single edition, preferably the 16th Edition unless the project was already far advanced when the latest edition came out.

But what about my blog and website? Posts and pages written in the past use 15th Edition style. I’m gradually making the transition to the 16th Edition as I discover changes. So you’ll find Web site in older posts, and website in more recent posts. It’s not that I can’t remember which to use—it’s that the rules have changed.

Do you follow a specific style in your blog? If so, what style do you use and why did you choose it? How do you handle evolving style rules?

David Bowles recently wrote about a related topic: the changing meanings of words. He asked the question if the dialogue in his historical fiction should use words that are no longer used or that have different meanings today than when his characters lived in the eighteenth century. You may want to drop by his post and give him your opinion.

Added 2/11/11: Based on comments received on this post, I am now planning two additional posts—one on style sheets and one on whether to use a style guide for blog posts. On the last topic, read Matt Keegan’s How to Maintain a Consistent Writing Voice.

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