While I was proofreading my current projects Olexia Legends 1 and 2, I made a checklist of all
the little inconsistencies I found as I went along so that I would remember to check them in both
books. I thought this might be something we're sharing because there are just so many little
details to go over while you're proofreading. So today I’ll be sharing that list. [Music]
this list is by no means comprehensive these are just the things that I found inconsistencies with
in my own writing and I thought that you might like to see them with some examples. But first we
have to talk about what a style guide is, and why you need one. If you're going to have consistency
in your book, which is an absolute must, then you're going to need a document detailing all
the specifics that you have chosen for this book. These are going to be little things like
hyphenation, capitalization, and italics. This is especially important if you are writing a series
because these things are really easy to forget between one book and the next. So basically a
style guide is just a document that you make that details how you want things to look in your book.
each book and or series that you write is going to have different needs and also just different
preferences that you have for different books and there is a lot of leeway in how you choose
to present things to your readers, but it is really important to have consistency with things
like capitalization, italics, and punctuation throughout a book or series because these are
things that readers will definitely notice. So for my personal style guide I have broken it down into
six different sections and they are “formatting” , “hyphens” , “do not hyphenate” , “words and
phrases” , “punctuation” , and “capitalization”. Again these are just my books needs yours will
vary so my “formatting” section is just how I want special text formatted within my book,
for example one of my characters has psychic visions in Olexia Legends so I want all those
visions to be both in floating paragraphs and italics, while also being written in present
tense. And for things like signs or notes that are within the actual narration of the book,
I want to have those italicized. And when the characters read text out loud in the dialogue,
I put a single quote and courtesy space inside the double quotes. Again just my preferences
do whatever you like just be consistent. The “hyphenation” section is, as the name suggests,
things that I want hyphenated, but it's also things which I just personally frequently
forget to hyphenate. So things that I have in my hyphenation section are things like “next-door”
“mid-day” and “Ildre-” followed by a name. This is a special title of respect that is
used in my fantasy world. I also have a “do not hyphenate” section because I’m picky like that.
The “words and phrases” section is just a list of things that might have multiple spelling options
where I want to make sure I use consistency. These are things like “alright” “goodnight” and “toward”
I have a tendency to accidentally use the British versions of these words a lot in my writing
so I have to go back and fix all those before I start editing. “Punctuation” has my choices for
things like ellipses and em-dashes so you know if an ellipses or em-dash ends a sentence in
dialogue then the word after them is capitalized, ending the sentence. This is probably kind of a
controversial opinion out there but I just think it reads better. And the last section that I have
is “special capitalizations” which is both for my fantasy words and just normal words when and where
I choose to capitalize them. When I have this list here I just bold the letters and the actual phrase
that I want capitalized makes things easier. Okay so here is my checklist of things that I need to
check for my document. These are things that I frequently find inconsistent in my own writing
and that I make sure to check while proofreading. I won't include anything
that's specific to my style in this guide, but all I do for that is search for each instance of
the word or phrase in the book and go through my whole style guide and do that. So first is
“add all front and back matter” I forgot to proofread my front and back batter one time
and there was an error and I had to re-upload everything. Don’t make my mistakes kids. Next
is to “convert all quotes into smart quotes” this is both single and double. Next I check
for the number of cuss words that I use. I try to keep them minimal in my books as they are for
young adults so you know I just have to double, triple make sure that I don't have too many. next
is “add non-breaking spaces for nested quotes” I use a lot of nested quotes in my dialogue so it's
best for formatting if you use a non-breaking space if you, like myself, prefer the courtesy
space. Another controversial opinion, I know. Next is to correct the punctuation in my nested quotes.
this is probably the most complicated punctuation that I write, within, you know, quotes within
quotes, the punctuation gets a little crazy there, so I like to double check all of it
while I’m proofreading. I also want to make sure all “…” are converted into non-breaking ellipses,
again very important for formatting, especially with ebooks. then I want to check for double
spaces, they sneak in. also I want to check for capitalization of words from my style guide, so
again like I said I’ll go through my entire style guide and make sure everything is capitalized
correctly. I also want to check my capitalization on compass directions. Of course fantasy we use a
lot of “let's head east” or “they went southwest” so I gotta check all of those make sure they are
correctly capitalized. like I said I accidentally used the British version of a lot of words,
especially “towards” and “backwards” so I do want to manually make sure that I check a couple
of these things. Then I want to check all my special words and phrases for my formatting guide.
And lastly I want to check all capitalization of special words, names, and titles.
Okay so that's what I’ve got, that's kind of my running list of, um, capitalization and
errors to check. I do have a ton of individual words that I go through and check, like I said,
I didn't include any of these here most of them are just specific to me and my personal
“writing quirks” as we like to call them, so my personal version of this list is actually about
three times longer. But like I said this is just one that applies to more broad writing. What else
did I not include in this list that you searched for while you're proofreading? I’d be really
interested to know those. if you'd like to dive into the world of Olexia you can check out Age of
the Gods and The Legend of Mendi, which are both free short stories that I have available on my
website. I’ll link them down below. Alright that's all I got for you so thanks for watching. Bye!