I got my edited manuscript back today and discussed it with my editing team. They wanted to make sure I was comfortable with how the program worked and that I would understand the comments that were made.
My major grammar flaws? I used "that" 1180 times in an 87K word manuscript. I kid you not. I just had Word count them for me. "That" is one of the most over-used words in the English language, and a good bit of the time, it's completely unnecessary. If the sentence can be understood without it, take it out!
I also have an addiction to ellipses, which my readers may have noticed, and I tend to have long, compound sentences where several smaller sentences might be better.
My edited manuscript looks something like this:
That's (hehehe) one of the words I search for when I'm finished writing. I can usually delete about half of them or reword the sentence so it's not needed. "Just" is another one of my overused words as well. #knowyourflaws
ReplyDeleteDoing a search for it is an excellent idea, ooza! Thanks for the tip!
ReplyDeleteThat's just enough of that!
ReplyDeletelol
Have I mentioned (that) I really love a tough editor?
xoox
I managed to pare it down to 598 "thats" on the first pass through the manuscript. I'm staring the second run-through tomorrow, and I'm curious to see how many more I can eliminate.
Delete