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A
Bookstore Visit
One
thing I enjoy doing on a Saturday afternoon is to peruse bookstores.
I look at cover design (front, back and spine), text layout and page
design, and some smaller, sometimes insignificant details that tell
me a lot about the publisher. Here are some of those smaller things
that scream at me. (Disclaimer again, these are only my opinions.)
The
word “forward” is a direction—not backward, but
forward. The word “foreword” means the words that are
“before” the other “words”. This is a huge
mistake, but a more subtle mistake is who writes the Foreword and
should it be called a Preface. A Preface is written by the author
whereas a Foreword is written by someone else.
A
very simple contraction “it’s” is a short form of
“it is” whereas “its” is a possessive belonging
to. Spellchecker will not catch this. Both are spelled correctly. You
just have to read and substitute “it is” to see if the
sentence is correct.
Two
words used as a single modifier must be hyphenated; i.e., Blue-eyed
girl; not a “blue” girl and not an “eyed” girl,
but a blue-eyed girl. Not a “two” house and not a
“story” house, but a two-story house. (It’s a simple
test.) This is true of dates and numbers as well; Twenty-fourth of July.
Check
your spelling and word usage; two words that sound the same, but
mean different things; We go forth on the fourth. A spell check will
not catch this.
Blank
pages don’t need page numbers.
Smart
quotes are the ones that have little tails. The other marks without
tails are indicators for inch and foot marks.
The
3 dots in a row is a character called an ellipsis. If you use the
dot, space, dot, space, dot, space and you come to the end of the
line, you run the risk of having one or more of the dots wrap around
to the next line.
As
to the proper order of the front matter; I encourage you to visit
your library or bookstore and see how others have done it. You do
have some freedom in this area. Get a feel for what looks correct and
pleasing to you.
How
is your front matter numbered? Most front matter is numbered with
Roman numerals if at all. Page 1 should be where chapter one
starts—not the Preface or Introduction.
The
correct spelling to protect your “rights” to the
“copy” is copyright. Even though you write a book and make
a copy to protect your rights.
(I’ll
cover more about filing a copyright another day.)
Disclaimer: Not
responsible for advice, ideas, suggestions and/or
programs. By
mentioning these programs or any other program, I’m in no way
endorsing these or any other programs for you and/or your project.
Any advice, ideas or suggestions and/or programs mentioned are
considered my opinion only and am considered not liable. Not
responsible for sales or lack of sales of your project.
Brian@SunriseBooks.com
SunrisePublishing@gmail.com |
