[catsittingstill]

I have spent the last couple of days looking over a book manuscript, checking it for internal inconsistencies, and inconsistencies with previous books in the series.

Kindle wouldn't load the rtf file of the manuscript :-( but the free e-mail conversion was fast and easy :-)

Checking for internal inconsistencies was way easier than it would have been with a paper book. I read it once through from beginning to end, just as I would have done in paper, and then went through it a second time, more carefully. When a character, or the narrative text, made a claim (person A was killed in such and such battle, for example) I did a text search and quickly verified the claim, or saw that it was false, and if it was false I could find out what character first made the claim. When I found an inconsistency I made a marginal note. It got to where I was actually more reluctant to look things up in the previous books (all paper, so I had to page through, looking for particular scenes so I could verify who said what to whom) than in the manuscript I was working with on the Kindle.

When I was done, the "My Notes and Marks" option for the manuscript showed me all the inconsistencies I'd noted. When I realized it would be good to organize them by chapter, I did a search on "Chapter" and went through highlighting the chapter titles. "My Notes and Marks" then included all the chapter titles I'd highlighted plus all the marginal notes I'd made, in the order they appeared in the manuscript.

Then I just wrote them up, chapter by chapter, to send to the author.

I don't know of anything other than a Kindle that would have let me do this. I think the Kindle could be a really useful tool for textual research.