My 1 star reviews

[dadioflex]

Immanant/imminent is one spelling mistake I came across recently when reading someone's work. They're both good words, though one is obviously more obscure than the other, so a spell-checker rides right over them.

[John Carroll]

Originally Posted by dadioflex

Immanant/imminent is one spelling mistake I came across recently when reading someone's work. They're both good words, though one is obviously more obscure than the other, so a spell-checker rides right over them.

Interesting. I'll add them to the list, though I don't think I've used them yet.

This is my list of notes up to this point. It doesn't include everything I fix by any means, rather it's aimed at some of my worst habits and fixing some of the things that are easy to miss. I've now added your suggestion.

Editing notes

Extra words to be removed:

1. ‘that’
2. ‘of’
3. ‘of them’
4. ‘them’
5. ‘even’
6. ‘any’
7. ‘just’
8. ‘for’


Mistakes made with word spellings, to be checked with ctrl-f

1. ‘awhile’ vs. ‘a while’ vs. ‘for a while’ - Rule: ‘awhile’ has a silent ‘for’ in front of it.
2. ‘upon’ vs. ‘on’ - synonomous, but using 'upon' way too often.

Homonyms and other similar words.

2. week and weak, make sure each is correct.
3. waste and waist, make sure each is correct.
4. poor vs. pour
5.‘their’ ‘there’ ‘they’re’
6. ‘will’ ‘we’ll’ ‘well’
7. ‘through’ ‘throughout’ ‘thought’ ‘though’
8. ‘imminent’ ‘immanent’

Other issues:

1. Use of ‘she’ and ‘he’ multiple times in a sentence. One can usually be removed.
Example: “She doesn’t even trust Sir Danth and she doesn’t like me either.”
Remove the second ‘she’: “She doesn’t even trust Sir Danth and doesn’t like me either.”

2. Use of ‘that’, ‘which’ or ‘who’.

3. Use of words that make sentences vague, such as “He appeared to be tall. He’s either tall or not, be definite. ‘appear’, ‘seem’, ‘sort of’, ‘kind of’, ‘possibly’, ‘rather’ are all vague uses.

4. Using ‘as’ instead of because.

5. Options for said: told, stated, claimed, asked, answered, replied, responded, informed, advised, enlightened, pouted

6. Using ‘though’ instead of ‘although.

[GeoffC]

Originally Posted by John Carroll

Yeah. That's my favorite too. "Emo Bunny" has performed better than any. Even with that rating, it's been rated 41 times on B&N for a average of 4 stars. On Apple it's been rated 22 times for 4 1/2 stars. It's really weird though, so people either hate or love it.

Why surprised/weird; all authors have their fans and detractors.

[dadioflex]

Oh, if we're getting serious about this, then removal of as many "be" words as possible is transformational.

ie: is, am, are, was, were, be, being, been and a few others that have the effect of rendering text passive.

I read a slushpile story that had "82" uses of the word "was" in it, which really starts to beat on your brain like water torture. He was this and he was that...

[John Carroll]

Originally Posted by GeoffC

Why surprised/weird; all authors have their fans and detractors.

No, I mean the story is weird. As is most of my writing . . . *grin*

[GeoffC]

Originally Posted by John Carroll

No, I mean the story is weird. As is most of my writing . . . *grin*

Ah !


Oh ....


oops ....

[Nada y Nadie]

Some people have trouble with effect and affect. Using the wrong one of these words - then/than/them - is easy to miss during proofreading. Don't know if you ever do alot instead of a lot, but a lot of people do. Maybe check it's vs. its. I guess you could compile quite a list of things to check if you wanted to (vs. too and two)...