Course curriculum

  • 1

    Why should you polish your book?

    • First impression

    • The biggest mistakes are the simplest ones

    • Pay attention to detail

    • Polishing checklist
  • 2

    Mistakes

    • Harry Potter

    • The bare minimum

    • Do the Work book

    • Some poor books

    • Proofread your back cover blurb
  • 3

    Track Changes

    • The Track Changes feature

    • Track changes in Pages (Mac)

    • Track Changes issue
  • 4

    Getting a proof copy

    • What is a proof copy?

    • Evaluate the content

    • Proof copy checklist

    • How to edit your proof copy (markings)
  • 5

    Book elements

    • Your author photo

    • Acknowledgements page

    • Headers and Footers

    • No headers/footers on chapter pages

    • Delete chapter numbers in headers

    • Headers should be simple

    • Chapter headings/titles

    • Use sans serif font, down style

    • The chapter title
  • 6

    Content

    • Consistency

    • Jargon/technical words

    • Introduce people/experts

    • Be clear: Use square brackets

    • Use references

    • If in doubt, take it out
  • 7

    Typography

    • Use bold-italics for emphasis

    • Don't use all caps

    • Use lowercase letters

    • Hanging sentences

    • Uppercase letters

    • Proofread for minor errors

    • 'Spaced out' sentences

    • Reduce wide spaces between words
  • 8

    Hyphenation

    • What is hyphenation?

    • Automatic hyphenation

    • Manual hyphenation

    • Adding hyphens yourself
  • 9

    Punctuation

    • Colon

    • Dashes

    • Commas and hyphens

    • Quotes + consistency

    • Quotation marks

    • En dash for quote source

    • Woodcuts

    • Ellipsis

    • Brackets (or parentheses)

    • Using slashes
  • 10

    Bullets

    • Use down style for bullets

    • Don't use commas or semi-colons

    • Long bullets can use punctuation

    • Align left

    • Consistency in writing bullets

    • 'Clever' bullet designs
  • 11

    Images

    • Image width

    • Image width: example
  • 12

    Page numbers

    • No page numbers in illustrations page

    • Page numbers should be the same font as the body text

    • Check the pagination

    • Add page numbers
  • 13

    Numbers

    • Write numbers consistently

    • Two or more numbers in a sentence: use figures

    • Always spell out numbers that begin a sentence

    • Convert currencies into dollars
  • 14

    Style sheet

    • Widows and orphans

    • Drop cap

    • Tables

    • Straight and curly quotes

    • Hanging indent

    • Double spaces
  • 15

    Index

    • How to create an index

    • Making edits to the index

    • Double entries

    • Use lowercase for the index