General Q&A about the craft of professional writing, editing, and publishing. Questions about all types of writing are welcome -- fiction, technical documentation, scholarly articles, poetry, scriptwriting, blogs, and more.
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I am about to apply to a grad school, and I have prepare the SOP for it (think it like a cover letter to apply to a job). I know the rule: show what I've got, not tell how I think I'm cool. I've tr...
When I ask the Should I use hypophoras at the beginning of every paragraphs? question, Lauren Ipsum suggests me to organize things with headers while Kristina Adams advises me to avoid headers in o...
I am writing an an article to share knowledge, not novel. Usually, when you change the current topic, at the beginning of the new paragraph you would like to use some transition words such as Addit...
For context, I am a forty-something male from the Great Lakes region of the United States. I work full-time as something other than a writer. About 25 years ago in high school, I was an almost-st...
I have heard that I can use calibre to create a cloud with all my books, not just ones from a specific vendor. How would I do it?
The question If a book doesn't have DRM does that mean it is OK to give a copy to my friend to read? has answers implying that without permission there are legal and ethical hurdles in giving away ...
Some kindle models come with a text to speech software that has several optional settings. There is both male and female, as well as 3 speeds, which gives 6 different combinations. In theory, a l...
A recent answer here indicates Amazon has a pretty restrictive payment policy. So minor authors selling books in multiple countries could have hundreds of dollars due them that have not yet hit the...
I downloaded a .mobi file format book from Baen it opens fine on Calibre, and on my Kindle keyboard. When I try to open it on my Kindle Paperwhite I get this message Error An error occurred...
There are several different software products for collecting and formatting the electronic written word. Microsoft & Google, are two big names offering products, there are also many others. Lo...
I see some kindle books advertised on Amazon that say "text-to-speech: Enabled" what is this? How is it different from an audio book?
I was just sitting down to start shopping at Smashwords, and found this listing. A quick look on line seems to indicate this is some kind of world wide deal. What is "Read an Ebook Week"? Where...
Ebooks have been a boon to independent authors, providing a path to audiences, unmatched in the history of publishing. The field is rather new, and currently there is not even Wikipedia page Indep...
DRM (Digital rights management) is a somewhat controversial anti-piracy measure. There are strong arguments on both sides of the debate, this question is not about the should/shouldn't debate. It...
Beginner here. So, I have tons of ideas for a novel, and in fact I want to write one (even a series), but I'm struggling a lot in actually starting writing the story. I have ideas for characters an...
How can you write a book from the point of view of a character who is not the main character and introduce the main character later on, who you want the story to focus on? How do I do this in an or...
I wrote a short story here http://zecountess.deviantart.com/art/Mirrors-440990952 whose ending explains everything that is narrated before. The feedback I got from my readers is varied, and none o...
Most of my life I've used the MLA citation format when writing any sort of essays or research papers about difference topics. However recently I've been exploring different types of citation format...
I am in the final stages of writing a book and currently I am preparing the index. Are there any rules whether index entries should be listed in singular or plural? Currently I have Markov chains...
Does anyone know of any blog tools that incorporate a timeline? What I'm essentially wanting to do is write little short mini stories about my life, but on each blog entry I'd want a timeline to ap...
In a technical tutorial which fits better: In this tutorial you'll learn or In this tutorial you will learn or in general does it make no difference?
OK, I know I was warned, but what can I do? I had this question for a very long time. I have decided where to write (platform like computer or notepad), I am in the middle of deciding my way of wri...
In America at least, Haiku are commonly taught to students as poems having 5, 7, then 5 syllables, when in actuality, they have a structure of 5, 7, then 5 on. The NaHaiWriMo site explains what an ...
I recently noticed I use "after all" very often. But unlike other phrases, I never seem to find a way to replace it. Some examples: Like the books, they hadn't moved a single inch. Erin found t...
I'm (amateurly) writing the subtitles for an English TV show. I'll illustrate my question using a small example, but I'm hoping to receive answers as general as possible. One episode has a sentenc...
I have to confess that I find Strunk & White's "The Elements of Style" to be a very tedious read. Can anyone recommend an alternative title that covers similar ground?
I need to know how to make my writing more brief without maring its original meaning and message. I have been struggling with that for a while, and still cannot do that. It simply seems to me that ...
I'm interested in starting a pleasure project: a fantasy story, along the lines of a witch delivering a prophecy to a king about a dangerous and deceitful foe who will overthrow him, and the king e...
I have a problem where I often proof my own writing and I don't catch all the errors while I am reading through it. I often miss entire words out of sentences or find myself repeating words. I can ...
I have a problem with the similarity index of one of my works since the plagiarism detector "Ithenticate" identifies θ-continuous as continuous. In my university, all that matters is the similarity...
Background To be honest, I really didn't know how to title this question. Anyway, the background. I was sitting around in front of the plan for the second book of my trilogy. Woohoo! I finished th...
When documenting software API so others know how to access the various methods, what data structures are used etc, I like to document each bit in detail and also include, regardless of the coding l...
Even though discovery writing is about letting the story go without interference, you still don't want the characters to get killed in the first chapter. For this exists safety nets, people, objec...
So my fears are kind of taking over my enjoyment of writing my book because I feel I'm doing something wrong. In my story I stole ideas from other stories. I took the idea of Bioshock's infinite so...
I was asked to prepare an overview of an existing IT architechture and provide a document that consists of weaknesses analysis and suggestions on how each of the weak spots can be improved. How to...
I have enjoyed writing prose for years and have a few short stories penned. I would like to build up to a novel but believe I have identified a potential weakness in my storytelling. My style is g...
I've been struggling for a while with my CV and I need help on deciding which sections should I include in it? I lack the formatting skill, I remember studying in school how to prepare my CV - ther...
Many word processors are capable to tracking and displaying changes made to a document. Those changes are typically displayed in special markup supported by the editor. E.g. But when using a pla...
So in elementary school, I was told not to use Wikipedia too much because you can't trust what they write. So then for all the projects, I used the Canadian Encyclopedia, but then now, I really wou...
Software developers don't ever work in text editors, instead they use IDEs (integrated development environments) full of code assistance tools, etc. Why don't writers use similarly advanced writin...
My main character is up against the world, or, rather, the world and reality are up against her. A good story is in some ways defined by its villain. 1984 personifies its villain by adding a repr...
In programming, it's usually accepted that DRY code is better code in most situations. Does this principle also apply to documentation? I'm asking about the documentation output, not necessarily ...
Using git to track modifications to the project allows contributors to include comments with each commit. If the project's guidelines, and managers' control, keeps those comments limited to a forma...
Is anyone aware of a plugin for MS Word that allows me to keep my documents in a git repository (gitlab compatibility would be even better)? I'm aware that git diffs won't be very meaningful, merge...
I noted in this question: What is the best way to learn technical writing? ...that a rated method to learn how to write technical documents is to imbibe good examples. Can you recommend any exam...
Following up on my previous question, "How to make the villain's motives understandable if his logic is flawed?", how can I let the reader know that the lack of logic is on the character's side, in...
I wonder, what could be a good way to provide time measures in a fantasy universe. I don't mean the calendar which is covered in the question: Out of this world... Giving it time?, but measures lik...
I've not done collaborative writing before, but I've read several works, and sometimes the text strikes me as having a split personality: some parts were clearly written by one author, while others...
I have been gathering ideas for a novel. The basic idea is in place; the story combines two different eras but the same place. How do I get the little details about the place, the people, their lif...
In the context of a technical manual, I need to write instructions guiding users through several standard manipulations. When providing examples of these manipulations, I have written a short sente...
