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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When writing an academic essay, if I was to reference Microsoft or Facebook, should I write Microsoft™, Microsoft® or just Microsoft? What is the difference?
I come across words like rectitude, like laudatory, like indigent, and being an experienced reader with a strong grasp on my native language, I know what they mean. They're words that I know. But ...
"Reaching an end to his path, Eric found a locked door, the lock was a combination of 4 numbers, and above the doorknob a script explaining the lock : 'finishing four circles, a lost day is found' ...
I am writing a report on our project in school, and we were discussing what would be the best place for the page numbers. It seems obvious, at least to us, that the page numbers should be right-ali...
I'm looking for a software that helps me develop and organize the characters for my novel. What I want: something like a filesystem, with a file for each character it should have or allow me to ...
What symbols used after difficult words in a text to refer a reader to a glossary for a definition? I'm really looking for the most commonly used / accepted symbols and I am wondering whether cer...
I'm writing a book (travelogue) about Japan in English, detailing my walk across the country a few years ago. My target audience is English speaking countries, and I'm trying to write in American E...
I have been a habitual writer since my childhood but recently planned to move on to the next level and use my skills professionally. From last 7-8 months I am trying for small internships (paid /no...
Summary: I'm looking for a way for reviewers to comment collaboratively as close to "inline" as possible on a large HTML project. The problem in detail I work on a team that documents a large pro...
I was recently editing a novel destined to be published primarily in e-book form, and made a list of pre-press instructions, to be followed when the final text is agreed upon. Some of these instruc...
Can I make a low-key reference to a Marvel movie in my book without anyone noticing? And if they do notice, can I get sued?
I am writing a novel on Microsoft Word 2016. Does it give a correct word count that I can tell to my publisher?
Someone asked me to write screenplay and not the script, hence I want to clarify.
My question is similar to one asked previously. I'm writing non-fiction, topics on the intersection between science and religion--quantum mechanics, cosmology, evolution. I've published ebooks o...
I am writing a novel, and in one part, a boy falls off the building. I feel like it would be very gory. Most people said to write in great detail, but then some people say to write what I know. I f...
I translated a book, and was thinking on writing a foreword to it. Not so much introducing the book (as there is a editor foreword from the original that does that), but as an introduction to the p...
I was wondering if there is a term for the non-linear narrative technique used by the TV series Arrow. That is, flashbacks from the past feed into the story line going on in the present. I'm think...
I always hear people say, "Write in the active voice," so I decided to eliminate passive voice from my writing (as much as possible). It made my writing stronger, but I wonder: Does writing too muc...
I'm at the very beginning of a blog post for Worldbuilding Stack Exchange's blog, Universe Factory, written in conjunction with an answer to a question on Worldbuilding. It's going to about astrono...
What's the difference between the two? I've seen both in the same book. For example in the Bone Clocks by David Mitchell: Space breaks: He’s clever, I realize. First he makes you grateful. Rig...
I have a character that, by design, quickly jumps between emotions. To put it into human terms, I have pictured scenes where he will, literally, within the span of a sentence, go from hysterically ...
For the occasional use of inner voice, Italics are usually recommended. However I have a protagonist who is speaking with himself all the time, and Italics use quickly becomes tiring and distract...
I've written a poem exploring my conflicting emotions of anger and the joy that the anger keeps supressing. Is it appropriate to publish a literary work based on such intense negative emotions?
I'm writing (or at least trying to write) a novel, and using standard manuscript format: 12-point Courier, double-spaced, 1-inch margins, etc. I'm using Google Docs, which automatically converts s...
Is Writer's Market a viable place for a freelance editor to find possible clients? As I understand it, the book is geared towards writers finding agents/publishers, but I've never even paged throug...
They are the good in lyrics and poems, but what about prose? An example from my own writing: I fall to the ceramic floor, blood and bile dripping from my lips, my stomach full but my muscles...
Is there an official or de facto standard for how to write a movie summarization for an encyclopedia, magazine, newspaper or other kind of media? For instance, are there widespread templates, reco...
I am working on a fictional book which would be similar to that of Winnie-the-Pooh in terms of its format and ability to be read, but I want there to be philosophical meaning to what goes on in the...
In my novel, the protagonist starts out as a runaway slave, and I want to point out to the reader that she is avoiding those who are in charge of slaves who all wear a uniform involving a blue shir...
I'm trying to describe a character in a story and I'm having issues describing her appearance. She is a black woman with specific (vitiligo like) markings and I don't know how to write that. I do...
I'm in 11th grade in a New Zealand high school, and for my end of year exam I'm planning on using a quote from the book I have chosen which contains the word "f*ckin". This is a quote which is impo...
I have a section which uses an onomatopoeia but I can write it in 2 ways The onomatopoeia before source action is implied: "you do realize that she's the personification of the tome. your proc...
In writing in general, there are discovery writers and outliners, planners vs. pantsers. I am very curious to know how screenwriters create screenplays. Do writers start with a basic plot and th...
Based on this outline, I'm not sure how to to best re-tell this story. In particular, I'm not sure if I should tell the story as a first person "narrator," or in the third person? What are the adva...
I write a regular column (of about 800 words) for an industry publication that specialises in management matters. The columns deal with workplace matters and give insights on operational matters su...
I'm writing a master thesis for my master in economics. Given that the thesis is not expected to be too much formal (the master itslef is very practical and little theoretical) I want to use good ...
My book editor says that we need to professionally reflow the text with Adobe InDesign software (not just in a word processor). She asks $350 for the job, which seems like too much money. Do I ass...
I know that Australian English has many spellings in common with British English, but (as with Canadian English) the two are not identical. Are there standard, authoritative dictionaries for Austra...
I'm having trouble with keeping "units" on the same line, or together. For example, g C m-2 (grams of carbon per square meter) often gets broken between the "-" and "2". I realize it's possible to ...
I am working on a scene (one of many) and I am having trouble with voice (in all of them). I find first person handy in some situations and third in others. Below are two excerpts from the same s...
I'm keen in writing stories of my imagination. However, my Grammar is not up to the mark. Even I use very simple words and not complicated words like the ones who use in Novels. I read many great b...
So how did this animal suicide thing start? Ironically, it began with my own death wish. But why? I had perfect health, friends and family who cared about me, plus I had just been admitted i...
I'm writing a fiction book and noticed that my paragraphs seemed excessively long, most having three or more sentences in them. The Online Writing Lab's page "On Paragraphs" is helpful, but as a n...
I'm sure you don't remember me. Asked quiet a few questions a year ago. Never came back for round 2. Was working on your advices. Writing. I'm nearing the climax of my novel. There's a scene. Sor...
When writing an analytical synopsis for a fiction book, is it common to bring in a developmental editor? I am new at writing. As I understand it, the developmental editor could help more in this s...
I've read this question: What exactly is an editor? And that anwers the 'what an editor is' So, my question would rather be, How do you become an editor? Which skills must an editor have? Is it d...
What should a cover letter for a short story contain? Do I need to tell what is it about, try to "sell" it? Should I write about myself?
I have a Scrivener formatting question. Using Scrivener (on Mac), I'm trying to put a poem into a page of a novel. Scrivener keeps capitalizing the first word of the next line even though the previ...
Some people write books about serious things and real things in life. If a book is written like that, how can you tell if it is a novel or a documentary [non-fiction]? .
Examples: To make sure we had plenty of time to ask questions, we took the first bus to Mrs. Mann's house. By the time we arrived it was 11:00 a.m. Seven hours before the planet apocalypse....
