Saturday, May 30, 2015

The Most Popular Word of 2014 was—



For the very first time, the most popular word of 2014 wasn’t a word at all. It was the heart emoji.


Global Language Monitor (GLM), a Texas-based language analysis firm, scoured blogs, Twitter, Facebook and 250,000 global news outlets to determine the year’s most popular words. And for the first time in fifteen years, they chose a non-word.
In terms of popularity, the heart emoji was followed by ‘hashtag’ and then ‘vape’ -- which was also named Oxford Dictionaries’ 2014 Word of the Year. The list was rounded out by ‘blood moon’, ‘nano’, ‘photobomb’, ‘caliphate’, ‘white privilege’, ‘bae’ and ‘bash tag.’

‘Ebola’ was the name that scored the most appearances.


Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.

Sunday, May 24, 2015

Q without U


Almost all Australians recognize the word, Qantas, one of very few words in the English language where it’s correct to have a Q without a following U. It’s the third oldest airline in the world founded in November 1920 as Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services, but The Flying Kangaroo, has been known as Qantas for a long time now.

13 April was National Scrabble Day, and in honor of all those people who have thrown their tiles across the room when they drew a Q and no U, Plugged In has provided a list of nine genuine scrabble approved words with a Q and no U. They even give you their scrabble scores!

Qi, Qat, Faqir, Qwerty, Qaid, Qadi, Sheqel, Qindar, and Qoph.

And here I’d always thought sheqel was spelled shekel. Sigh.

For their meanings, scrabble scores and more details see: https://au.games.yahoo.com/blogs/plugged-in/9-perfectly-legal--scrabble--words-that-use-q-but-not-u-195802589.html

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.


Tuesday, May 19, 2015

Why not end a sentence with a preposition?


How do you end sentences?
What do you use to end a sentence with?
Sentences? How should they end?

“Never use a preposition to end a sentence with.”
“This is just the kind of nonsense up with which I will not put.”

Here’s a video from “Ask the Editor” with the definitive answer about using prepositions at the end of sentences. It includes a fascinating peek back into history, reminding me why my high school made us study Latin for a year!
http://writerscircle.com/2015/03/straight-from-the-editors-mouth-the-verdict-on-ending-sentences-with-prepositions.html


Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.


Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Why Can’t Romance Novels Get Any Love?


The Smithsonian Magazine has published a long and thoughtful article on why romance fiction is ignored, and not studied seriously.

Kathleen Woodiwiss’s bodice ripper "The Flame and the Flower" was a stunning success way back in the early 1970s, yet scholars still deride the genre of romance with exactly the same arguments they used 250 years ago. And this is despite EL James and the Fifty Shades books being the fastest selling paperbacks of all time.

In 2007, Frantz Lyons started the International Association for the Study of Popular Romance along with Professor Eric Selinger, a scholar of American poetry who teaches popular romance at DePaul University in Chicago. The IASPR has hosted conferences worldwide and in 2010 launched a peer-reviewed journal, The Journal of Popular Romance Studies. Their hope is for a scholarship foundation at a PhD-hosting institution and a full-fledged graduate program.
It will be interesting to see what happens next.


Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.

Friday, May 8, 2015

The Romance Industry


Laurie Kahn spent four years making a documentary about the romance industry. She’s listed ten “surprising” things she’s learned about the romance industry during that time.

Some of them will be no surprise at all to romance authors. A few of them have even finally started to penetrate the heads of businessmen, telling them how they failed to recognize an opportunity and are now playing catch up to get a foot in the door.

One such piece of information is that romance novel sales total more than a billion dollars a year—as much as sci-fi, mystery, and fantasy combined. Even as recently as five years ago men were shaking their heads and saying romance was only read by frustrated uneducated elderly single women. Apparently, they were wrong.

Another point she makes is that the majority of romance authors help and support each other, teaching newbies skills, helping them climb the ladder and finish writing that book. It’s a community of people engaged in a love of books and reading.

Romance authors pioneer new technologies and methods. They were the first to use ebooks, the first to use social media, the first to build communities with their readers, and the first to embrace self-publishing.

Her final point is that romance writing isn’t easy. Some days it seems like every second person is going to write a book. Some have even started one. But the number who have actually completed the book, had it edited, had a professional cover made, had the polished book formatted and put up for sale, is a lot smaller.
Writers are multitalented, hardworking people.

For the full article go here: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/laurie-kahn/romance-novels_b_7109458.html


Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.

Sunday, May 3, 2015

The Oxford comma is officially dead, but





People refuse to let it go to a peaceful burial. The argument for and against continues to be waged.

http://mentalfloss.com/article/33637/best-shots-fired-oxford-comma-wars

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.