Do You REALLY Make Your Titles All Caps?

Thought I'd give you a sneak peek at an editing tip that will appear in a future edition of my SharingwithWriters newsletter, if only because I am in such a snit. Keep reading for what caused my little tizzy fit but first, here's the tip:

We often read on the Web that it is oh, so smart to put our titles all in caps when we send out media releases and other marketing or promotion.  After all, the story goes, caps will make that title really stand out. Yep. Editors will immediately identify author or publicist as a novice. Gatekeepers (from agents to feature editors) will immediately be aware that they’ll have to go through and put all the titles in italics, lower case—rather than simply copy and paste. Copy and paste makes their lives easy. All caps give them a headache. If you’re using all caps, you have no idea how many editors have ditched your e-mail by hitting the delete key, or sent your snail mail to the circular file.

So, my tizzy fit? A soon-to-be-published review on my review blog, The New Book Review, required me make fifteen edits--upper case to lower.  I try not shout at my readers.  So what did I  do? Some I just retyped. Others, I removed the reference to the title altogether.  It was just easier that way!
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Carolyn Howard-Johnson edits, consults. and speaks on issues of publishing. Find her The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success (How To Do It Frugally series of book for writers). Learn more about her other authors' aids at www.howtodoitfrugally.com/writers_books.htm , where writers will find lists and other helps including Great Little Last-Minute Editing Tips on the Resources for Writers page. She blogs on all things publishing (not just editing!) at her Sharing with Writers blog. She tweets writers' resources at www.twitter.com/frugalbookpromo . Please tweet this post to your followers. We all need a little help with editing. (-:

Backwards Editing: What a Concept!

This is the tip I offered in a mini-column (for lack of a better word) for a listserve I belong to. It's Word_Mage. You may subscribe by sending an e-mail to Word_Mage-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.


This is Book Expo America (BEA) week so I'm keeping this short. It is one of those tips some of you may know and use or one of those tips some of you may know and not use 'cause you get in a hurry! In any case, it's an important reminder.

For the most accurate self-edit possible end the process I outline in The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success with a backwards edit. Start at the back of the book and read each sentence aloud. Yes. Backwards. Doing that keeps each sentence unconnected to other sentences and to other ideas so your expectations of what should be on the page are minimalized. That way your brain won't fill in corrections when they aren't there. This works as well for query letters and media releases as it does for full manuscripts.

By the way, The Frugal Editor has a couple of chapters on writing the kind of query letter that won't make an agent or other gatekeeper roll her eyes. Many of the helps I list in those chapters come straight from the mouths of 20 of the nation's top agents (and, yes, the agents are identified, complete with URLs). And they're all agents who cared enough to help me help you. Not a bad start for finding a compatible agent!

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson edits and consults on issues of publishing. Find her The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success on Amazon. Learn more about her other authors' aids at www.howtodoitfrugally.com.