electricland

thassalia has a list up of things in a book that turn her off. I found it interesting because it intersects with mine at so few points, and yet I totally see where she's coming from (most of the time -- I'm still finding the second point a tad impenetrable). Most of the time I'm a fairly uncritical reader, so much so that in my more paranoid moments I wonder if I just have no taste whatever and will read anything that comes my way. (In my less paranoid moments I figure I'm just good at telling beforehand what I'm not going to like, and avoiding it.)

I do have things that will yank me out of the story and, in some cases, make me stop reading, though. ( Read more... )

1. Thou shalt not randomly capitalize words.
2. Thou shalt not use italics or bolding for emphasis, unless thou canst give thy copy editor a really good reason why.
3. Thou shalt not use clip art. Nay, not even though thy text useth an orchestra metaphor and thy clip art library hath an orchestra image.
4. Thou shalt not pile sub-sub-heading upon sub-heading unto the sixth heading level and beyond.
5. Thou shalt pay close attention to the rules of parallelism and balance.
6. Thou shalt not use the phrase "as well as" as a synonym for "and."
7. Thou shalt use the serial comma.
8. Thou shalt not introduce obscure vocabulary into the text without a proper explanation.
9. Thou shalt pick a font and a colour and stick to it, not because thy copy editor cannot deal easily with this, but because it pisseth her off.

And this shall be the word of the copy editor.

Anyone got any more?