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Top Five Editorial Pet Peeves For

Non-fiction Books

Editors love writers. Without them, we would be unemployed. But there are some writing pitfalls that make us want to cry for our mommies. They’re like nails on a blackboard; like knuckles cracking in a quiet theater; like strangers who insist on calling you “cutie.” Here are my top five editorial pet peeves for non-fiction writers, and I hope that by printing them here, somewhere an editor will be spared a night of weeping over a keyboard.

5. Misspelling: Spell check is the 14th wonder of the world (somewhere between Caller ID and Velcro), so abuse it mercilessly. It keeps words like “tabel” from appearing in professional copy. It won’t catch “good” when you meant “God,” but it will pick up the more blatant errors. If you use a lot of jargon and the spell check is flipping you off, add the new words to your word processing program’s dictionary. And be sure to invest in a quality print dictionary, the kind you could kill someone with from 10 feet away. It’s worth it.

4. Pretentiousness: There’s nothing worse than a know-it-all, even if you really do know it all. Nobody wants to feel like he or she is being talked down to, especially the nice reader who plunked down $19.99 for your book. Choose the simpler sentence structure over the long, winding road, and choose appropriate vocabulary. There’s no need to say “facility” when “building” will work just as well. If you can’t judge your own writing, it’s best to have someone else look at it. If you’re not at the editing stage yet, ask a friend who can be counted on for brutal honesty.

3. Redundancy: It takes a lot of words to fill a book, but strive to fill it with ideas, not character spaces. If you’re overloading your manuscript with synonyms in an effort to make your writing clearer, stop. A writer who is using good examples and explaining things well can trust the reader to know what her words mean without flashing her abundant vocabulary. If you’re coming up short in your word count, the odds are that you haven’t explained an idea fully. If you’ve explained your idea as fully as you can, move on. Bring something else to the discussion.

2. False assumptions: This is the flip side of numbers three and four. Be careful that you don’t speak over your audience’s head. When you know a lot about your subject (and if you’re writing a non-fiction book you probably do), it’s easy to assume the audience knows as much or almost as much as you do. If you’re writing a text on advanced biochemistry, you probably don’t need to explain what a cell is, but be aware that not everyone reading your book will have a medical degree. You might have to backtrack and explain some concepts that seem elementary to you. Again, showing your work to someone else is the best option if you can’t judge this for yourself. Show your manuscript to someone from your intended audience, and if his eyes glaze over or he can’t explain what he just read, you need to do some prep work. The lesson here is to know your audience.

1. Do your research: Readers can smell an author who doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Don’t let that author be you. Don’t skimp on the background work that comes before you sit in front of your keyboard. Even if you never use a particular piece of information, it will inform other aspects of your work. No one wants a letter from an irate reader who happens to be an expert in the field (or who was at the event you’re describing and knows that the curtains were blue, not red). It will discredit you, your editor, your publisher, and your high school history teacher, who taught you better.

By Monica Haffner American Book Publishing Editor

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