Editing/style guide

Thanks to the people who've taken time to send encouragement and suggestions. I've heard from people I've known for over 50 years, pastors, relatives, friends from church, and folks from other states. It is humbling to know that you are on this journey with me. Thank you! 

 As I’ve written these two chapters, I’ve become increasingly aware of my need for help with my writing. The irony is that I have been a published writer for over 40 years and for a few of those years I made a good living as a writer. Here is a quick rundown of what I’ve written over the years

• co-author of two books (Windows Performance Secrets and Limit Your Greed),
• co-author of over 1,000 articles on technology and related subjects for a wide variety of magazines, blogs, and Websites,
• sole author of a handful of additional articles and blogs in technical publications and Websites, and
• author of more than 100 personal blogs.

The bulk of my writing was with a co-author, almost exclusively with my business partner, Mark Van Name. It is a real luxury knowing that there is another person who will make sure your words aren’t nonsense! We understood what the other person was writing about, could maintain either that person’s voice or our common voice, and were able to clean up any clarity or grammatical issues.

I am convinced that I need to get an editor, even if I do end up using a publisher. (More on using a publisher versus self-publishing in a future blog entry.) I need both a “technical” editor (for biblical references and their applications) and a copy editor. Ideally, that would be the same person, but that may well not be possible. If anyone knows of people who have those skills, please pass their contact info along to me. I am willing to pay for their work. I have some leads but would love to have some more.

I am toying with the idea of seeing what AI can do rather than using a human editor. One example of how AI might be able to do well is to check all the biblical references in the book. I plan to investigate Claude as well as what Gloo AI has to offer. Gloo AI purports to be faith-based. Having an AI that doesn’t have a problem with Christian concepts would be helpful. I get rather annoyed when Word tries to change “Adam’s curse” to “Adam’s course” or its refusal to consider “giving” as a noun rather than a verb. (It’s a gerund, Word. Cut me a break!)

I also need a style guide to keep me from being inconsistent in my writing style. A publisher will have their own style guide, but I think it is easier to convert from one style to another than to have to deal with a mishmash of styles. Here are some of the style issues I need to investigate and decide upon:

• Formal or base style guide (SBL vs. Chicago) – Scholarly theological writing tends to use SBL (Society of Biblical Literature), but this book will be aimed at a much more general audience. Someone confusingly SBL sits on top of Chicago, so I’d prefer to just use Chicago. I don’t know what Christian publishers prefer.
• You vs. we vs. one – It is easier to write using “you” as in “you need to read the Bible.” The downside is that it can sound like I’m talking down to the reader. Using “we” is more inclusive but can be awkward at times such as “we need to prepare for retirement” when I’m already retired. Using “one” sounds way too stilted. SBL does not allow first person.
• Tense of quotes (present vs. past, as in “Jesus says” or “Jesus said”) – I prefer past tense since it happened in the past, but most people seem to use present tense. Hopefully Chicago or SBL addresses this.
• Capitalization of pronouns referring to God, Jesus, or the Holy Spirit – I prefer “He” to “he” but that is not the current trend in Christian publishing.
• Avoid passive voice unless doing so is awkward vs. avoid at all costs – I prefer the former strategy.
• Footnotes vs. endnotes – I think endnotes make the text flow better, but it is more of a hassle for readers looking for more information.

As a bonus, finding an editor early would be a great help in deciding these and then enforcing the decisions. 

In the meantime, I'm working on the chapter about the biblical view of work. It is taking quite a bit of time on the research side of things. I'm planning to post it in whatever state it is in next week by Monday at noon. Hopefully, that will be decent enough to get useful feedback from you all!