WMO Meeting Minutes: March 2019

Here are the March WMO meeting notes and forward-looking information. WMO meets at 1 p.m. on the third Saturday of each month in the backroom of http://greekkouzina.com/ in Pittsboro. Come early for lunch, literary gossip, and then the meeting. Send comments, updates, or questions to Rick Bylina. Al Manning opened the meeting by welcoming guests and noting upcoming events. Dwayne Wells proudly showed his new book “Backstage at ‘The Lost Colony’”

March’s feature presentation was “Developing your own Style Sheet and Standardizing Your Punctuation Practices” by Judith Stanton. Novelist, poet, and scholar, Judith has also worked as a technical editor and an acquiring editor for an E-press. She loves talking about style, usage, grammar, and punctuation. Her example author Style Sheet for Wendy Lindstorm is below. (www.wendylindstrom.com)  Her message: make your own style sheet appropriate to your material and limit those mistakes later. Here are the links to sentence punctuation and hyphens.

Judith Stanton handout for Writers Morning Out 20190316

Wendy’s Style Sheet—updated 20190315

What is a style sheet, and why do I want one? 

A style sheet will help you whether you are planning to traditionally publish or self-publish. If traditional, your new agent and editor will be not only relieved but impressed that you are so organized and professional in your approach to your work. Whether your prose or poetry is contemporary, historical, futuristic, paranormal or wildly experimental, each subgenre has its own insider lingo. For many of the terms here, usage is in flux. I made an editorial decision to standardize these words in the most modern way, throughout her 8 novels.

These preferred spellings and usages are based on online and print copies of Merriam Webster and others, including the British OED and Cambridge dictionary and Free Dictionary on line. I made Merriam Webster (MW below) my default authority. I am checking each of these words in every book and adding new words as they crop up. This will help tremendously to ensure consistency as I edit Wendy’s last two novels.

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USAGE/SPELLING

double time (as a noun) BUT double-time (as a verb)

Drug Store, drug store but drug-store owner

dry, drier, driest (as relates to moisture) BUT dryer (as in clothes dryer or blow dryer)

farther (used for distance only) BUT further (used where you can substitute more or additionally)

goodbye (one word in MW—BUT MW notes good-bye as a variant)

Grandma/Grandmother/Grandfather when addressing him or her by name

BUT lower case grandma/grandmother/grandfather when modified by my, your or our

may (used for permission) BUT “might” (used when conditional)

melee (no accent marks in current American usage, this is a trend)

naive, naivete (no accent marks in current American usage, also a trend)

pastime BUT parttime—go figure…

wave (when waving a hand) BUT waive (to evade, forgo or relinquish)

ALWAYS HYPHENATED (and obviously rare!)

narrow-minded (always hyphenated)

empty-handed (always hyphenated)

COMMON PHRASE, NO HYPHENS, ALL SEPARATE WORDS

cast iron frying pan

chest of drawers

mill pond

saloon keeper, saloon owner

suit coat

ONE WORD, NEVER HYPHENATED

babytalk, babytalking

backpedal or backpedaled

backyard (becoming standard now)

bathwater, bathroom, bathtub

bedstand, bedside

boardinghouse

closefisted

cobblestone

collarbone

cookstove

fieldstone

firewood

heartsick, heartsore

nightclothes, nightrail, nightshirt, nightstand

peephole

schoolboy, schoolgirl, schoolhouse, schoolmarm, schoolroom, schoolteacher and schoolyard BUT school board and school day

showroom

snowball, snowbank, snowfall, snowflakes

stepmother

suppertime

watercloset

windowpane

woodbin, woodpile, woodshed, woodshop, woodworking

workbench

Snarly and shifting hyphenations. Phrases like eye to eye, face to face, man to man, and side by side are seriously confusing!

Rule: they are hyphenated if used as an adjective before a noun but not hyphenated if standalone.

Examples:

            They had a serious man-to-man talk. BUT…

            They talked man to man.

            WHEW! 

April’s feature presentation is “YOU”. Bring your or a favorite poem or prose piece for an OPEN MIC. 5-6 minutes in length, including your intro, reading, and follow-up. It is, after all, Poetry Month.


May’s feature presentation is “So You Want To Self-Publish Your Book And You Don’t Know Squat” by Rick Bylina. An umbrella presentation on how to get started with copious references to additional resources. A Chatham County author, Rick has self-published seven books and has a website that needs a serious update.