GooseGrade lets readers of a blog highlight mistakes of the copy-edit sort so that the blogger can fix them. It stops spammers by grading each copy-editor based on whether her suggested changes are accepted by the blogger. Here’s a C-NET article about it.

I’d try it at this blog, because I do occasionally (= constantly) make mistakes, but I’m on the road and can’t easily update my template…

[Tags: goosegrade copyedit crowdsourcing everything_is_miscellaneous ]

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I’m reading a pretty bad serial killer book by a well-known writer in the genre.

The first chapter describes a brutal killing by an unnamed gent.

The second chapter beings with a description of the hero doing something illustrative of her character. In this case, she’s jogging, pushing her physical limits, reminiscing about her time as an Olympic rower, yada yada.

The first words of that second chapter are our hero’s name.

I’m wondering how many other books begin exactly and precisely this way, right down to the hero’s name showing up as the very first words.

[Tags: cliches crowdsourcing bad_books serial_killers ]

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