Editting Terms

Here's a bunch of terms used in editting to help you all out a bit--for those who don't know what some of the terms mean, that is. Something for everyone to gander at, including myself. I'll get into the grammar terms later, one by one. Hopefully


All cap (caps; full caps) - Text that's in CAPITALS
Ampersand - Name for the & character
At sign - Name for the @ character

Bold - Name for boldface text
Braces - Name for the { } characters
Brackets - Name for the < > characters
Bullet - Heavy dot used as an ornament or to being a vertical list

Close paren. - Name for the ) character
Curly Quotes (smart quotes) - Name for the " " characters

Ellipsis - Name for the . . . character
Em dash - Name for the — character
En dash - Half an em dash, name for the – character
End-line hyphen - Hyphen that falls off the end of the line of a text

Hard hyphen - Used to join certain compound words (e.g., blue-eyed)

Intercap (midcap) - Name for the capital letters that appear in the middle of a company or product name (e.g., WordPerfect)

Open paren. - Name for the ( character

Serial comma - Comma preceding and or or
Slash (solidus; slant; virgule) - Name for the / character
Small caps - Capital letters that are shorter than regular caps (e.g., A.M., P.M.)
Soft hyphen - A hyphen that appears at the end of a line to indicate the word continues on the next line
Strikeout - Name for striking out a word or words

Typo - Short for typographical error