Edited

Last night, T Campbell, my editor at Graphic Smash just sent me an email enumerating the corrections I need to apply on all the dialogue and text on my comics which was running since April 2001.

It was a pretty long list of corrections. After reading the problems, I went, "D'oh!" I couldn't believe some of the mistakes I made:

• Missing periods and commas.


• Redundant words like using "also" and "too" in the same sentence.


• Adding spaces where there shouldn't be, like "black smith" instead of just "blacksmith." (I know this one! D'oh!)


• Removing spaces where there should be, like "bestfriend" instead of "best friend."


• Mixed tenses. This gets me everytime.


• Applying emphasis on the wrong word like "SURE is hot" instead of "Sure is HOT."

For a moment, I felt offended when I received the email regarding the necessary corrections. Just for a moment, though. I felt the same way back in university whenever I submitted an article for the school paper and the editor corrected my work. I just couldn't help it.

But I understood that that's what editors do. And that the corrections they asked for were, well, correct. In the end, I'd rather they catch the mistakes early so that I will have the time to fix them even before the reader gets to see the pages. Also, I get to learn stuff that I never knew before. An example is that I didn't know it's supposed to be "sic 'em" and not "sick 'em."

I guess I'm saying that I do appreciate the head's up by the editor on the mistakes I've made.

Anyway, last night, I applied the corrections for Chapters one and two already. It took me some time to do because I made some minor changes to the pages I was correcting, too, such as changing the font and applying little cosmetic touch-ups on the old drawings. I'll be working on the rest of the chapters tonight when I get home.