Ottomans, widows, and orphans

Okay, time for more cats! (Yes, it is relevant. Keep reading.)

 "Two Jolly Kittens at a Feast," published and printed by Th. Kelly, c. 1874.

This week, I edited. Five more chapters are done. Here are the highlights (or nitpicky details, however you look at it):

1) I checked on some vocabulary. Although my book is set in its own world, the historical time period that I'm freely adapting is the early 1800's, and I'd rather not use words or objects that weren't being used at that time. So off to the dictionary I went, to check on "jiff," "thingummy," and the history of stoves. They all passed the test. 

2) "Ottoman," however, had to go. It refers to the Ottoman Empire, which doesn't exist in my book. "Footstool" made a good replacement, as well as a good excuse for the kittens above. "Gothic" had to go for the same reason.

3) I also decided to capitalize the word "Season" when it referred to The Season, the social season when debutantes make their debut.

4) And there was the usual missing period/awkward phrasing/"Wait, didn't I change that in Chapter 1? This needs to match" stuff.

Coming up this week: editing the last four chapters, plus Widows and Orphans.

"Mother and Child" by Henry Essenhigh Corke,1912. Widow? Orphan? Who knows?

There are widows and orphans in my book, and I'm not talking about my characters (although a lot of them are one or the other). I'm talking about little words, all by themselves, looking stupid. Like a single word at the end of a paragraph, alone at the beginning of an otherwise empty line, or at the top of a turned page. 

This is a typography thing, and MS Word has a setting which will prevent it, but the problem is that it prevents too much as well as leaving some pages with as many as two fewer lines than others. Using that setting gets rid of single word orphans, but also prevents a paragraph from starting on the last line of a page. After some intense research on the subject, I find that modern published novels do that all the time. But they don't seem to have orphans. Apparently I'll have to fix it manually. [loud groans]

On a more fun side, I've learned more about iStockphoto including that I could use one of their images for my cover. I've found an image I like and have started playing with the downloadable comp. Exciting stuff! Now I just need to figure out what program to use for the cover layout. . . . 

(Thanks to Wikimedia Commons for the illustrations.)