guest post: Renata Hill

Today, we're pleased to have a guest post from one of Electric Spec's founding editors: Renata Baron Hill. Among Renata's many talents, she is an excellent editor. She shares one of her tricks with us...

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When I’m up at two in the morning, typing a promised post for a blog, or for that matter, two in the afternoon writing a query letter or, more likely, responding to a Facebook IM, sometimes I rush to click Publish or Send without reviewing my work. Say, what? Yes, it happens, particularly if I have not devoured my daily ham-and-cheese Lunchable.

Now, Ginger, a nifty FREE download from Ginger Software helps me out. Sure, it checks spelling, but among its coolest features is the homophone checker. I’ll give you a hint if you were sick that day in sixth-grade English: homophones are words that sound the same, but have different spellings and meanings. So, when I suggest to my online friend, “Let’s grab a bear after work,” Ginger understands the context and automatically corrects my sentence to, “Let’s grab a beer after work.” Now, my friend knows that I don’t want to don camo, but actually quaff a delicious malty beverage.

Plus, for all you harried writers out there, Ginger also checks subject/verb agreement, singular/plural nouns, consecutive nouns, and basically makes you sound more like Arthur C. Clarke than Arthur Dent. Try it. There are no strings, no secret malware, and it works for PCs and Macs.

Renata, a founding editor, recently switched to a new medication that has enabled her to better appreciate the rich weirdness of China Miéville's novels, the complex settings of Frank Herbert's earlier worlds, and the strange, feminist-loves-phantasm themes in the works of Laurell K. Hamilton. When not researching obscure marketing facts about Fords for wealthy corporate clients or writing scintillating software documentation for moody SQL developers, she adores reading the genres of fantasy, science fiction, alternative history, and the macabre. She was first published at the tender age of 6, spent adolescence and young adulthood plumbing the depths of life's ironies in short story form and non-fiction articles, and some day hopes to nestle into the mantle of "famous novelist".