12 Letters That Didn't Make it into the Alphabet

I can actually remember seeing old books with the long S used on covers and in illustrations, back when I was a small child. Since the long S and the short s are both pronounced identically, it gradually disappeared during the nineteenth century. (No, I wasn’t alive in the nineteenth century!)

Ash, the A and E joined together, was also still seen occasionally when I was a child. And as for the Ampersand, he’s still very much around. But most of the others are quite fascinating, and each has its own story.

Happy reading.

http://mentalfloss.com/article/31904/12-letters-didnt-make-alphabet

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.

Be yourself

Stop comparing yourself with other authors. You know, all those lucky people whose book trailer goes viral and they make an instant million dollars. For every one of them are the other billion videos that didn’t go viral.

For every book that hits the Number One spot on the New York Times Best Seller list are a million or two that didn’t.

While you are exhausting yourself to write blog posts just like Successful Author, or make book trailers like Millionaire BookTrailer Maker, or to research and write a book exactly like Latest Best Seller, you will always fail. Every author has a voice. Write your own book. Write what is your passion. Craft your book as best you can in your own way.

Then polish it, get it professionally edited, have the cover made professionally, get it formatted properly, and then send it out into the world knowing it’s the best book YOU can offer right now.

And instead of slavishly staring at its Amazon sales rankings and biting your fingernails to the quick over clicks on your blog or every review on Goodreads, switch the internet off, put your butt in your chair, and start writing your next book with the aim of making it even better than the previous one.

There is only one you. Be yourself. Just be the very best you can be right now.

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.

20 French Phrases You Should Be Using

Way back in 1066 the English language, already a mish-mash of a dozen different dialects, suddenly doubled in size with the Norman conquest. French became the language of the government and hence of the ruling classes. “Pig” now only meant the animal. The meat became “pork”.

Even today, almost a thousand years later, French words still make up almost a third of the words in the English language. Almost everyone knows what déjà vu means, for instance.

Mental Floss has come up with a list of twenty lesser-known French phrases. Most of them I’d heard of, read in books, and knew the meaning of. Remember the hero riding ventre à terre to rescue his heroine in the old-style bodice rippers? Some of these phrases really are too good to disappear such as honi soit qui mal y pense and revenons à nos moutons.

Enjoy reading these: http://mentalfloss.com/article/60462/20-french-phrases-you-should-be-using

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.

What makes a language globally important?

Researchers having been trying to identify what makes a language important on a global scale. They began by identifying sources of media that had been translated into multiple languages. They included 2.2 million books that represented over 1,000 languages, tweets sent by 17 million users, spanning 73 languages, and articles on Wikipedia that had been edited by humans, not robots.

The map shows their findings about how the various languages were linked together.

Ultimately, English turned out to be the largest hub for information to be translated from one language into another in all three data sets. Other languages including Russian, German, and Spanish also serve as hubs to other languages, but to a lesser extent than English.

More than fifty percent of all communication on the internet is in English, and the internet is the way that most people are communicating now, which indicates the ability of English to connect people across all languages.

Many years ago the language that connected people was Latin. Books were handwritten by scholars, often monks, and they read and wrote Latin. The study has been completed and the results are in. These days it seems it’s English, which is good news for authors writing in that language.

To read the study go to: http://www.iflscience.com/brain/new-study-reveals-most-influential-languages

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.

End of Year Romance Statistics

According to the 2014 Nielsen Romance Buyer Survey, the top ten tropes for romance books are:
1. Friends to lovers
2. Soul mates/fated mates
3. Second chance at love
4. Secret romance
5. First Love
6. Strong heroines
7. Reunited lovers
8. Love triangle
9. Sexy millionaire/billionaire
10. Sassy heroine

Some facts:
Romance fiction generated $1.079 billion in publisher revenue in 2013.
9513 romance fiction ISBNs were published in in 2013.
Romance ranks #2 in publisher revenue for adult fiction.
40% of romance is ebooks
84% of romance buyers are female.
The biggest single age group of romance readers is 30-54.

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.
The photo at the top of this blog was taken in 2008 at a romance convention. These are authors I worked with at the time.

Science Shows Something Surprising About People Who Love to Write

No matter the quality of your prose, the act of writing itself leads to strong physical and mental health benefits, like long-term improvements in mood, stress levels and depressive symptoms. In a 2005 study on the emotional and physical health benefits of expressive writing, researchers found that just 15 to 20 minutes of writing three to five times over the course of the four-month study was enough to make a difference.
By writing about traumatic, stressful or emotional events, participants were significantly more likely to have fewer illnesses and be less affected by trauma. Participants ultimately spent less time in the hospital, and enjoyed lower blood pressure than their counterparts.
James W. Pennebaker has been conducting research on writing to heal for years at the University of Texas at Austin. He said that expressive writing allows people to take a step back and evaluate their lives. Instead of obsessing unhealthily over an event, they can focus on moving forward. By doing so, stress levels go down and health correspondingly goes up. From long-term health improvements to short-term benefits like sleeping better, it's official: Writers are doing something right.

More details of the study are at: http://mic.com/articles/98348/science-shows-writers-have-a-serious-advantage-over-the-rest-of-us

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.

People in thirty countries were asked about their reading habits. Guess who reads the most?

The average Indian citizen reads 10:42 hours per week. Korea fell at the opposite end of the spectrum just below Taiwan and Japan, indicating that the average person there reads 3:06 hours per week. The United States, which fell toward the bottom of the pack, reported that the average person reads 5:42 hours per week.

First of all, countries located in geographic clusters reported similar results. For instance, people in the Asian countries — of India, Thailand, China and the Philippines spend the most time reading.

The southernmost nations, including Venezuela, South Africa, Australia, Indonesia, and Argentina all recorded similar results: 5:54 to 6:30 hours per week per person.

The Northern European and Middle Eastern countries also reported similar results. Egyptians are reading about 7:30 hours per week and Saudi Arabians are reading about 6:48 hours per week. The Czech Republic, Russia, Sweden, France, and Hungary all reported numbers falling in between those of Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Another interesting finding was that that group of industrialized, first world countries including Spain, Canada, Germany, the U.S., and Italy reported relatively low rates of reading. The U.S. response of 5:42 hours per week per person tied that of Germany. That rate was also just lower than those of Turkey, Spain, and Canada and just higher than that of Italy.

Finally, the study also showed what genre of books people favor across the world. According to the study, 32% of respondents are reading fantasy books, rendering it the most popular genre

I found this study extremely fascinating. Many Asian nations revere scholars, mystics, intellectual success, which makes it logical that people in those countries read more. Whereas in the west we seem to revere "celebrities" or sportspeople. Presumably, as a group of nations, we're glued to the TV instead of reading.

The full details of the study are at: http://mic.com/articles/52703/can-you-guess-where-in-the-world-people-read-the-most

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.