Wednesday

Raven reads Rocket's Press Day notes under the lamp with a pencil behind her ear.

"On saturday," she reads. "Small s. Rocket said quote we need more string lights. No comma, no capital, no closing quote."

"The ideas are right," Rocket says. "That is what matters."

"The ideas are right," Raven agrees. "And a reader who trips on a missing capital stops hearing them."

Nova hovers over the page, her light pausing on each mistake without pointing. "Editing is kindness to the reader," she says.

"What do you notice when you read it aloud?" Raven asks.

Rocket reads. He stumbles at the list without a colon. "Okay," he says. "Pencil."

He finds ten mistakes. Raven finds none that he missed, which pleases them both.

Editing fixes conventions: the shared rules that let a reader move without tripping. Revising comes first, because there is no point polishing a sentence you may remove.

Capitals start every sentence and every name: Raven, Maple Street, Saturday. A comma follows an opening phrase, separates items in a list, and sits inside the quotation marks before "she said".

Quotation marks wrap the exact words someone says, and the first word inside them is capitalized. An apostrophe shows belonging (Nova's light) or a missing letter (don't).

A colon introduces a list: the library porch, the garden gate and the skate ramp. Spelling you can check by reading the word backward, one letter at a time.

Raven thinks aloud: "On saturday needs a capital S, because Saturday is a name. Rocket said quote needs a comma after said and a capital inside the quote."

Edit in passes. One pass for capitals, one for commas, one for apostrophes and quotation marks, one for spelling. Four quick reads catch more than one slow one.

Ten mistakes found, ten readers kept. Tomorrow we try a new approach to an opening and learn to take feedback.