I just completed a stage of the publishing process called "page proofs." After my manuscript went through the typesetting process, it was sent back to my copyeditor. She and I both read the manuscript multiple times looking for mistakes, tweaking words, and searching for lines that were either too tight or too loose. Tight lines run together like this: Weareclosertogetherthantwopeasinapod. L o o s e l i n e s a r e m o r e l i k e t h i s.
My copyeditor used a couple of terms I was unfamiliar with: widows and orphans. It turns out there are rules to typography that make print more visually appealing to readers. An orphan is a very short line at the end of a paragraph, and a widow is a very short line at the top of a page. Both leave a lot of white space and interrupt reading flow. I found a good article that explains rags, widows, and orphans here: http://www.fonts.com/content/learning/fontology/level-2/text-typography/rags-widows-orphans
After much back and forth between myself and the copyeditor, she compiled one master list of changes for the typesetter. It's starting to look like a real book.
I can't wait to see what comes next on my path to publication!
