So far this season, we've noticed an uptick in problematic scoring in the tech area involving:
1. Insufficient comments to justify tech markdowns
2. Scoring NON-technical problems in the technical area.
A few points to keep in mind:
A book can score no higher than its technical score (the "tech torpedo").
To avoid the possibility of an unfair or inaccurate evaluation, it's VITAL that reviewers restrict their scoring in this area to the exact five issues/questions raised:
Technical 1. Spelling/Typos/Wrong Word punctuation errors
Technical 2. Punctuation/Hyphenation
Technical 3. Capitalization/Italics
Technical 4. Sentence Structure/Syntax
Technical 5. Verb Form and Noun-verb Agreement
Of the above questions, number 4 is probably the least cut-and-dried (due to our inclusion of "awkwardly worded sentences"). Generally speaking, we're looking at sentences that are incorrectly put together, NOT necessarily long sentences.
The real "no-no" is adding stylistic problems to the tech area in your comments or scoring. Some examples of this year's TECH comments from reviewers that should have been included in other sections:
Lack of footnotes or footnotes incorrectly rendered--covered in the Content section
Reviewers deducted points when they thought the author could have used better or more appropriate phrasing or word choice (happy to glad)—this is covered in the Style section. And we are not editing the books, anyway, so we don't need to think of better adjectives for them.
When in doubt, either ask an awards director or put your observation into another scoring area!
You can see all the evaluation questions before you score a book; go to Scoring Forms (https://www.mwsadispatches.com/scoring-forms -- the link is also found on the left navigation bar on our reviewers' page).
Our plan:
To ensure that we're being fair and consistent in our evaluations, if we find problems in your tech scoring, we'll ask you to either provide more justification for your scoring or raise your score.
Again, you don't have to document ALL errors; just provide enough examples to justify your scoring.