I was recently giving my book a final edit before sending it to the publishers and I decided to make a change to the dialogue of the main character.

All through the book I had her saying ‘cos’ instead of ‘because’ but decided that actually it would work better if I reversed this.

So, in order to make sure I didn’t miss any, I used the ‘Find and Replace’ facility in Word and pressed ‘Find and Replace All’.

Sorted.

Or so I thought.

It was only when I carried on with my edit that I discovered the terrible truth.

The book is all about the production of a play. A play involving  a stage, a script, props and, of course, costumes.

Or ‘becausetumes’ as they had now become.

I was telling some writer friends about this at the weekend, hoping I’d get some sympathy, but oh no, all I got was hysterical laughter and really hilarious jokes such as: ‘good job the character didn’t play for the Broncos – or the Bronbecauses!’ ‘Good job she didn’t love cos lettuce. Can you imagine – “she made herself a bacon and because sandwich he he he!”‘

I nearly a-because-ted them, I can tell you!

I don’t know, sometimes it feels like all this modern technology that is meant to make our lives easier only ends up making it a whole lot more complicated. What say you…?

PS: HOROSCOPE WATCH – No shocking proposal so so far it’s one-nil to me. According to today’s stars my moon is ‘sextile’ and therefore I’m going to be tying up some loose ends. Getting rid of all those ‘becausetumes’ perhaps?