Thank God for Technorati, lest I miss little gems like this, from Mari Adkins, one of the editors over at Apex Digest:

Every slush reader on the planet has a list of “woes”. I admit, after almost two years of wading through Apex Digest slush, I’ve been slow to create mine. Here, though, are my top six in no particular order.

* “It was as if” – No, it wasn’t. Either something is or it isn’t
* Cover letter trying to be humorous and failing badly – Personally, I don’t feel humor has any place in a professional cover or query letter
* “Suddenly” – My eyes and ears bleed
* Poorly addressed cover letters – ie, those submissions which come to a specific editor – When you submit directly to a specific editor, your submission is forwarded to the actual submissions pool.
* No cover letter – I get these quite often, the rogue submission with no cover letter whatsoever, and I’m always left going, “HHmmm.

Helpful stuff. I’ve always hated “Suddenly” myself, and try to avoid it, but it probably appears once or twice in a given tale. “It was as if” makes sense. E.B. White would scream if he saw it.