I recently finished my book, Stranded. There are several finish lines in getting to the end of a book: one of them is going through the copy editor's queries, a task I have just accomplished.

A copy editor's job is to go through a book and check every detail. Occasionally, going through their queries can be, ahem, frustrating. This time it wasn't: every point she made was spot-on. And then I got to the 'style sheet' she'd added to the end.

In my defence, I couldn't spell-check the book properly because my computer was running so slowly (it has since broken completely and been replaced). My style sheet is an alphabetical list the copy editor made for me of all the spelling and style errors I made. I find it delightful and funny, because it gives you a perfect précis of the book as a whole. For that reason, I'm reproducing it here. This is my sheet of shame:

adrenalin

bougainvillea

Brizzie (Brisbane)

chirruping

cholesterol

cooperation

drily

earrings

earth/heaven

Ecstasy (drug)

email

fallback

flip-flops

geckos

girlie

guidebook

hellhole

Hotmail

impostor

jet lag

jokey

make-up

Mass (church service)

minuscule

mosquitoes/mozzies

multicoloured

multi-storey

newly-weds

OK

on to

pockmarked

rainforest

rainwater

rear-view mirror

ringtone

sandcastle

seafront

seawater

semicircle

shiny

slidey

smiley

stallholder

T-shirt

unshakeable

unusable

Valium

veranda

Westerner

whitish

And that, alphabetically, encapsulates absolutely everything you need to know about my new book.