Editor's notes: No cheating. Or even swindling, duping, tricking or general chicanery.

This is the last in my Editor's notes series for now, in which I share some of the things I often find myself telling authors when I report back to them on how I've edited their work. It's not about the basics of how to tell a story or that you need to check your spelling, but about the less obvious things that can subtly affect the reader's experience. If you want to catch up on previous posts, and there are six including this one, I've now given them all the tag 'Editor's notes', so if you...