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Monthly Archives: June 2012

Between or among?

29 Jun

I’ve encountered this one a few times recently, so it’s time to differentiate between between and among. Or among between, betwixt, among and amongst. Did you see what I did there?

It’s all a question of numbers: in general terms, between is used when you’re talking about two things, and among is used when you’re talking about three or more thing, whether that’s points, places, people or choices.

So, between means into or across the space separating two points or locations or objects – “He regularly caught the train between Glasgow and Edinburgh”, “He squeezed in between Sally and Jan so he could be in the photograph”, or two things that need to be differentiated or otherwise chosen: “I couldn’t choose between the doughnut and the cream cake, so I had both”.

And among means surrounded by, in the middle of – “I was trapped among the cows in the field” – or indicates a differentiation, choice or division involving three or more parties or objects – “You must choose your holiday destination among Bulgaria, Hawaii and Outer Mongolia”

Between can be used for more than two objects, people, etc. when you are indicating a connection between several entities/parties (“There are links between Spanish, Italian and French”) although this one is a matter of stylistic choice, and I prefer among for more than two, and when a group does something – “We came up with his fine between us: although he got caught, we all raced the shopping trolley down the main road”, although I might be inclined towards among here, too, if I was being particularly picky.

These choices, where it’s not clear which has to be used, is why we editors have style sheets, by the way, so that when we make a choice the first time, we make sure we make the same choice next time.

Bonus information:

I’ve been asked about betwixt and between a few times. Betwixt is just the archaic form of between. Betwixt and between means “neither one thing nor the other”

And amongst, like whilst and while, is a mainly British English alternative form of among, but can seem a little over-formal.

You can find more troublesome pairs here and the index to them all so far is here.

 
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Posted by on June 29, 2012 in Errors, Language use, Troublesome pairs, Writing

 

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My short cuts: adding shortcuts to the quick access toolbar

27 Jun

Do you use commands in Word that are usually buried inside a menu inside a menu inside a menu? I’m going to show you how to add these onto your Quick Access Toolbar, so you can get at them using a shortcut in just one click. And scroll to the bottom for a very quick way to do this …

The example I’m going to use is AutoCorrect Options. I have posted about how to find and work with AutoCorrect, but it is buried within some nested menus, which means you have to click and click and click whenever you want to add a new entry, wasting time to do something in order to save time. Now, I can access the menu I want with just one click!

So, first of all we need to go up to the Quick Access Toolbar, right at the top of your screen in Word 2007 and Word 2010 (in Word 2003, right click on the main toolbar and customise it). Note the down arrow to the right of your standard buttons, and click it:

You will notice an option to choose More Commands – this is how you add more buttons to the Quick Access Toolbar. Click on that, and you’ll get a screen which allows you to customize the Quick Access Toolbar:

Note at this point that you can access this menu via Word Options – Customize, too, if you want to.

We can now see a whole load of Popular Buttons you can add on to the Quick Access Toolbar – so you can pop them on there to get at them whenever you want to. These are a few buttons that appear at the top level when you click on any of the tabs on your main ribbon.

We’re going deeper, though, into buttons and commands which don’t appear on the top level of your tab menus. So click on the arrow next to Popular Commands and you’ll get a list of options:

You can choose All Commands, which will give you every command and button (with a hover-over tip to which menu they belong to so you can choose, for example, Spell Check from the Review tab rather than the Blog version, which won’t do much for you in a standard Word document. In this case, to add our deeply buried button, we want to choose Commands not on the Ribbon.

Now you have a list of every command and button that exists in Word. How handy that AutoCorrect begins with an A! Look for your button and highlight it, then click on Add >> to add it to the list on the right – which is the list of buttons that appear on your Quick Access Toolbar. At this point you can even choose when these buttons will appear, but I always leave it on All documents. When you’ve pressed Add, there it is, on the list:

Click on OK and it will magically appear on your Quick Access Toolbar:

Want to check it’s true? Click on the little icon, and there’s our familiar AutoCorrect menu.

What a time saver! I’ve added all my very commonly used buttons from different menus onto my Quick Access Toolbar, from Bold to Spellcheck and all sorts of other things in between …

Adding items quickly to the QAT

Edit to add: If you have the button you want to add to the QAT in front of you, simply right click on that button and you will get the option to add it to the quick access toolbar!

Magic! And it works however deeply buried the button is in your lists of commands – for example, you can choose something that appears in a menu within a menu:

Please note, these hints work with versions of Microsoft Word currently in use – Word 2003, Word 2007 and Word 2010, all for PC. Mac compatible versions of Word should have similar options. Always save a copy of your document before manipulating it. I bear no responsibility for any pickles you might get yourself into!

This is part of my series on how to avoid time-consuming “short cuts” and use Word in the right way to maximise your time and improve the look of your documents. Find all the short cuts here …

 
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Posted by on June 27, 2012 in Errors, New skills, Short cuts, Word

 

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Palate, pallet or palette?

22 Jun

I see these three, especially pallet and palette, mixed up all the time – of course double letters, e at the end of a word and e or a are all classic ways to confuse spellings, so it’s hardly surprising that people get into a pickle with these.

Your palate is the roof of your mouth, and, by extension, can also be used to describe someone’s ability to appreciate different flavours and distinguish between them (wine tasters, for example, should have a good palate).

A palette is that board, usually round with a thumb hole in, that artists use to mix their paints, or the range of colours that an artist uses.

And a pallet is a portable flat platform used to store and stack other things – it’s often made of wood but you also find them in plastic. It’s also a kind of flat knife used to shape clay or plaster. And (whisper) it can be used to describe an artist’s palette, but let’s not confuse matters by doing that, OK?

“The artist cleared his throat, stepped up onto the pile of pallets that had stored his bread, grasped his palette and mixed some colours, and let the taste of the wine swill around his palate.”

You can find more troublesome pairs here and the index to them all so far is here.

 
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Posted by on June 22, 2012 in Errors, Language use, Troublesome pairs, Writing

 

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Are you guilty of presenteeism?

20 Jun

This is not my current desk

Having inadvertently given my friends and family the impression I work all day and every day, I started to think about whether the cult of “Presenteeism” is as strong in the self-employed community as it is among employees. Surely it shouldn’t be … and if it is, what can we do about it?

What is presenteeism?

We’ve all heard of absenteeism, or the practice of regularly removing oneself from the working environment for no good reason. Presenteeism is the opposite. It’s in the Oxford Concise Dictionary, and here’s how they define it:

The practice of being present at work for longer than required, especially as a manifestation of insecurity about one’s job,

This manifests itself in that classic competition over who can stay latest in the office (or, more importantly, who can be seen to be staying latest in the office. Or being in earliest. Or both. We’ve all sent an email to the boss when we’ve got in particularly early, haven’t we?

Now, that’s all well and good when you have a boss to impress. But what if you work on your own?  And I’m admitting doing this myself, here – although inadvertently. It’s easy to send that Tweet or Facebook status at the end of a long day …

Phew – done 10 hours at the desk today – big project!!!!

but is it so easy to say

Good day, did a couple of hours of work, all caught up so I lay around reading for a few hours

Well, is it?

Why do we have to engage in presenteeism?

I’d be interested to work out why we do this. Are we so busy trying to combat that insidious view of freelancers as people who sit around in their pyjamas watching daytime telly? Surely our friends and family know we don’t do that by now?

If you work in an office, you will tend to have set start and finish times, a proper lunch break, and weekends off (or a set working pattern) and holidays. How many freelancers take the full holiday entitlement they would be given as an employee? I know I probably don’t.

So when it’s quiet, we’re up to date and we skip off merrily to the cafe, or the gym, or just lounge in the garden for an hour or so, is that really a crime?

And isn’t it better for our friends and family to know we’re happy. whole, balanced and relaxed than working every hour there is on a hideous treadmill of work? Didn’t at least some of us go freelance  to avoid that hideous treadmill of work?

Celebrate balance, not overwork

I’m not suggesting we stop working when we need to be working. Everyone has to pull one of those 11 hour shifts sometimes. But let’s all be honest about how we live, celebrate the downtime as well as the busy times, and acknowledge that, yes, we do do this in order to have balance and flexibility in our lives, and we do have work patterns which are different, but balanced over the grand scheme of things.

I’m going to talk about this in public – I dare you to too!

Inspiration for this post came from one I published on my other blog about what I do all day. I have tried, since publishing that, to note when I have some time off …

 
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Posted by on June 20, 2012 in Business, Ethics

 

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Horde or hoard?

18 Jun

Of course this one comes under the “these words sound the same! Which on earth do I use?” category, as so many Troublesome Pairs do. What do you do if you’ve only heard the words spoken but want to write one of them (well, you look here or in a dictionary, but you know what I mean …).

So, here’s the difference:

A horde is a noun meaning a large group of people. It’s often used in a pejorative or slightly threatening sense (ravening hordes) but also in a positive, if slightly anachronistic way: “Hordes of people came to my tennis party!”

A hoard is a noun meaning a store of money or possessions. It’s usually used for something impressive and/or unusual, rather than just “some stuff”, for example a dragon will have a hoard of gold and jewels, and we had the Staffordshire Hoard archaeological find of golden and bejewelled items a few years ago. There’s a verb to go with this one: to hoard – to collect such things together, usually seen in a negative way to describe misers or people who can’t bear to throw anything away.

Interestingly, they do come from different routes: horde comes from the Turkish for (royal) camp, via Polish, whereas hoard comes from Germanic origins.

I used both words in one sentence in a post on my other blog today, as a little hint as to which troublesome pair I was going to post today – I wonder if any of my hordes of readers noticed …

You can find more troublesome pairs here and the index to them all so far is here.

 
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Posted by on June 18, 2012 in Errors, Language use, Troublesome pairs, Writing

 

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Sian Edwards

16 Jun

Welcome to Saturday Business chat. Today I have the great pleasure of introducing Sian Edwards, a friend and fellow home-worker who lives locally to me. If you do work from home, it’s great to have local people around who you can meet for a coffee and a chat when work and time permit. Sian also told me about proz.com, which is a great resource if you’re a translator or, like me, you do localisation, as it puts you in touch with customers all over the world.

It always makes me happy to see how much my interviewees love their work, and here’s another person who does! Let’s meet Sian …

What’s your business called? When did you set it up?

I trade under my own name and have been a freelance translator since 2006. I worked in various roles at three different translation agencies before taking the plunge.

What made you decide to set up your own business?

I wanted the flexibility to fit my work around my family life.

What made you decide to go into this particular business area?

I have always enjoyed translation, ever since I was a student. I enjoy it so much that it hardly feels like work! So it was an obvious step for me.

Had you run your own business before?
No.

How did you do it? Did you launch full-time, start off with a part-time or full-time job to keep you going … ?

I jumped in at the deep end. I’ve been a full-time freelancer from the start. But I did have a lot of work from my former colleagues already lined up.

What do you wish someone had told you before you started?

Don’t rely on just one or two clients. I lost my major client after a few months and, although I was able to replace them fairly quickly, I could have done without the panic!

What would you go back and tell your newly entrepreneurial self?

Get some business cards printed, go out and network! Don’t sit in front of the computer by yourself all day. It will be good for your state of mind and you might even get some work out of it.

What do you wish you’d done differently?

I wish I’d made the effort to find out more about accounting and tax when I started. Some kind of course or workshop would have been a good idea. The transition to paying six months of income tax in advance came as a particular shock.

What are you glad you did?

I’m glad I was bold. It’s not in my nature at all, as I’m quite a shy, introverted person, so approaching people I knew in the industry in the hope that they would send me work felt a bit cheeky. But it worked and gave me a much-needed boost at the start.

What’s your top business tip?

Don’t be afraid to say no. If you don’t have the time to do a good job, it’s better that you don’t do it at all.

How has it gone since you started? Have you grown, diversified or stayed the same?

The amount of work offered to me has gone up and up. At the same time the type of work I do has become more specialised.

Where do you see yourself and your business in a year’s time?

The same, but with a tidier office!

Ah, yes: the double tax thing (which I blogged about when it hit me). I found it so helpful to do my course at the beginning of my freelance life (see my post about setting up your own business for links) and don’t know how I’d have coped without it. Good luck with that tidy office, Sian!

Sian can be contacted via her profile on www.proz.com. She does German to English translation.

If you’ve enjoyed this interview, please see more freelancer chat, the index to all the interviewees, and information on how you can have your business featured.

 
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Posted by on June 16, 2012 in Business, New skills, Small Business Chat

 

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Historic or historical?

15 Jun

There is quite a lot of confusion about this pair, with them being used pretty interchangeably. But, as is often the case, there is a distinction and there is a rule, and it’s nice to maintain those separate meanings and subtle points of difference. Isn’t it?

Historic, or, for that matter, geographic, pinpoints a particular time or example. So historic means famous or important in history: a historic event. “The historic moment when the Titanic sank”. Similarly, geographic refers to a specific thing, a specific point to do with geography: the geographic north pole.

Historical, on the other hand, is a more general term, getting across the idea of something as concerning history, for instance, historical evidence. It also means “belonging to or set in the past”, so a “historical re-enactment”. And geographical means concerning geography, so you have a Geographical Society.

“Historical evidence points to this historic event being a turning point in the War.”

“The Geographical Society undertook an expedition to the Geographic North Pole.”

You can find more troublesome pairs here and the index to them all so far is here.

 
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Posted by on June 15, 2012 in Errors, Language use, Troublesome pairs, Writing

 

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My short cuts – Using AutoCorrect in Word (2) Why and how to use it

13 Jun

Welcome to the second article in my series on AutoCorrect. Last time, we learned what AutoCorrect does (automatically changes words you type or spell incorrectly to their correct forms, e.g. changing “teh” to “the”) and where to find it in Words 2003, 2007 and 2010, and we can also set up a shortcut button to make it more accessible.

Now we’re going to look at how you can use AutoCorrect to speed up your typing and make it more efficient, and how you actually amend the AutoCorrect entries to tailor them to your requirements.

Why would I use AutoCorrect?

Apart from correcting common typos, AutoCorrect has two very handy uses: I use it in these ways all the time, and if you, you will save yourself time and effort.

  1. If there is a word you can never remember how to spell, set up a short cut AutoCorrect, just type in the first few letters, and AutoCorrect will auto complete it for you. No more finding it in the spell checker yet again.  Type in Kaz and Word will display Kazakhstan.
  2. If there is a long word or particularly a phrase that you use over and over again – “Creative and Marketing Director”, “economic forecasting”, “qualitative and quantitative research methodologies”, set up a short cut for each one and save all that typing (and possible typos). Type cmd, ef or qq and watch the phrases type themselves!

How do I tailor AutoCorrect to my individual requirements?

The key to this is in the AutoCorrect menu we met last time.

First of all, there are some useful features on the screen directly in front of you. Here’s how you turn on and off all those useful features that sort out typing errors as you go (we’ve all typed THe at the beginning of a sentence, haven’t we). You just untick the box if you don’t want it to do something. By the way, we’ll be looking at those other tabs along the top, especially AutoFormat As You Type, in another article.

So, for now, we’re working with the standard AutoCorrect. We’ve started off with a list of signs and symbols, because they come before “A” in Word’s alphabet. To see what else there is, try typing a letter into the top, blank fields. Here we have a mixture of the standard AutoCorrect entries (abouta changes to about, etc.) but the top two are my own additional entries. See how many keystrokes and how much time I save by typing aaa and getting accountability agent application inserted into my document (plus it’s typed correctly first time!).

How to add a new entry to AutoCorrect

Let’s look at how to add those new, personalised AutoCorrect entries. Well, it’s pretty simple. Type the abbreviation or mis-spelling in the left hand column (or field), the text that you want to appear in the document in the right hand field (or highlight the word you want to add an entry for in your document, then access this menu), and press Add.

You can see that your entry has now appeared on the AutoCorrect list, in its place in the alphabetical order. Now, whenever you type lb, the words Liz Broomfield will appear in your document.

How to delete an AutoCorrect entry

What if you want to delete an AutoCorrect entry? I did this recently – I had set re to AutoCorrect to recognize for a document I was working on that had no contractions (they’re, etc.). Of course, when I was then typing something more informal, I got lots of they’recognize as it tried to do what I’d asked it to do. So I wanted to get rid of that entry altogether. Here’s how you do that: Look up the entry by typing in your abbreviation – what you type as opposed to what you want to come up. When you’ve found the one you want to delete, press the Delete button.

Now you can see that the entry for lb/Liz Broomfield has disappeared and the list goes from lastyear to learnign. Note: it doesn’t ask you if you’re sure you want to delete, but it does leave that entry in the top text fields, so if you’ve made a mistake, you can just add it again.

How to change or replace an AutoCorrect entry

You may want to change an AutoCorrect entry – for example, you’re stopping talking about Liz Broomfield and want to refer to Lionel Blair. Type in your abbreviation and your new version of what you want Word to insert, in this case Lionel Blair. AutoCorrect will find the original entry and highlight it. The Replace button will appear – so press that.

Word does like to make sure you mean to do it when you change something, so you’ll get another little dialogue box asking if you do want to redefine this AutoCorrect entry. Press Yes (if you do).

and there you go: Liz Broomfield has changed into Lionel Blair.

Today we’ve learned why to use AutoCorrect and how to personalise it to help you type efficiently.  If you’ve found this article helpful, please leave a comment or click one of the “like” buttons below! Thank you,

Please note, these hints work with versions of Microsoft Word currently in use – Word 2003, Word 2007 and Word 2010, all for PC. Mac compatible versions of Word should have similar options. Always save a copy of your document before manipulating it. I bear no responsibility for any pickles you might get yourself into!

This is part of my series on how to avoid time-consuming “short cuts” and use Word in the right way to maximise your time and improve the look of your documents. Find all the short cuts here …

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Copyediting, Errors, New skills, Short cuts, Word, Writing

 

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Then or than?

11 Jun

This Troublesome Pair is one I come across constantly. Interestingly, it features just as much in non-native English writing as it does in native English writing – this is usually very much not the case, with the errors found in each kind of writing not overlapping much at all. I can only think that it’s a typing error rather than a misunderstanding or mis-learning.

Then means “at that time”, “after that, next”, and, as an extension of that meaning, “therefore”. “He went to the park, then he went to the shops”. “You have made a mess of the spelling, then you will find people can’t understand you”.

Than is used to introduce the second element forming part of a comparison – “A cat is usually smaller than a dog”. It is used to express a sense of something happening next in a very specific phrase: “No sooner had the company reinvested in stock, than it went into liquidation” and I wonder, on reflection, if that is how the thans have snuck into the place of thens – maybe there’s an echo of this in the writer’s mind, or it’s a case of a rewrite of a sentence that then goes a bit wrong.

Anyway, it’s not strictly necessary to use the no sooner than phrase, so it’s perhaps best to stick to then for times and than for comparisons.

You can find more troublesome pairs here and the index to them all so far is here.

 
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Posted by on June 11, 2012 in Errors, Language use, Troublesome pairs, Writing

 

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Tammy Ditmore

02 Jun

Welcome to Saturday Business chat.Today’s Freelancer is Tammy Ditmore from eDitmore Editorial Services, who I know through a network of editorial professionals we both belong to. Tammy’s one of our newer businesses, having been going for around 18 months (this time round), and is one of our freelancers based in the US – but as you can see, we all have similar issues and learning curves, wherever in the world we might be!

Tammy has some interesting things to say about the difference between being a freelancer and running a business, and also about the resources that are out there for both business people in general and editors in particular.

What’s your business called?

eDitmore Editorial Services.

When did you set it up?

January 2011.

What made you decide to set up your own business?

I had been working as the managing editor of an academic journal for more than five years, but the situation had become very stagnant and I wanted something different. I wanted to edit more and manage less. I applied for several editing and/or writing jobs in my area and got nowhere—I couldn’t even get an interview. I finally decided it was time to return to freelance editing, which I had done before I started at the journal. But when I freelanced before, I never thought of it as a business; I just took whatever work happened to come my way. This time I wanted to be more official. So I established a name, created a website, and set myself up legally as a “sole proprietorship”.

What made you decide to go into this particular business area?

I have been involved in editing in one way or another for about 30 years. I graduated from college with a journalism degree and spent more than 10 years in various editor roles at several daily newspapers. I left newspapers when my oldest son was a baby and wound up working from home as a freelance editor, proofreader and writer while my kids were young. Then I took the academic journal position, and learned more about running a business. By the time I started my business, I had editing or writing experience in a number of styles and publications.

Had you run your own business before?

Although I had worked as a freelance editor for a number of years, I had not thought of myself during those years as running a business. I did not have a business name; I did not market or advertise; and I never thought of myself as a businesswoman. When I decided to leave my position with the academic journal, I knew I needed to do things differently. I wanted to see my work—and I wanted other people to see this—as my business, not just something I was doing until I could get a real job.

How did you do it? Did you launch full-time, start off with a part-time or full-time job to keep you going … ?

While I was still at the journal, I made my business plans and did the preliminary work, like getting a logo and a website. By the time I left that job, I had one contract that I knew would keep me very busy for a few weeks and would provide some steady work throughout the year. I was lucky; I could take some risks because my husband’s job was very safe and I didn’t have to worry about insurance benefits since our family was insured through him. That made it less risky for me to step away from the steady paycheck.

What do you wish someone had told you before you started?

I wish I had known how many resources were available to help get me started, such as editing classes and training, list-serves and discussion groups, online invoicing, etc. I did not need to reinvent so many things—it was all out there but I didn’t know where to look for it.

What would you go back and tell your newly entrepreneurial self?

“You don’t have to go it alone,” and, “You know more than you think you do”.

What do you wish you’d done differently?

I wish I had taken more time off between finishing my journal job and really plunging into work on my own. I think it would have been good to take some editing classes and just spend some time thinking about what I wanted to do and how. I expected to have slow spells in my first few months where I could focus on such things, but I never really did.

What are you glad you did?

I’m glad that I paid to have a logo designed around my business name and that I was able to get a professional to design my website. Both turned out better than I had envisioned and are definitely memorable.

What’s your top business tip?

It’s not a very original one—I would say you should network. Join professional organizations in your field; volunteer for specific roles; and tell everyone you know about your business. Some of my best and most unexpected business has come from very unlikely places.

How has it gone since you started? Have you grown, diversified or stayed the same?

Much better than I had expected. I almost doubled the income goal I had set for myself for the first year, and I have turned away work on several occasions. Even more important to me, I have been able to work on a wide variety of publications and manuscripts for a variety of publishers, authors, and students. In a little more than a year, I have worked on books and articles about Puritan theology, international counter-terrorism tactics, Christian ethics, Facebook advertising, the original Saint Nicholas, and successful car dealers, and I have just started editing my first novel. Also, I am truly enjoying learning more about today’s rapidly changing publishing world and how to market and run my business. I have started to think more like a businesswoman in addition to thinking like an editor.

Where do you see yourself and your business in a year’s time?

I am considering some steps now to raise my business profile and visibility, so I hope that by this time next year more people will know about eDitmore Editorial Services.

I know what Tammy means about expecting a slow spell between finishing the day job and launching the business – I thought that about Jan/Feb 2012, but went straight into full-time busy-ness. Still, it’s good to be busy! And I wish Tammy all success through this next important year for her business. Read her 2013 update here.

Tammy’s website is at www.editmore.com and you can of course contact her by email. She’s based in Califormia.

If you’ve enjoyed this interview, please see more freelancer chat, the index to all the interviewees, and information on how you can have your business featured.

 
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Posted by on June 2, 2012 in Business, New skills, Small Business Chat

 

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