 Just passing on this e-mail. This is full
of fun (edited in a couple of places for privacy reasons). This is the
kind of gentle and friendly encouragement every freelancer needs.
>>> Hiya, Toots! Thanks for a good job on Out of Debt, Into Praise. Here are some comments for you: BE CONFIDENT!!! BE CONFIDENT!!! BE CONFIDENT!!! You are an accomplished proofreader. Get rid of that question mark! You do not need to question yourself at every correction. If your correction isn't correct, the editor will not use it. If you're not sure, look it up. For example, 46 percent of all proofreaders suffer bouts of self-doubt. Not forty-six percent. You'll find this in 8.17 and 8.18 of The Chicago Manual of Style. Learn to love this book. It is your friend. Usually, an apostrophe s will be added to form a possessive of a name ending in -s. "Charles's singing voice made me sick." The exceptions are Jesus and Moses. "Moses' hair suddenly turned white." "Jesus' words of comfort and acceptance are especially welcome right now." (Chicago 6.24, 25, 26.) Also, poor breaks need to be circled on the right margin, not the left, as the first proofer on Debt ... Praise did. They're easily missed on the left. I'll have to remind her. By the way, good catch on Chia Pet. I looked it up on the Internet and found it was spelled with two words. (I've never bought one, but I once bought my brother a Mr. Grass, something similar.) So, in short, if you're not sure of something, try to find out the answer. And be confident! Pull that question mark key off your computer and never use it again! Talk to you soon - Pam *****************
THE ONLY TWO BOOKS YOU NEED In the UK: The Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors
A must for those that work with words
Synopsis
In the US: The Chicago Manual of Style
What can we say? This weighty tome is the essential reference for all who work with words--writers, editors, proofreaders, indexers, copywriters, designers, publishers, and students. Discover who Ibid is, how to deftly avoid the split infinitive, and how to format your manuscripts to impress any professor or editor (no, putting it in a blue plastic folder is just not enough). More on this bargain later GOOD NEWS FROM MARK I'm so happy I took your course!
It is great fun and I'm starting to reap the rewards. I just completed
proofreading a novel for a private author, will be doing work for a calendar
publisher, just took one test, and have another on the way--all within
one month of finishing the course!
Online dictionaries here: http://www.online-dictionary.net/index.htm
The Freelancers course seems to go
from strength to strength. Apologies are due to a few people, it has been
a busy time, please expect an answer soon. Working
from home seems to be more popular than ever.
A note below about contacts in the freelance business. >>>> Dear William,
Hope your weekend is off to a nice start. Thanks for writing! It has been an absolute pleasure to work with you--you wouldn't believe how few freelancers actually take the time to do a job right, and return it in a timely manner. It was such a relief to know that the stuff I sent you was actually getting done and would be back in my hands quickly. >>>
BREAKING NEWS FROM A FREELANCER!
>>> Hi William,
SOS ANSWERED Freelancers able to help a previous student with not much spare time! Hi William,
Hi William,
>>> Joan kindly writes: "I would also like to mention how evident the personal touch is throughout your course. Before contacting you I had enquired about one of the other courses advertised in the press and had received nameless e-mails from them... "As regards the course, I think you are offering a tremendous service. Your love of the written word is quite apparent and your willingness to share your knowledge with those of us taking up a new occupation is really appreciated. The section Getting Started for Real is excellent: without it I wouldn't have known where to begin. "I was feeling rather despondent at one stage, having approached several publishers and tapped other sources without any success. In reply to one telephone call I was told they have at least 12 freelancers phoning every week. Then, last week, completely out of the blue, I received a test from a publisher who had previously not even replied to my initial enquiry. I have completed this and am now waiting with bated breath." Good luck to Joan who has just moved here from S. Africa.
One thing you will never receive from Freelancers.co.uk: junk e-mails. Here's one offering a university diploma -- no books or classes needed, just cash from your wallet! >>>>>>>>>>>>> UNIVERSITY DIPLOMAS Obtain a prosperous future, money earning power,
Diplomas from prestigious non-accredited
No required tests, classes, books, or interviews. Bachelors, masters, MBA, and doctorate (PhD)
No one is turned down. Confidentiality assured. CALL NOW to receive your diploma
1-212-465-3248 Call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, including
>>>>>>>>>> More Good News I received the course last week and I love it! I just wish I had taken it earlier. I'm looking forward to "getting started for real!" The course is wonderful and I can't wait to start using my new-found knowledge. I just finished the course and was very happy with my final score. The course was very instructive and helpful, plus a terrific read. Santorini must be a wonderful place. Again, thank you so much for all your help. >>> To order
your Freelancers course: Infoplease: the polite way to find facts and figures on the Internet. Xrefer: a single interface enables you to search more than 500,000 entries in encyclopedias, dictionaries and books of quotations from the world's largest publishers. Cambridge Dictionaries Online: free access to the Cambridge Dictionaries of English, American English, Idioms and Phrasal Verbs. Project Gutenberg: long-established project to make out-of-copyright books freely available in electronic form for everything from Shakespeare to Sherlock Holmes.
Nevertheless, there are still unscrupulous traders with all kinds of tricks to get your cash. Even the old chainletter scam, "Send £5 or $10 to these 4 people, and cross off the bottom name and add yours" and "expect £500,000 in a few weeks in your mailbox!" is doing the rounds, and many more are being sent to inboxes around the world. >>> More good news Dear William, I can't thank you enough for all the trouble you have taken correcting the proofreading test. It is now on its way to their copy editor -- if she reacts favourably, it will be thanks to you. J.C.C. >>>
J.H. e-mailed to say: "I have recently started contacting publishers and had had a more positive response than I expected." J.H. has already had her details put on file, and has passed a test for another publisher. She now needs to go only one stage further to find work. The hardest part is getting started, and anyone in this position has my sympathy. Never were the words more true, as in "make or break". Advice: Keep at it, and be persistent. It will pay off eventually. >>> GRAMMAR ERRORS CAN HURT YOUR CAREER This short article just published in the Times is interesting for those who like to get things right. SLOPPY spelling and bad grammar can bring the climb up the career ladder to a full stop, research has suggested. A tendency among British workers to rely on computer checks to correct mistakes is infuriating managers. They claim that frequently they are presented with work that would make a schoolteacher flinch. Common mistakes include a failure to capitalise names and places properly and the misuse of apostrophes. [There's still plenty of this, as in Fish and Chip's or Pub Meal's.] Other errors included in an employers' top five include use of American spellings and confusion over the application of similar words such as "affect" and "effect". The rise of the sloppy worker is revealed in a survey of more than 1,000 British firms and managers by Office Angels. >>>
These tests can be fascinating because they may only be a few pages long but they are designed to make sure you really do know how to copyedit or proofread! If you pass one of these tests, you'll be put on a list, and are then in a position to receive work. I do get a fair number of queries about 'certificates'. Generally, the certificates that are offered by some mail order businesses are really worth nothing. Publishers only care about whether you can pass one of these tests. The certificates on offer prove nothing. They are used by these firms to help their sales. One of the businesses offering a certificate used to sell a course on how to get a flat stomach in seven days. They probably offered a certificate with that too! Their prices also are way too high
for what they offer. That's because they have high advertising costs, need
to print brochures, and they are also run on purely commercial lines. Some
courses you'll read about cost, say, £200 or $360. BUT, if you buy
a course within 7 days, miraculously, they'll take 50% off the course fee.
A well-known sales trick!
Dear Ms.....: Thank you for replying to our ad for freelance proofreaders and copy editors. We ask that all candidates complete our short copyediting test before we include them on our active list. Please copyedit the attached text as you would an article appearing in an academic journal (i.e., do not rewrite; we are not asking for developmental editing). You may either complete the test on a hardcopy printout and return it to me by mail (see address below) or copyedit the text in Microsoft Word using its "track changes" feature and email the copyedited file back to me. Please let me know if you have trouble opening the attachment or have any questions. Sincerely yours, ....................
>>> Please correct all spelling, punctuation,
grammar, and usage problems, as well as anything inconsistent. The main
text and the references are from the same paper; treat them as a unit.
Call out any queries in the margin, just as you would on a regular paper.
Queries should only be questions that need the author’s input (e.g., discrepancies
between references and citations, major sentence rewrites, blatant factual
errors) or issues of house style (for which you would query your production
editor).
In order to to better provide some
historical specificity to our analysis, we will outline scenerios of partticular
womens lives in 3 different time-periods focussing on spatial qualities
of the accounts we explore. We make no claims re: the representiveness
of these women’s lives, but we do think, that the the insight gained from
these “stories” are a useful aparrratus for creating a historical framework
for understanding contemporaneous debates about private and public spaces,
which we have worked deciduously to provide. We also apprecciate that none
of these woman’s lives has been presented to us naively or transperantly.
Our sources of information ranges from poetry to diaries to interviews,
in to which we look for traces of class and gender relations that have
help us understand the experiences portrayed therein. As Joan Scott (1992:26)
abjures us, “It is not individual’s who have experience, but subjects who
are constitituted through experience”. Her apothem reflects our hope for
uncoverring the conditions, “the workings of the ideological system” (Scot,
1992, p. 25), in which the experiences of these women were being construed
(see also Domosh, 1997 ), through a tending to the meanings attributed
to and associated with particular spaces, we can iluminnate something of
the “shaping” of distinctions between public and private, lived through
particular gender- and priveliged class-relations (compare Kaplan, 1996;
Kirby, 1996)....
Useful link: English Grammar and
Style
PS: Stop searching for the best proofreading course you can buy. You'll find it here, at Freelancers.co.uk!
Check back again soon for more
Archive News!
PPS: 'Life' for most
employees!
.jpg) |
For
those familiar with the first edition of 1981, this second edition will
come as something of a shock. No longer is the book the size to slip into
a pocket, or perch on that rare space on your desk. The pages are now three
times bigger, but what has been lost in convenience has been balanced by
greater coverage and easier use, so that someone wanting to check the spelling
of blameable now gets an entry reading "blameable not blamable (US)", rather
than an instruction to "see -able". The Oxford University Press way, given
here, is not the only way of doing things. Other publishers have other
preferences, particularly for such things as spellings in -ise or -ize,
but what this book will give you is a guide to a set of rules on when to
hyphenate or combine words (use "blacklist" for the noun, not "black list"
as recommended in the first edition); on doubtful or variable spellings
("gettable" not "getable"); the punctuation of abbreviations; dates and
spellings of proper names, and all those other little things that are so
difficult to be consistent about when writing. It is also an invaluable
guide to words that are often confused such as biannual "twice every year,
every six months" and biennial "every two years". This edition also keeps
its charm for the browser, and is full of surprising, editor-confusing
terms such as Aelia Laelia "an insoluble riddle" and pickelhaube "a German
spiked infantry helmet".
.jpg)
The
Internet is opening up all kinds of opportunities and continues to grow.
Imagine where it will be in 5 or 10 years' time? Expect a seamless integration
into everyday life.
