PhraseExpress

Thanks to the discussion list of the Editorial Freelancers Association, I recently discovered PhraseExpress — a program that saves time by completing frequently used phrases or snippets of text. I had previously been using the Autocorrect function in MS Word to do this. For example, I had set up Word so that when I type ‘hivx’, the words ‘human immunodeficiency virus’ magically appear in the text. Now I’ve set up PhraseExpress to do the same thing.

The advantage of using PhraseExpress is that it works across all applications — Word, Excel, Thunderbird, Outlook, WordPress, etc. It’s also more user-friendly than the autocorrect function, and the phrases can be stored in a single data file and shared across a network.

Overload

I know that I’m overloaded with work because I’ve reverted to the ‘business card strategy’ that I used last year, when the tasks involved in running my business seemed overwhelming. Back then, I wrote each task on the back of one of my unused business cards, then sat on the floor with the cards around me, seeking inspiration. This time, I’ve written the job name and the outstanding tasks for that job on a card,  then spread the cards out on my desk. I’m not sure quite what this is achieving , but at least it makes me feel as though I’m in control.

Copying file names

I continue to be amazed by the power of the internet to answer computer questions. Today I needed to sort 15 Word files into three groups and then create a Word document showing the results. I knew there must be a better way to do this than copying and pasting individual file names, and there is. A quick search of the net gave me the answer — select the relevant files in Explorer, hold down ‘Shift’, right click and select ‘Copy as path’.

Have laptop, will travel

I have now been away from Australia for 4 months and have managed to keep working, first from the UK and then from a small village in the south of France. The only ‘tools’ I brought with me were a few reference books and my laptop, but I found during my 3 months in France that I couldn’t manage without a printer, so had to buy one (which I gave away in exchange for a bottle of wine and some fancy tea-towels when I left the village). Internet access has been great — much faster than I’m used to in Australia.

There have been a few issues in being away from home. The first was the time difference, which made it difficult to exchange emails with clients in Australia during their working day. I eventually solved this by getting up at 6 am, dealing with work emails and then going back to sleep until a more civilised hour. Another problem was finding time to work on the business; for example, this blog fell by the wayside during my stay in France. However, now that I’m in the less enticing surroundings of north London, it’s easier to focus on admin tasks and I’m getting myself organised.

There have also been benefits to being in Europe. I’ve found some new clients and earlier this week I attended the annual conference of the UK’s Society for editing and proofreading in Oxford, where I met lots of interesting people, learnt a few new tips about working with MS Word and PDFs, and got some ideas for marketing my business.

Overall, the experiment of attempting to work from anywhere has been successful, and I will definitely be back in Europe next year.

Befuddled by time zones

I’m currently visiting the UK and will soon be heading to the south of France, to take advantage of the fact that I can (in theory) work from anywhere. So far, the main issue has been the change in time zones. Some of my clients are in Australia and others in Europe. Normally, I prioritise the projects from Australia when organising my working day, because the clients in Europe are asleep. However, now that I’m in Europe, I have to turn things around. To add to the confusion, I’m on yet another time zone for completing the assignments for my online grammar course, which is based at UC Berkeley.

Making progress on grammar

I’m enjoying the online course that I’m taking (Grammar, Mechanics, and Usage for Editors).  The assignments are quite challenging, particularly those that involve identifying different sentence types or parts of sentences. I’m still struggling with the difference between phrases and clauses, and between simple, compound and complex sentences. However, the course notes are helpful, and the main text for the course – A Writer’s Reference, by Hacker and Sommers – has lots of useful practice exercises.

Grammar course

This week I signed up to UC Berkley’s online Grammar, Mechanics, and Usage course (even though the title of the course includes the serial comma, which I wouldn’t use). It’s over 10 years since I last took a grammar course, so I thought it might be a good idea to have a refresher. Also, I’ve realised that I really enjoy studying.  My business coach has been encouraging me to read The Success Principles. One of the exercises was to list 100 successes in your life (a difficult task!) and I found that about a third of my successes involved gaining qualifications or skills.

Expanding my vocabulary

This week’s tip from Copyediting.com was about the new dictionary site Vocabulary.com. The site looks really interesting, because you can search for a word in different ways; for example, by parts of speech, number of syllables and rhyming words. You can also take a challenge, which involves answering a series of vocabulary questions. I’ve just done my first 15 questions and already learnt 2 new words – bilk (to cheat someone out of something) and insalubrious (unhealthy).

While I was taking the challenge, the site offered me tips on how to find words. For example, to find a US president who rhymes with ‘daft’, you simply type ‘president+rhyme:daft’, and Vocabulary.com brings up a page about William Howard Taft (who apparently was the last obese US president).

New skills in Word

Last Saturday I gave a short training course on editing effectively with Word 2007, and on Monday I attended an advanced Word 2007 course. This ‘immersion’ in Word improved my macro skills, because I demonstrated a macro at the course I gave, and learnt more about macros at the course I attended. Later in the week, I had to use someone else’s computer to edit onscreen at a meeting, and much of the work involved shading and unshading cells in tables. I was able to quickly record a couple of macros for these tasks, then simply use the appropriate keystroke each time I needed to change the shading of a cell.

Thanks to a post on LinkedIn, I also discovered a new tool this week – ReadPlease – which reads any text on the screen (browser, email, word processor, spreadsheet and any other program that displays text), albeit in a horribly robotic voice. I’m using the program to check for errors in my blog posts and in my contributions to discussions on LinkedIn.

Screen snipping

This week I discovered that I know much less about InDesign than I thought (I volunteered to do a newsletter layout using InDesign, but now realise there’s a big difference between a real document and the examples in Classroom in a book). However, in organising material for the newsletter, I needed a partial screenshot from a website. I was pleased to find that my version of Vista includes a snipping tool. For those who don’t have that tool, an alternative is the free screenshot tool, Greenshot.

I’m still recovering from the major project that I finished in early February. That’s not surprising – when I archived the project, I found it included more than 2500 email messages and 6500 files!