The Final Touch

Recently I learned about a tool called Robo­Form* — and when I find some­thing really use­ful, I want to share the news!

At first, I assumed it was too good to be true or, worse, that it might actu­ally com­pro­mise my secu­rity online. But then I heard about it again, from a source I trust greatly and who has years of online expe­ri­ence (shout-out to Sab­rina Gib­son!), so I decided to look into it fur­ther. I gave the free ver­sion a try and fell in love! Seri­ously! I am SO DELIGHTED to have this new tool in place that when I reached the free-version limit (10 pass­words, I think), I imme­di­ately upgraded to the Pro ver­sion (under $25) for my 40+ pass­words!

Robo­Form stores all your inter­net user­names and pass­words so you don’t have to fig­ure out a sys­tem for remem­ber­ing them all. Fur­ther­more, nowa­days there is such a threat of iden­tity theft and hack­ers get­ting into our inter­net accounts (two friends of mine have recently been phished on Face­book), that I was glad to know Robo­Form helps pre­vent that, too, with its optional random-password gen­er­a­tion, which gen­er­ates a unique, strong pass­word for each site that calls for one. Robo­Form stores them all for you so you only need to remem­ber one, to enter the Robo­Form pro­gram and access all your oth­ers. You can view, copy, or change your pass­words at any time under the “Edit” option on the menu, but as far as any­one else is con­cerned — any­one who doesn’t have your Robo­Form pass­word — the pass­words are secured with military-level encryption.

One other thing: Robo­Form can also auto-fill forms for you, if you find your­self at a lot of dif­fer­ent web­sites that require the com­ple­tion of long forms with per­sonal data. You sup­ply the infor­ma­tion in an ini­tial set-up, and then click an icon when­ever you need a form filled. (I do make sure to read over the form just to make sure it all got filled out cor­rectly, and because some­times I might want to change the email address I’m sup­ply­ing or such, but it’s a help­ful resource nonetheless.)

In short, I think Robo­Form is one of the most use­ful resources I’ve ever encoun­tered for online work (and play!). At the very least, why not click here to learn more?

* http://​cmp​.ly/5

For some rea­son, a lot of peo­ple are con­fused about when to use “it’s” (with the apos­tro­phe) and when to use “its” (with­out the apos­tro­phe). One of them is a con­trac­tion, the other a pos­ses­sive.

‘I’m so con­fused!’ Photo by brain­loc on Stock​.Xchng​.com

If nuances of good writ­ing make you feel some­thing like the fel­low in the pic­ture above, you are not alone! But take heart! I’m about to lend a help­ing hand.

Some­one sug­gested to me that maybe the con­fu­sion comes about because it has been so ingrained in us that pos­ses­sives use apos­tro­phes, so we tend to assume “it’s” is the pos­ses­sive. Well, per­haps. But don’t for­get words like these, which are pos­ses­sives with­out apos­tro­phes: hers, his, yours, ours, mine, theirs. All these words are called pos­ses­sive pro­nouns. And guess what?! So is its! There is no apos­tro­phe in any of them! Look at the fol­low­ing examples:

“Did you take her books or ours?”

“Nei­ther. I took his books. You don’t have yours?”

“I only have one of mine. All I found of my math book was its jacket, so Jim and Lana let me bor­row theirs.”

“Its” is the pos­ses­sive pro­noun replac­ing “the book’s”: “the book’s jacket” = “its jacket.”

But notice the dif­fer­ence here:“It’s time to get to school.” In this sen­tence, “it’s” is called a con­trac­tion because it “con­tracts” or pulls together the two words “it” and “is.” The fol­low­ing con­trac­tions are also famil­iar to you — and note their apos­tro­phes: don’t, won’t, can’t, doesn’t, weren’t, aren’t, and more. Remem­ber­ing these con­trac­tions will, I hope, help you to remem­ber that “it is” also calls for an apos­tro­phe when con­tracted (or, as I like to say, smushed) into “it’s.”

One final point: NEVER EVER is it cor­rect to write its’. Never!!

Was this punc­tu­a­tion tip help­ful? I’d love to be your GPS (that is, gram­mar, punc­tu­a­tion, and spelling) nav­i­ga­tor for other quan­daries you’d like assis­tance with. The first five peo­ple to post ques­tions which are cho­sen as the topic of future posts will each be awarded 15 min­utes of proof­read­ing as a free gift from me (that’s a $5 — $10 value or more, depend­ing on the pro­fes­sional and the type of work needed) as my thanks!

Do you have an ad, a let­ter, a blog post, a resume you’d like proof­read? I look for­ward to your ques­tions and sharing!

‘Sweet Son’ by Dori­ana at stock.xchng

“Mom, I’m sad…,” my five-year-old began.

Good gra­cious! I thought. It was only 7:05 in the morn­ing; what could he pos­si­bly have to be sad about? But that was just what flit­ted through my mind in a frac­tion of a sec­ond because he con­tin­ued before I could even ask.

“…because summer’s over,” he said plaintively.

Well, it did feel that way two days ago when we awoke to 40-degree tem­per­a­tures breez­ing in through the win­dows we’d left open to the almost-60-degree air the night before.

“Oh, honey,” I assured him, “summer’s not over yet. It’s just cool this morn­ing, but don’t worry — it will warm up again today.” And indeed, it did. In fact, they’re pre­dict­ing temps in the 90s this weekend.

But life is full of changes, isn’t it? Ups and downs, cool­ing and warm­ing, and hints of things to come before they fully arrive.

In our house­hold, we are presently mak­ing school-supply lists, pur­chas­ing shiny new ten­nis shoes, arrang­ing for back-to-school doc­tor appoint­ments and (don’t tell him yet!) shots. The new school year — and, yes, my child, fall — is coming.

Per­son­ally, I look for­ward to being able to ded­i­cate stead­ier hours to my proof­read­ing and copy­edit­ing work, and to bring­ing YOU more great tips and resources to strengthen your writ­ing. I look for­ward to my kids redis­cov­er­ing the joys of learn­ing from ded­i­cated teach­ers, of renew­ing old friend­ships and mak­ing new ones, and of being engaged in a more cre­ative mix of activ­i­ties than this mom has ever man­aged! (Me? I cre­ate with words — not so much with paint and nature walks and mak­ing up fun out­doorsy games!)

Sea­sons change. Most tran­si­tions are a mix of happy and sad. For now, I’m glad my kids are squeez­ing the last bit of joy out of sum­mer and look­ing for­ward — at least, pretty much — to fall.

How about you and yours? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

First of all, “Happy Mon­day morn­ing” to you all! My dar­ling cat Pump­kin and I have a video mes­sage to share with you:

I had so much fun mak­ing this video! For starters, it’s the first one I’ve ever made online, and I think it’s so fun to learn new skills!

Sec­ond, I made it using an awe­some web­site called Ani­moto, which is so easy and slick that I was absolutely amazed! Not only can Ani­moto cre­ate videos out of var­i­ous video clips you upload, but — as you can see in this video — it can make a video out of your still pho­tos. You can do short (30-second) videos for free, or you can pay $30 a year to make as many unlimited-time videos as you wish. Seems like a great deal to me — and so much fun!

(If you should decide to pur­chase the $30 deal, would you be so kind as to email me first? In so doing, both you and I can get a dis­count on our ser­vice through Animoto’s refer­ral pro­gram. Thanks!)

Third, this one-year-old kit­ten (he still acts young even though he’s offi­cially full-grown now, and we still refer to him and the other kit­ten we got at the same time as “the babies,” as com­pared to our two older cats) is such a cutie — don’t you agree?! — that I just laugh out loud each time I see these pics, espe­cially the “pull-up” ones, and I just had to share him with all of you!

Hope you enjoyed the video — and my goofy cat! Would you please let me know what you think by post­ing a com­ment? Thanks!

Have a PURR-fect day!

Remem­ber the tra­di­tional way of doing pro­fes­sional net­work­ing? Spend a few hours in the car or plane to meet up with oth­ers in your field or related fields. Make con­tact with a few folks, maybe exchang­ing busi­ness cards — many of which would end up at the bot­tom of a purse or pocket, or in a pile on the desk at home. Hope­fully you’d chance to meet up with a few peo­ple who could really be an asset to you and for whom you could rec­i­p­ro­cate; you would leave sev­eral well-intended offers of “Let’s keep in touch” behind and, once back at your home office, maybe you fol­lowed up — or they did — and… maybe not. Either way, a lot of time and energy (and prob­a­bly money) had been spent for min­i­mal return on your investment.

I would encour­age you to try out LinkedIn, espe­cially if you have need for pro­fes­sional con­nec­tions. A quick way to get to the site is to fol­low this link to my pro­file and surf around from there:  http://​www​.linkedin​.com/​i​n​/​f​i​n​a​l​t​o​u​c​h​p​r​o​o​f​r​e​a​d​i​n​g​e​d​i​ting.

Yes­ter­day I took advan­tage of a webi­nar on Social Net­work­ing offered by Sab­rina Gib­son. She’s the Social Net­work­ing leader I’ve been learn­ing from in online train­ing since Decem­ber. Here’s what another mem­ber of the class had to say about her:

Linda Rus­sell on Sab­rina Gib­son — Social Net­work­ing (YouTube​.com)

Although this was an “intro” webi­nar, I decided to lis­ten in. I fig­ured either it would be good to have what I already knew reit­er­ated and rein­forced or she’d have some new infor­ma­tion to share, or both. Well, it turned out to be “both”!

I pro­moted this to some of you through my email list (If you are inter­ested in know­ing about resources like this, please fill in the brief form at the right of my home­page; I will NOT bom­bard your mail­box, and you can always un-subscribe if you change your mind), but I know some of you had sched­ule con­flicts yes­ter­day. So I am thrilled that Sab­rina has now made the record­ing of her webi­nar available!

Fol­low this link to check out what the webi­nar offers: http://​www​.Social​Max​i​miz​ing​.com/​V​i​deo3. And as a teaser, here are a few excerpts from the info page:

So many net­works, so lit­tle time! Have you put off Social Net­work­ing as just another “waste of time”?
Are you using Social Net­work­ing and not really find­ing any results? Are you con­fused as to what to do, when to do it or how to do it?…

If you are like most busi­ness own­ers you:

• Are smart with where you spend your time and money
• Rec­og­nize mar­ket­ing is a MUST to suc­ceed (espe­cially in this “new economy”)…
• Desire to grow your business
• May not under­stand tech­nol­ogy but rec­og­nize it is vital for success…

What I would like to share with you is a sim­ple step by step strat­egy so you don’t waste your time “tin­ker­ing around” with Social Net­works.  If you are not seri­ous about grow­ing your busi­ness, you can just stop read­ing now!  If you plan to “sur­vive” and even thrive in this new econ­omy, you need to do things differently…

Sab­rina has stated that the link to the webi­nar will only be avail­able for two weeks, so I strongly encour­age you to take advan­tage of it right away! (And while the info page says it’s a 1-hour event, it was actu­ally between 1–1/2 and 2! Can’t beat that for FREE!) Enjoy!

Oh, and please stop back here and leave a com­ment about what you thought of the webi­nar after you’ve viewed it. I’d love to hear!

Whew! After quite a few days of frus­tra­tion, I learned yes­ter­day (through Sab­rina Gib­son, my social-media coach) that Host­Ga­tor was the place to go to work out my Word­Press kinks!

See, though I don’t really under­stand it and prob­a­bly can’t explain it well, Host­Ga­tor is what enables me to have a “self-hosted” blog — to take my domain name (Final­Touch­Proof­readin­gAndEdit­ing) and use Word­Press blog­ging fea­tures with­out hav­ing my name buried inside a Word­Press URL. Don’t worry if you don’t under­stand that; I just fol­lowed Sabrina’s direc­tions for set­ting it up (and if you have a busi­ness you want to blog for, you might find it use­ful to learn more about this — I can put you in touch with the right people).

Until this morn­ing, I’d been tear­ing my hair out. See? It’s a lot shorter now than it used to be! Com­pare this — before the glitch –

Heidi with longish hair (Photo cour­tesy Gabriel Mann, age 5)

to this — after I’d yanked out half of my locks!

Heidi with short hair (Photo cour­tesy Gabriel Mann, age 5)

(Of course, it was a wel­come change for summer.)

Any­way… my point is that Host­Ga­tor turned out to be the place I needed to go for answers! What’s more, they are so strong in the customer-service realm that the three issues I brought to the Live Chat tech­ni­cian (and one more that I added in along the way) are now all resolved, so I am out of panic mode and back into lov­ing my blog!!

So, you should see more of me in the near future! (And I just may become a Host­Ga­tor affil­i­ate, but for now, FYI, I make no “com­mis­sion” off of pro­mot­ing them here, other than the fun of pass­ing along a great tip and resource to my friends!)

Oh, and the change in the look of the blog is “col­lat­eral dam­age” from all the tech prob­lems. I may end up chang­ing it back, or chang­ing to some­thing a bit fancier, but for now, I’m just glad to be here, back with you!

I love the tips offered by “Gram­mar Girl” Mignon Fog­a­rty on her web­site and pod­casts, and in her email newslet­ters and books. The fol­low­ing is copied from her email newslet­ter which I received today. Very interesting!

What Is a Janus Word?

Bob wrote, “How about weigh­ing in on the word ‘sanc­tion.’ I am con­tin­u­ally con­fused by see­ing the word used in con­texts in which it appears to mean approved by an author­ity, and oth­er­wise condemned.”

“Sanc­tion” is some­thing called a Janus word–a word with two oppo­site mean­ings. Such words are named after the Roman god Janus who has two faces that look in oppo­site direc­tions. Other Janus words are “cleave” (which can mean to cling to or to sep­a­rate), “screen” (which can mean to review or dis­play or to hide or shield from view), and “trim” (which can mean to remove things or add things).

Can you think of other Janus words? Please share in a com­ment here!

“Punc­tu­a­tion is a means, and its end is: help­ing the reader to hear, to follow.”

–Thomas McCor­mack, as quoted in Eats, Shoots and Leaves* by Lynne Truss

McCor­mack says, fur­ther, that the pur­pose of punc­tu­a­tion is “to tango the reader into the pauses, inflec­tions, con­ti­nu­ities and con­nec­tions that the spo­ken line would convey.”

To tango the reader into…! Isn’t that lan­guage just gor­geous?!

(By the way, you’ll notice McCormack’s and Truss’s British style of punc­tu­a­tion. If you won­der why there’s a colon where I wouldn’t nor­mally place one, and why there is no “ser­ial comma” used, it’s because of the dif­fer­ences between Amer­i­can and British writ­ing styles. Inter­est­ingly, I just learned last week­end at the AWESOME “Copy­edit­ing Boot­camp” work­shop I attended that, more and more, for copy­edit­ing pur­poses, the pre­ferred style of spelling and punc­tu­a­tion — even among British pub­lish­ers — is the Amer­i­can style. You learn some­thing new every day!

I was so proud of my sixth-grader-to-be the other day when he read a post­card giv­ing direc­tions to camp and noted a mis­spelling. “They mis­spelled ‘through,’” he said after barely a glance at the card. “What,” I inquired, “did they spell it t-h-r-u?” But as I was about to explain that infor­mal spelling to him, he said, “No, they used the wrong form: t-h-r-e-w.” Sure enough, there it was: some­thing to the effect of going “threw” some lit­tle town to get to the camp.

This is the sort of error busi­nesses and orga­ni­za­tions who com­mu­ni­cate with the pub­lic really want to avoid in order to retain cred­i­bil­ity and pro­fes­sion­al­ism in the eyes of their clients. It’s a mis­take that might come of sim­ply not know­ing the dif­fer­ence between “through” and “threw” or because, as can hap­pen to any of us, as you’re typ­ing the mes­sage, three other things are going on in the office at the same time — maybe one of which is your coworker telling how her son threw a great pitch at tee-ball, and your mind picked up on that use of the word and it got dropped into your mes­sage. It hap­pens to the best of us!

Look for a good proof­reader and pass every ounce of pub­lic com­mu­ni­ca­tion past him or her before it goes pub­lic. A brief post­card would take a proofer 15 min­utes or less — and you’d pay a small fee for a great return!

By the way, “threw” is the past tense of “throw”; “through” (infor­mally “thru”) is the prepo­si­tion for going into and then out of some­thing.