B is for Benefits of Basic Writing Skills
What better topic on a blog about writing, than to choose B is for Benefits of Basic Writing Skills for my next entry in the A to Z Blog Challenge!
Believe me, from what I have observed over the past several years in proofreading papers for students, even at grad school levels – as well as for other people, young and old – basic writing skills are sadly lacking!
You would think, with all the tools available to us both offline and online, that “writing right” would not be such a problem!
Think about it – in MS Word, we have spell and grammar checkers. We can even add other features, such as checking for passive language and ensuring we use American English rather than UK English (or the other way around). Even online, we can adjust our settings to check for spelling errors, which produces the squiggly or dotted red lines under misspelled words to alert us to them.
Yet, persistent and common errors continue, giving the impression that some people simply don’t care about using basic writing skills – or they honestly haven’t yet put much effort into developing such skills.
What are the benefits of basic writing skills? Perhaps the most important benefit is the ability to communicate clearly to others – to “say” what you mean in such a way that it is perfectly understood by the intended recipients. Especially online, you have nothing else you can rely on – aside from emoticons, to some degree – to ensure your meaning comes across correctly. By contrast, when you communicate in person, you also have the benefits of body language and gestures, facial expressions, and tone of voice.
So what are basic writing skills? What are more benefits of basic writing skills? Stay tuned for more posts on the subject!
[Source: Shared by Facebook4Freelancers with the public on Facebook].
A is for April-Apology-and Academic Achievement
Happy April!
I decided to join the A to Z Blog Challenge, so I could get this blog up and running on a consistent basis.
So my belated first post is A is for April – this new month in which we embrace a new season, although Mother Nature missed the memo here in Maine, as spring arrived with summer-like weather, before retreating to temperatures and precipitation more like winter (yes, we have had SNOW – just this morning, as a matter of fact!)
A is also for Apology – since I must apologize for neglecting this blog for way too long. I do hope participating in the blog challenge will help me get on track and establish this blog so it can be helpful to those readers who currently write from home as freelancers – or those who are interested in doing so!
Finally, A is for Academic Achievement – as a lifelong learner, I highly encourage the ongoing pursuit of knowledge, whether for practical purposes or simply to fulfill the passion to learn more about subjects that interest you. I am on that path now, currently in my 10th doctoral course in an Ed.D. (Doctor of Education) program at Northcentral University (NCU), with a dual concentration in Educational Technology and E-Learning.
By the grace of God and sheer determination to succeed, I have managed to maintain a 4.0 GPA …so far! This effort has resulted in the upcoming awarding of a high level of academic achievement: initiation into Kappa Delta Pi, listed as “one of the largest and most prestigious educational honor societies in the world.” The NCU chapter is called Alpha Delta Epsilon and the initiation for new members is scheduled for mid-May. I am thankful, yet a bit overwhelmed, about this award, at this age and stage in my life!
[Source: KDP Logo and description from http://www.kdp.org]
New Month – New Opportunities to Succeed!
[I apologize ahead of time to those of you who read more than one of my blogs, as I am posting this in each one as an update!]
Hello – yes, it’s really me!
After getting off to such a good start with blogging in 2011 – I have had three unusual months in a row and am NOW trying to get back into it, in this new month of August.
Brief summary with the major events of each month:
*May: I had a GREAT private writing client who paid me $100+ per article, PLUS bonuses! He kept me busy most of the month; one week, I had my first ever $1000 week – and ended up making over $2400 for the month.
*June: Good news and bad news!
The Good News:
My youngest daughter got married and I acquired a wonderful son-in-law!
My middle daughter also got engaged, and my oldest daughter was already engaged – so two more weddings coming up in the next two years.
Also, I got rehired to work as an online writing tutor for the Online Writing Lab (OWL) at Smarthinking.
The Bad News:
My Mom, who had been in failing health, fell a couple times at home, and while in the hospital for x-rays, tests revealed a mass in her lung.
*July: My Mom passed away.
It has taken awhile to get back to even feeling like writing or doing any other kind of freelance work. Mom had been sick for quite awhile, and we thought she had beat breast cancer a couple years ago…
She was under hospice care and surrounded by family members during her final hours at home. Her final words and fervent prayer were that God would take her quickly, so she could finally see her Lord and her Ben (my Dad) again.
We’re glad she’s no longer suffering and we’re rejoicing that she has rejoined Dad in heaven – we lost him nearly nine years ago, to lymphoma.
***********
NOW… it’s a new day, new week, new month – representing new opportunities to succeed!!
People do not die for us immediately, but remain bathed in a sort of aura of life which bears no relation to true immortality but through which they continue to occupy our thoughts in the same way as when they were alive. It is as though they were traveling abroad. ~Marcel Proust
The day which we fear as our last is but the birthday of eternity. ~Seneca
Our death is not an end if we can live on in our children and the younger generation. For they are us, our bodies are only wilted leaves on the tree of life. ~Albert Einstein
The death of someone we know always reminds us that we are still alive – perhaps for some purpose which we ought to re-examine. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960
**Quotes from 
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Wrong Word Usage-Homonyms 101
Courtesy of the character known as Inigo Montoya in the 1987 movie, The Princess Bride, we have this great line, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
That thought often crosses my mind when I read common words misused – repeatedly – by numerous people. Words that sound the same but are spelled differently, and have different meanings, are known as homonyms. A dozen often confused and misused homonym pairs and groups include:
*blew, blue
*brake, break
*buy, by, bye (a variation of goodbye)
*cell, sell
*cite, sight, site
*it’s, its
*knew, new
*know, no
*their, there, they’re
*threw, through, thru (a variation of through)
*to, too, two
*your, you’re
While each pair or group of homonyms sounds the same, the difference in meaning totally changes what you’re trying to say in your written work (see what I did there?) Let’s take that example I just wrote: you’re is a contraction for you are, while your is the possessive form of you.
The longer version of that half of my sentence would be “…changes what you are trying to say in your [belonging to you] written work.” Now look at what would happen if we switched the words around: “…changes what your trying [?] to say in you are written work.”
In the first instance, the your trying should be followed by a noun, such as “your trying day” – where your describes the day belonging to you, and trying indicates you had a difficult or stressful day. That obviously doesn’t make sense; likewise with the “you are written work.” While someone may call another person “a piece of work,” that’s typically NOT a complimentary thing to say!
Contractions are probably easier to use correctly if you remind yourself that the apostrophe - ‘ – indicates a letter, or more than one letter, is missing. Read a sentence out loud, if you need to, making two words out of the contraction to see if it makes sense in what you wrote.
For instance:
The gray cloud dumped it’s/its fluffy snowflakes. Obviously this should read “its fluffy snowflakes ” [belonging to the cloud] rather than “it is fluffy snowflakes” – which makes no sense in the context of this sentence.
Remember to bring their/they’re mittens to them. Do you want to remember to bring the mittens belonging to them, or “they are mittens to them”?
All those other homonyms? It’s a matter of learning and knowing proper definitions, thinking through what you write, and making use of the “preview” option if you’re writing blog and forum posts. It often helps to read your written work out loud, or even ask another person to read it to you. There’s just something about combining senses of seeing and hearing that helps identify errors, along with having a second person review your writing.
Now what about words that don’t really sound the same, but are close, like lose-loose, an-and, sale-sell, rather-whether, and more? Ah, that’s a topic for another day!
Related articles
- Bad Grammar Makes Crabby That Way (funnyhamlet.wordpress.com)
- It’s the content that counts (malbell.wordpress.com)
- 10 Common Errors “Spell Check” Won’t Catch (reminis.wordpress.com)
Welcome to Write from Home
Welcome to Write from Home – Right from MY home, in Maine, USA!
You will find this information, and more, on my “About” page, but I thought it would be appropriate to introduce myself in my very first post on my new blog.
I am a professional freelancer and a lifelong learner. Providing freelance services including writing, proofreading, and editing – combined with having served as a writing tutor for Smarthinking for a semester – plus my ongoing pursuit of higher education, have all inspired me to strive to help others improve their writing skills. I do address some of these issues at my related blog, Office Help 4 Hire, but I thought it would be best to devote a blog specifically to this purpose.
In this newest blog of mine, as of March 2011, I want to demonstrate that you can write from home – without looking like you … write from home. Let me explain.
Most professional artists, crafters, and quilters prefer the term “handmade” or “handcrafted,” rather than “homemade,” to describe their masterpieces. The term “homemade” many times conjures up images of children’s arts and crafts projects.
Writers who write from home should strive to produce “handcrafted,” well-written “works of art” that exemplify professionalism and excellence, as opposed to the type of “writing for fun” style that appears on forums or Facebook where precision and format typically don’t matter as much.
I look forward to sharing tips from what I’ve learned along the way, and reading feedback from you who choose to leave comments. Of course, my biggest fear is making a mistake in the course of writing this blog, since I’m not perfect, by any means! I certainly hope NOT to make any mistakes, and I always preview posts – but hey, I’m only human and it just may happen! So – consider yourself forewarned!
Related articles
- Preview Is Your Friend (officehelp4hire.com)
- New Writer Tips: Social Networking with Forums (officehelp4hire.com)
- New Writer Tips: Social Media/Networking (officehelp4hire.com)
- How to Proofread Your Own Writing (blogs.sitepoint.com)
