Subscript, Superscript, Dummy - The Freelance Files MMCCXI

Subscript vs. Superscript

The people who created (and we use that term loosely) content for the former eHow.com sometimes became desperate for new topics, or as the contributors called them, "titles." When a so-called title drop occurred, some rushed to claim as many as possible, frantically scrambling for a reason to believe they had the necessary knowledge to "help" someone find an answer. Of course, some of them knew they didn't... but the most dangerous were those who believed they could reliably find and transfer any information. That apparently includes returning DotD Mark Koltko-Rivera, who pretended to know the answer to the eternal question, "How to Turn Off the Subscript" for ItStillWorks.com. Note to Dr. Rivera? You didn't...

WordPad Columns for Dummies

WordPad Insert Object Menu

Perhaps one the of the most... irritating? traits of the eHow.com "contributor" (as their freelance writers were called) was that so many were desperate for the cash that they'd write any nonsense down and pretend it was the "answer" to whatever question they were pretending to answer. The site's 300-word minimum pretty much precluded ever saying, "Sorry, Charlie, you can't do that," which lead to such rubbish as Foye Robinson and her Techwalla.com post, "How to Make Columns in WordPad."

WordPad Tables for Dummies

Using the WordPad Insert Object menu

Some weeks, the staffers here at the Antisocial Network put together some sort of theme. For one week, it's all about a given topic; for other weeks, the theme is all posts from a given site. Although we're not in a theme right now, it seems that we're on a streak of eHow.com contributors who found it convenient to use their own definition of a critical term in a search question scraped from Google, or to choose the easy way out by some other means. Heather Wilkins did both in her Techwalla.com post, "How to Create a Table in WordPad."

WordPad for Dummies

Wordpad Insert Object task

In case anyone wonders, we publish this blog because we have absolutely no use for people who pretend to know something just to collect a few bucks. After all, there are plenty of people out there who do know whatever it is these yutzes try to write about, so we'd rather get the straight dope from them. That's definitely not what we got from eHowian Vera Leigh ("verily"? Really?), whom we found at Techwalla.com pretending to know "How to Create a Chart in WordPad." In fact, she didn't.

Excel Charts for Dummies

Sample survivorship curves

If the truth be told, we here at the Antisocial Network have very little patience with people who pretend they know something but are in reality ignorant. We especially dislike said people when they pretend to be knowledgeable because they are greedy and want to make some money. Surely you can understand? You don't? Well, let's look at an example, the Techwalla.com post "How to Make a Survivorship Chart on Excel" as written by someone claiming to be named Vera Leigh. You know, "Verily"? Truthful? Well, not so much this time...