Physician, Heal Thyself for a Dummy Blogger

Everything you need to know about blogging, our ass

Ever heard that admonition before? "Physician, heal thyself"? If you haven't, it essentially means that you shouldn't criticize someone else for having the same fault as you. Say, Donald Trump shouldn't be calling Hillary Clinton a "liar" until he examines his own demonstrably tenuous connection with the facts. Be that as it may, we'd rarely seen this except in people writing "grammar" suggestions, not until we decided to visit a previous DotD to see what other inane crap she had to say. Libby Baez, aka CountryWine of PersonaPaper did not fail with her post, "Many Posts Are Way Too Disappointing."

Typewriters for the Clueless Office Drone

margin levers on IBM Selectric®

Back in ye olden days, when the latest boy band members were just a gleam in their daddies' eyes; people wrote business letters, essays, and even personal correspondence on a device called a "typewriter." We suspect that if you wanted information on how to use these devices, along with 8-track players and rotary-dial telephones, you'd be wise to ask someone who has actually used one a time or two; not the likes of  eHowian Richard Kalinowski (aka James Gapinski), who we rather suspect has only seen a typewriter in a classic movie or perhaps an antique store. Regardless of the lack of any experience doing so, however, we found Richard attempting to explain "How to Set Margins on a Typewriter" at BizFluent.com... of course (it's at ItStillWorks.com these days).

Carets for Dummies

Letters with a circumflex

After yesterday's revelation that some freelancers are too stupid to know the difference between "carat" and "karat," we went on a hunt for others who have problems with those words and their homophones. So far the teams uncovered no "carrot" posts, but it didn't take long to find a dummy who mangled information about the caret symbol (all we did was google caret site:ehow.com). Meet Chad Buleen of eHow.com, whose post "How to Type a Caret Symbol" popped up in the Leaf Group niche site Techwalla.com – even though it's not really "tech" and Chad's definitely not a wallah...

Using Roget's Thesaurus for Dummies

Roget's Thesaurus In an era when lazy writers can find an online tool to "spin" a sentence, paragraph, or an entire article (you spinners know who you are, don't you!), the concept of a thesaurus seems as old-fashioned as a dial telephone or a reel lawnmower. Yet a copy of the printed version of Roget's Thesaurus very likely sits on the reference shelf of almost every serious writer. Roget's is unlike the simple alphabetical lists of words with their synonyms and antonyms you find online or within word-processing programs, though; and first-time users are often confused by its structure. Never let it be said that wannabe author (and 20-time winner of the DotD) Joan Whetzel isn't ready to help them... sort of... with the "hub" she called "How to Use Roget's Thesaurus."¹

Freelancer, Heal Thyself... Dummy!

A freelance writer?

Our staff at the Antisocial Network is mainly composed of scientists and do-it-yourselfers, which is certainly why we almost never call out anyone for bad relationship or beauty advice. Keeping that in mind, it's pretty likely that there are few if any books of the self-help variety on our personal bookshelves and eReaders. We're mostly of the opinion that the only "help" most self-help books create is help for the author's bank account. With that in mind, we decided to delve into a peculiar corner of the genre, freelancers telling other freelancers how to make money. That's where we ran into Trisha Wright (aka dlwright or Trisha Faulkner), a former squid who moved most of her content to WritEdge.com. That includes an article she called "Skills Every Freelancer Should Have."¹