A Reprieve - and - I Wonder Why Dictionaries Went Out Of Fashion

Received the good new today that I am not going to have my autoresponder account terminated following the spam allegation. What a relief! Also received a very interesting tutorial on the definition of spam and how to avoid transgressing.

I will not try importing any more addresses into that system, I will only use the expensive double opt-in ones. I will have to find another way of dealing with my Empowerism leads once they have finished the original cycle. I am working on a new email series and it will be interesting to see what response it brings - if I ever get it finished.

Go my commission payments from Empowerism today - early again!

As well as starting to write emails for my new series I submitted an article to the directories for publication. My trusty Ezine Announcer made short work of that. I will have to polish up the other two articles I wrote yesterday and try to get them submitted this week if possible. The trouble is that, once I start writing, I have so many ideas I want to write them all at once and that does not leave a lot of time for proof reading and editing. Good job I prefer to keep busy.

This is today's article:

I Wonder Why Dictionaries Went Out Of Fashion
By Elaine Currie, B A (Hons)

More Tips For New Writers (Part IV)

When you begin writing for your home based business, never lose sight of the following facts:
1. People notice things (sometimes even the most minute detail)2. People remember things (sometimes even the most minute detail)3. People love to point out mistakes (sometimes even the most minute detail)4. People will magnify minute details.

Some people enjoy finding errors and pointing them out, even to the extent of writing books on the subject. Other people (and I admit to being one) can’t help noticing errors and find them so horrific that they (inadvertently and quite without malice) magnify them out of all proportion.
When you write for the public, you are poking your head above the edge of the literary trench and inviting them to pierce your brain with critical bullets. It is only sensible to take proper precautions. The tin helmet is not a great fashion accessory but, in these circumstances, much preferable to a baseball cap.

I used to work for a lawyer who had a selection of favourite words and phrases which he would drop into correspondence or conversation in order to impress people. These beauties included the phrase "most busiest" (makes me grind my teeth), "at the end of the day" (yawn), "in essence" (used relentlessly to introduce any minor point) and "very unique" (why does a unique word have to be devalued in that way?).

The day arrived when he discovered "vociferously" and latched onto it as his new favourite word. After several trial outings, he obviously became comfortable with "vociferously" and introduced "vociferous". Eventually he was managing to use one of them in every letter and conversation. He wrote to other lawyers informing them that he wanted to work vociferously to an early conclusion of the matter in hand. He told insurance companies that his clients’ losses would have been smaller if those companies had worked vociferously. He wrote to clients assuring them of his most vociferous attention at all times.

I didn’t understand why he thought it was a good idea for everybody to be shouting. When the awful truth dawned on me, I cringed: I realised that he didn‘t actually know the meaning of the word. I never did find out exactly what he thought it meant. I could hardly ask him. That would have led to a conversation I did not want to join in. How much good do you think it would do your career to impart to your boss the information that he appeared not know the meaning of a word he used on a daily basis? Trust me on this: promotion would not come into it.

You may call me old fashioned but I believe that professional people ought to have a reasonable level of education. At the very least they should know how to look words up in the dictionary before trotting them out for the delight of the general public.

Something, perhaps a combination of ignorance and arrogance, prevented this allegedly educated man from bothering to check on the meaning of this new word. It was, therefore, paraded about for all to admire. The use of the new favourite word escalated until no document was considered complete without it.

I was horrified and embarrassed. I squirmed, anticipating the day when another (better educated) lawyer or a client would broach the subject of this inappropriate word. Fortunately, I moved on before the day arrived and hope that my association with this word abuser has been forgotten.

A very public example of this kind of thing occurred to Georgie Fame who was a song writer and singer (and still is) in the 1960’s. Georgie Fame and his band, The Blue Flames, were very popular and, when they released a record, it was played all the time everywhere. This song was about the bank-robbing duo, Bonnie and Clyde, and included a verse about them stuffing their loot into a canvas bag. Unfortunately, when Georgie Fame wrote the words to the song, he got a word wrong. Instead of referring to a "burlap" bag, he used the word "dewlap". (In case you don’t know, dewlap is the loose hanging bit of skin under the throat of oxen, dogs, turkeys, etc ( you know the bit I mean.) I couldn’t listen to that song without picturing the villains stuffing bank notes into a cow’s mouth and that definitely ruined the dramatic impact for me.

This error did not go unnoticed by the rest of the world. Georgie Fame admitted in an interview that somebody had told him, before the song was recorded, that "dewlap" was not the right word but he brushed them off and didn’t bother to check. Once the song had been recorded and released, it was too late to do anything about it. This failure to check (even after a warning) became about as public as a mistake can be. If nothing else, it proved that people do notice these things.

I don’t know exactly why dictionaries went out of fashion but I’d bet money that it was due to pressure by the "don’t be shackled by correctness, creativity is all that counts" brigade. I never understood why you can’t be correct and creative at the same time but I’ll stay at the bottom of the trench until that argument is over. My suggestion is that you become a closet dictionary user. It’s still legal and completely harmless. If you fear discovery, you can cover your dictionary in brown paper or pretend you just keep it to prop the door open, or say it was a present from Granny. Whatever you do, use the dictionary if in doubt. If the idea of owning an actual paper dictionary makes you too nervous, you can find one online at http://www.thefreedictionary.com/. Never take a chance and assume you know the meaning of a word just from the context in which you heard it used.

Spam Day - The Robots Are Out To Get Me.

Not a good day.

Being accused of spamming is every internet marketer's nightmare and today it happened to me. I was initially angry because there is no way I would deliberately spam anybody and do my best to avoid sending accidental spam.

When I looked at the two "complaints" my autoresponder company had received, it turned out that they were identical messages from the same domain requesting removal from my mailing list. How they translated, "please remove from mailing list" into "you have spammed" is beyond me. I don't think they even read the messages before they emailed me witha threat of closing my account.

Just to add insult to my injury, I am convinced that the two emails were sent by robots as a result of some mad filter that domain has in place. I knew the robots were out to get me. Now I have to wait to see if they will let me keep my autorespond account or if I have to go in search of a new one.

What a pain!

Never trust a robot.

The Vanishing Mail Copyright © Elaine Currie, BA (Hons). The Hunting Venus Group http://www.huntingvenus.com

Am I Just Being Paranoid Or Are The Robots Out To Get Me?

It all started in the early part of the twenty-first century. In the early days of email we were thrilled with its speed and reliability, far superior to “snail mail” but there’s always somebody who has to go and spoil things for everyone else. In the case of email it was the purveyors of the namesake of a certain pork-based substance. They became such a nuisance that large teams of robots had to be employed to keep them under control.As the porkers got smarter, the robots had to become smarter still. At first, everybody agreed that stringent measures must be taken to defeat the porkers. Ever hear the phrase “throwing the baby out with the bath water” or “the cure is worse than the disease”? The number of spam merchants multiplied over and over. Eventually, the only way of controlling them was for every email user to have his or her own robot to filter their mail. I did not want a robot filtering my mail but I didn’t have much choice: nobody was allowed an email account without a robot to monitor its use.Every time I log into my email, I pause and listen for the faint metallic scraping and a slight pneumatic wheeze as the robot wakes and prepares to filter my mail. No matter how quiet I am, he always knows and is instantly awake and alert, ready to do his job. I did not request robotic help, don’t want it, don’t need it but the robot is here to stay.I think my robot is like the paranoid android in The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy: slow moving and depressive, so I call him Marvin (not to his face, of course). I don’t suppose my Marvin feels that censoring my mail is a suitable occupation for a robot of his caliber, any more that his namesake thought attending the car park at the end of the universe was a great career for a robot with a brain the size of a planet. On my part, I am sure that I am old enough to take full responsibility for my own correspondence. There is no need for Marvin to wear out his circuits on my account but it appears that we are stuck with each other for the duration.The extent of Marvin’s power first caught my attention when a regular newsletter which I enjoyed failed to arrive. Delivery just stopped altogether.I asked my email provider if there was a problem with this particular mail and they said there was nothing wrong with my mailbox, it must be a problem with the sender. I asked the sender why delivery had stopped and they said it hadn‘t, it must be a problem with my mailbox. I gave up and just resubscribed myself to the newsletter. Every time delivery stopped after that I wondered what else I might be missing in the way of interesting mail.It was shortly after this that it became apparent to me that Marvin has a bad attitude. Now I can sympathise with him because I know how it feels to be stuck in a boring job while the brain cells shrivel. That doesn’t mean I think he should behave badly, he should do the job to the best of his ability (even if it is beneath him) and not make mischief.Everyone seems to believe that the robots keep changing the rules in an effort to keep ahead of the porkers but I don’t believe that. I think they keep changing the rules mostly out of boredom but, in Marvin’s case, I sense a certain underlying malevolence. This surfaced recently when I sent an email to a friend I had not heard from for a while. My mail bounced back with a message to the effect that spam would not be delivered. How dare they, Spam indeed! From that day on, every mail I tried to send bounced straight back at me.Angrily, I contacted the email company support desk to complain. They helpfully told me that this problem was nothing to do with them, I must have used forbidden words in my emails and that was why they bounced. The forbidden words included “friend”, “free”, “you”, “internet”, “remove”. The list of forbidden words is long and growing longer by the day, it is difficult to make up proper sentences without using the forbidden words, soon our only way of emailing will be by inventing a new language.My problem now is that I cannot get email through to my friends and they cannot get email to me. Too late I realised that we neglected to exchange phone numbers: there seemed no point when email was so quick and easy. Now I can’t send email, can’t receive email, the robot has isolated me. Only one way left to break out of quarantine and it’s a long time since I sat with pen and paper to write letters. I won’t use the word processor as I am convinced Marvin will recognise it as a means of communication but I don’t think he will know what the pen is for and I doubt he’ll be suspicious if I take some envelopes with me next time I go out. A glorified email filter is hardly likely to know the purpose of a mailbox which is not of the virtual variety.I hear Marvin stir even though I have not switched on my computer, he seems to have the ability to read my mind. There is a faint clanking sound, the smell of ozone, an electrical crackle in the air. His hand on my shoulder is heavy and cold, the steel joints creak as his fingers tighten. I don’t think I will be going out to post any letters.

My New Granddaughter and Why Bother To Proofread

Decided I did not have writer's block in the technical sense. Think I was just tired and preoccupied. Still in about the same frame of mind but I'm trying to work. M anaging to keep everything going: surfing, classified ads, mailshots etc, and it's a good job my weekly newsletter sends itself out with no help from me.

I have been shamefully neglectful of my blog and my writing but with good reason: my new granddaughter finally arrived - 12 days late but beautiful! My thoughts have been pretty much taken up with the baby and baby related topics. Went immediately from the worrying stage to absolute bliss.

I don't care about money doublers or downlines at the moment, I have my little "Baby B".

Being my own boss has meant that I have been able to work as little as I wanted and to spend plenty of time with my family. If I had remained in the 9-5 rat race, I would have missed out on those relaxed fternoon visits. Time to get back to work and arrange myself a schedule to fit in with baby visiting.

My monthly newsletter should go out next week and, at this stage, I have no firm idea what I am going to put into it. All I have is the skeleton and a few vague thoughts. Now I need to work at putting some flesh onto those bones.

Last week I did manage to submit an article for publication. It is one from my Home-biz Workshop "More Tips For New Writers"series and I think I shall publish the rest of that series here in due course. In the meantime, here's the third article in the series:


What’s Wrong With Proofreading?
More Tips For New Writers (Part III)
By: Elaine Currie, BA (Hons) © The Hunting Venus Group
http://www.huntingvenus.com/echbart6.htm

Writing for your home based business just as important as any other kind of business writing. When you have an online business, you will be judged by the quality of your emails, advertisements, articles etc as well as by the textual content of your website.
I recently read an article in which the author encouraged people to write articles in order to promote their home based internet business. The writer of this article was of the opinion that punctuation, spelling etc, were not particularly important. His advice was to give your article a quick once-over with your PC’s spellchecker and then submit it without spending too much time on it or worrying unduly about the finer details. To him, the important thing was that you should write whether or not you had reached the appropriate educational standard to be able to write correctly.
In an effort to keep up with modern trends, I considered this premise and attempted to embrace it. Maybe I am totally old-fashioned but, I couldn’t do it. I simply cannot accept this idea that we should treat business writing as a casual pastime, where articles are to be carelessly and quickly executed because they are of limited importance. Of course I believe that people should be free to express themselves in writing even if they lack formal education but I don’t believe we are helping them or ourselves by lowering our standards.
Although I applaud him for encouraging people to write, I simply cannot agree with this author’s notion that correct grammar and punctuation are unimportant. Even slightly faulty grammar can render a written work incomprehensible. The phrase “Content is king” is overused nowadays. Although content is often high in a list of important elements, I cannot agree that content alone will make up for poor craftsmanship when it comes to writing. Offering slapdash work is an insult to the reader; the implication is that the reader either will not know any better, or is not sufficiently important to bother about. I would like to make it clear that I am not referring to the unfortunate mistake that slips through the proofreading net. There is nobody on this planet who has never made a mistake. Publishing an error takes a bit of living down but the only sure way of avoiding mistakes is by doing absolutely nothing. The thing that offends me is the “doesn’t matter”, “It’ll do” sloppy attitude.
I have seen emails and web pages written by people for whom English is obviously not their first language. While I greatly admire these people for learning a second language to a standard where they can write it fluently (not something I can do), I cannot overlook the errors. Some made me laugh whilst others were embarrassing. Publication of these errors could, with proper editing, have been avoided without losing the fresh content and individuality of the writing. Proofreading, copywriting and editing services are not hard to find, they are widely advertised on the Internet. A little money spent on these services can make a life or death difference to an email campaign or website.
Although I try to make allowances, be more modern in outlook, take a more relaxed attitude, and so on, I keep coming back to the fact that writing is about communication. In order to communicate effectively, writing must be performed correctly and there is nothing wrong in employing a professional to add the final polish.
If all else fails, I will rely on the old adage that if a job is worth doing, it is worth doing well.

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This is one of a series of articles
published by the author, Elaine Currie, BA(Hons)
at http://www.huntingvenus.com
The author’s monthly newsletter is available free
from mailto:networkerhvm@ReportsNetwork.com
You may republish this article only in its
entirety and with all hyperlinks intact.
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