Getting to grips with verbs

Hilary Cadman Professional development, Reference material Leave a Comment

I recently took out a subscription to Copyediting, a bimonthly publication from copyediting.com. The August-September issue arrived by email last week. I wish I’d received it before I’d paid about $200 to upgrade to the Office 2010 suite of programs. Copyeditor reviewed the new release and basically said ‘If you’re already using Word 2007, don’t bother with the upgrade’. I also …

Hilary CadmanGetting to grips with verbs

Challenging week, and a win through LinkedIn

Hilary Cadman Building the business, Professional development Leave a Comment

It has been another challenging week, with lots of editing to do and yet more problems with the computer (finally fixed on Saturday morning, thank goodness). At least my second computer is now set up, and I’ve learnt the important difference between a back up for restoring the computer (which I had) and one where you can see files in …

Hilary CadmanChallenging week, and a win through LinkedIn

More tools

Hilary Cadman Professional development, Software Leave a Comment

I recently bought yet another e-book from Wordtips – Terrific tables. I can see that I will get a lot more use from this than from the Macros book, which was mostly beyond me, even though it did help me to get started with macros. From the tables book, I’ve already learnt some useful tips, such as how to: insert …

Hilary CadmanMore tools

No need for online training

Hilary Cadman Professional development, Software, Update Leave a Comment

My attempt at attending a training webinar for Endnote was a disaster, because I couldn’t hear it properly due to a problem with my audio driver. No matter what I did with the settings on my computer, all I could hear was a tiny sound from the laptop’s speakers, and nothing from the headphones. This week  I downloaded and installed …

Hilary CadmanNo need for online training

Online training

Hilary Cadman Professional development, Software Leave a Comment

I use EndNote for dealing with references when I’m editing a document, and thought I was doing a good job of working with the program. However, this week I happened to look at the EndNote website, and realised that Endnote X3 has lots of features that I’m not making use of (probably because I learnt the program with EndNote 9, …

Hilary CadmanOnline training

Yet another tool, and an XO laptop

Hilary Cadman Professional development, Software Leave a Comment

This week I bought yet another electronic editing program. This one is called PerfectIt, and it’s designed to find errors and inconsistencies in MS Word. So far I’ve only used it to check a scientific paper that I’d already edited. It picked up a few errors (inconsistent use of hyphens and capitals).  Now I plan to trial it on an unedited document, …

Hilary CadmanYet another tool, and an XO laptop

Social networking is working for me!

Hilary Cadman Building the business, Professional development Leave a Comment

I’m not much of social networker. I could never see the point of Facebook (probably because I’m way outside the demographic, so don’t have many friends using it), and I gave up ‘tweeting‘ after a couple of weeks (a common phenomenon apparently). A post on the BELS discussion list persuaded me to join LinkedIn, and for a while I thought it was yet another time-wasting activity. However, now …

Hilary CadmanSocial networking is working for me!

What makes a conference worthwhile?

Hilary Cadman Professional development Leave a Comment

Last Saturday I went up to Sydney to attend a conference for medical writers. I realised while I was there that my criteria for rating a conference as ‘worthwhile’ have changed since I went freelance. As an employee, with all conference expenses paid (including my time if the event was during a working week), my criteria were fairly relaxed. Provided I had a …

Hilary CadmanWhat makes a conference worthwhile?