Fortiter

910 reputation

bio	website	ancestor-envy.blogspot.com.au
	location	Australia
	age	61
visits	member for	6 months
	seen	yesterday
stats	profile views	8

Dabbled in family history when I first retired from full-time employment. Now regularly put in 60-hour weeks. Is that obsession?

Delighted to have a new focus for my writing.

	910 reputation	bio	website	ancestor-envy.blogspot.com.au	visits	member for	6 months
18 badges		location	Australia		seen	yesterday

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28 Comments

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May 9	comment	Create automatic index from text document Does Microsoft Word no longer have the capacity to do this automatically from a concordance file? I recall doing this without any additional software.
May 9	comment	Which one is correct? If you opt not to use the second "will" then there is no requirement for "allow" to refer back to the first. So "This book allows you to ...". If you don't like "allows" then make the second "will" explicit as in your second version.
May 6	comment	Chopped sentences with too many conjunction, and repeating the subject again and again To what extent is this question limited by the condition "for a screenplay"? Would the same techniques be relevant in the case of a news report or a literary novel?
May 6	comment	Does writing in a certain mood change how a writer writes? Is the reductio ad adsurdum that to write about an amputee I should hack off my leg? I think it was Wordworth who spoke of "emotion recollected in tranquility". There is no guarantee that you will be able to exercise your writing craft while in the grip of the object mental state.
May 2	comment	How to assure your plot isn't a carbon copy of another story? @Neil Fein Are we responding to the same question? The one I read makes no mention of "how to decide" but asks "how to ensure"; and my (albeit) theatrical response was to acknowledge the similarity but then to introduce a dramatic deviation from the (apparent) parallel storyline.
Apr 25	comment	Questions about APA style Are you planning to create this paper on a manual typewriter? If not, most of your questions (about leaving blank lines and hitting enter repeatedly) are not relevant. Your issues are with word-processing not writing.
Apr 25	comment	Is there a reference for “dumbing down” material? When writing textbooks for junior high school, I used variants of Flesch Reading Ease, and the Flesch–Kincaid Grade Level to assess reading difficulty. Since the basic methodology balances word length and sentence length, my rule of thumb was that a new (necessary) polysyllabic term should be introduced in several short sentences to enable the reader to build familiarity.
Apr 22	comment	How should I begin my research for my Military Fiction? Perhaps a more relevant form of this question might be "Is it a good idea to write about something of which I know very little?"
Apr 19	comment	Multiple tasks and a step by step tutorial Then use 3 To view (a) a single contact {Go to 4} or (b) all contacts {Go to 5}. 4 To view a single contact, click on the name 5 To view all the contacts, click the "contacts" link.
Apr 8	comment	Is a glossary needed in a novel? @Des From your example, I cannot see why you want to include the word "banjar" at all when village hall will do for readers in English. Thinking about why you want to use the term should give you an insight into how to explain its meaning in a less obtrusive way.
Apr 1	comment	For Kindle, are hard paragraph breaks that serious? Have you misinterpreted the advice not to use ADDITIONAL hard returns? If you have hit return TWICE to create space between paragraphs (instead of using style formatting) then Kindle will see an empty paragraph and try to style it. That can look really ugly.
Mar 28	comment	Is it acceptable practice to use contractions in a fictional first person narrative for children? The relevance to the question "Is it acceptable practice to ..." lies in determining who is the arbiter of acceptability in your context. In the case of a children's book, that can often be librarians.
Mar 27	comment	How can I consistently distinguish among tables, fields, and records in a database? Have you taken a deliberate decision to NOT USE expressions such as "one-to-one" and "one-to-many"?
Mar 23	comment	Critique wanted for a fantasy prologue Is your proposed series intended to have any connection with this existing work?
Mar 15	comment	What is the correct way to write a fractional number in a formal letter? When using a fraction introduces problems with how the text will look or sound, change the unit of measurement. 66 months avoids the issues of hyphens (or not) and the solidus when precision is required and more than 5 years will suffice in many cases.
Mar 7	comment	How should we go from Stack Exchange Q/A to publishable PDF with the least hassle? This is NOT a recommendation but ebookglue.com is an example of an on-line tool that demonstrates that what you want to do can be automated. See also the Wikipedia Book Creator.
Feb 15	comment	Is it true that men (in general) can't write female first-person? How would we react if this question has been framed as "Europeans cannot, in general, write Asian first-person"? In general, statements based on such trite generalities are wrong.
Feb 1	comment	Is anybody aware of a good way I can determine whether or not something is public domain, or royalty free? @SF: Registration is convenient in the case of legal action <copyrightservice.co.uk/register/how_registration_helps>; but is not required and does not alter the extent of protection (only its enforcement).
Feb 1	comment	Is anybody aware of a good way I can determine whether or not something is public domain, or royalty free? The issue is not whether he "registered" copyright (that is NOT required under the Berne Convention) but whether he explicitly released or assigned the copyright that applies automatically.
Jan 25	comment	Workflow for writing and poetry contests Perhaps now that your "awesome talent" has been publicised, the promoters of contests will seek you out.