Natalie Colgate

Hathi Trust have embarked on the grand task of digitising all printed work for the sake of preservation.  This is a massive task and it seems Hathi Trust have a research stumbling block when it comes to ‘finding’ authors of work still in copyright.

Works belonging to authors who are considered untraceable are placed in a public catelog for 90 days.  If the authors have not claimed rights for their work within this timeframe, the content will be deemed ‘orphaned‘.

The Authors Guild have embarked on a search to find some of these orphaned works and have quickly discovered one famous rights owner already.  This places doubt on the process used by Hathi Trust in the ‘extensive review process’ they use to determine what titles go on the orphan list in the first place.  Authors Guild have since found a further two rights owners with similar ease to the first search.

Did you know you can lend out your e-books for up to 14 days?
See London Book Fair’s page on lending and borrowing e-books between friends.
Also check out Galleycat’s page on sharing Kindle books.

How English became the language of the world:

Originally, Latin was the language of intellectuals and the language of the Christian religion.  However, this was not the language spoken by most in the countries where Latin was used.  People spoke their own languages and the need for consistency became essential if these languages were to thrive.  The more the dialects were used by the speaking public, the more the demand for them to be recorded became evident.  If teachers, priests and politicians weren’t speaking and writing in the language of the people, the people would not respond to them and so the need for a standardised English language was born.

Soldiers and sailors who spoke English settled in countries where other languages were spoken and in this way, English spread around the world.  Despite this, local people continued to speak their own languages and dialects and nations who maintained their independence did not adopt English.  Due to the spread of English world wide however, diplomats, businessmen and the like found English beneficial during international negotiations and the power of English as a universal language began it’s accent.

Nowadays, many music bands sing in English, despite their home language and most internet sites are written in English.  Movies, if not originally in English at often sub-titled in English and so the power of this language has increased.

For a more detailed article on this topic, click here for an in depth BBC News post on which the above synopsis is based.

Your reader should focus on the point you put across and not on the grammar mistake that changed the meaning of the point.  An error, once read by your intended reader, cannot be undone.  Having your document proofread before releasing, printing, or publication adds undeniable value.

When working on your documents, make sure your words are concise, factual, and correctly presented.  You could be surprised at how obvious errors can come to your attention when you read your work just once before you send it off.  Many simple documents require proofreading:  letters, CVs, websites, presentations, brochures, newsletters, reports, short stories, etc.

I have worked in software programming, quality assurance and project co-ordination and I have experience in people-and-office management as well as director-level personal assistance.   Industries I’ve worked with include adult training (online and facilitator-led), travel visas, manufacturing and retail accounts.  In all cases, proofreading my own (and others’) work has proven to be a worthwhile task.

We’ve all misspelled a word or two now and again.  However, some of us misspell a great deal more than just now and again.  And, an even greater group of us don’t even realise we’ve misspelled some words in the first place.  But, by far the worst offenders are those of us who repeatedly use the wrong words simply because they sound the same as the intended word and, alas, rely on the electronic auto spellchecker!

I’ve stumbled across a website that lists some of the glaringly obvious, regularly misspelled words that are sometimes painful to read:  check out The Oatmeal‘s website for a list of 10 commonly misspelled words in English.

In 2005 the Royal Mint incorrectly spelled the word ‘Remember’ on a batch of £2 coins made to mark the anniversary of the Gunpowder plot.

The error remained officially unnoticed until 2010 when a man in Suffolk (Mr Albi Pinnion) noticed the mistake while at a pub.  More have since been found and they now fetch around £10 on eBay among coin collectors.

Mr Pinnion has also found several other coins with different spelling mistakes on them, for a more detailed article on this, see Small World’s post.

Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg has reportedly been incorrectly spelled on road signs in Webster, Massachusetts.

‘Chargoggagoggmanchaoggagoggchaubunaguhgamaugg’ has been deemed an incorrect spelling and ‘Chargoggagoggmanchauggauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg’ has been noted as the second most commonly misspelt variation of the word.  It has now been agreed that ‘Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg’ is the new accepted correct spelling.

Confused yet? The locals take the easy route and call it Lake Webster instead.

For a photo of the Lake in a Metro article on this topic, click here.

David Hewson has shared an excellent editing feature for the famously irritating, yet brilliant program, Microsoft Word.  The feature allows two documents to scroll simultaneously while editing (and physically scrolling) only one.

He cautions that if you have a several revisions in one of the documents it will cause the pages to become different lengths the windows could go out of sync.  His solution is to deselect the Synchronous Scrolling option, align the documents again, select Reset Window Position, then sync again.

See his full post on davidhewson.com

Some people can’t stop themselves correcting another person’s grammar and some people don’t mind such feedback.  Most people however hate being corrected by anyone but especially by their partner on the first date.  Reese Witherspoon famously admitted that she was not impressed when her date corrected her.  Write Well’s blog post on this topic elaborates a bit more.

Debretts, the modern authority on Etiquette, says “there is a fine line between interest and intrusion” and “a good conversationalist strikes a perfect balance between talking and listening. By picking up threads as they go along they create a multi-layered conversation and a sense of intimacy – the other person feels sure that they are listening, and interested.”

The rule of thumb could be to only correct someone else’s grammar for three reasons:

1. you’re the speaker’s parent
2. you’re an English teacher
3. you’ve been paid to correct the speaker’s grammar, such as assisting a toastmaster with his/her speech

The English language has doubled in size over the last century.  Since 1950, English has reportedly expanded by 70 percent.

In the new millennium Google found that English was expanding by 8500 words a year and our language apparently now stands at a count of 1022000 words.  However, nearly half of the newer words are not in dictionaries due to their slang or jargon origins.

See the full article from The Telegraph.

Guardian.co.uk has published a page quoting a health.com (US health website) that lists artists and writers as being in the top ten professions where people are depressed.

Ad hoc paychecks, irregular hours and isolation are a key feature in these professions and many famous authors have suffered from the side effects.  Ernest Hemmingway and Virginia Woolfe committed suicide and many creative people are well known to have mood swings.

For further reading, see the full articles at guardian.co.uk and/or health.com.