Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Working from Home


Do you have a job that lets you work from home? If so, do you work from home part-time, or full-time? Do you permit your staff to work from home?

Why I Ask

Editing, writing, and design can easily be done at home. All you need is a computer with the right software, plus an internet connection to send and receive files.

These jobs also make it easy for employers to track employees' work. Work-from-home employees can be told, "Edit/write/lay out X number of documents per day," and then either they produce the work or they don't.

Being a writer/editor/designer, I've had several jobs where I could have performed my work from home easily, saving myself the significant time, expense, and hassle of commuting. I've also had jobs where I could have allowed my direct reports to perform their work at home and saved THEM the hassle of commuting. Yet my employer said no.

What Holds Companies Back?

It's not uncommon for an employee's work-from-home request to be denied. Employers give a variety of reasons for saying no. I will discuss some of those reasons here.
  1. Technology and/or security. An employer might say that the infrastructure does not exist for an employee to be able to access company files from home without compromising data security.

    News flash: The technology DOES exist. In fact, it has existed for so long that it's not even very expensive anymore. If a company tells you that the technology does not exist, that's code for either, "We don't want to pay for it," or, "Technology/security is not the real issue, but that's our story and we're sticking to it."

  2. Tracking/logistics. With some jobs, performance can be evaluated on a quota-type system: employees are responsible for completing X number of tasks per day. Other jobs do not lend themselves to quotas, making them much more difficult for a boss to evaluate what work-from-home employees do or how productive they are.

    Some jobs simply cannot be performed at home because they require an employee to be on site (for example, in-person tech support). Fair enough.

  3. Trust. This is the biggest issue for most companies, I think. Many bosses believe that employees inevitably goof off more and work less when they don't have a supervisor literally breathing down their necks.

    In my opinion, if you're hiring employees that you don't trust, you have bigger problems than your employees' physical location, and you'd be better off addressing the real problems instead.

  4. Rank/seniority. At some companies, working from home is a privilege reserved only for the elite. Some companies confer this privilege on senior staff or C-level staff only.

    At one company, I was told that the technology did not exist to allow us to access the company's database from home. Later, I learned that the technology DID exist. In fact full-time staff worked from home all the time. But I was a contractor, and the privilege of working from home was not extended to contractors.
It Goes Beyond Saving Gas Money

Commuting is expensive, no doubt about it. Car payments, repairs, and insurance are expensive. Gasoline costs a fortune (upwards of $4.50 a gallon in the Chicago area this week). Even riding public transportation gets costlier all the time.

Working from home also saves time, which is invaluable. It also eases many of life's daily stresses (for example, being able to sign for a UPS package or let the cable guy in).

What Employees Hear

I wonder if employers realize how it sounds to employees when they are told, "You may not work from home, even though your job could be done from home very easily."

Employees hear one or all of the following:
  • We don't trust you.
  • Your time is not valuable to us.
  • We have no problems wasting your money.
  • We are deliberately denying something that could make your life better (sometimes for no good reason).
Employers, I'm not going to screw around here. Your employees are not stupid, especially in this increasingly tech-savvy age. If you deny employees' requests to work from home and you provide no logical reason, you can expect to lose valuable and talented staff to companies that do allow it. When the pendulum swings back and it becomes an employee's market again, it would behoove you to either revisit your policies or budget for turnover.

Friday, April 22, 2011

Happy Earth Day and Good Friday


Good morning!

Today is a great day to state my new goal for this blog: MORE PICTURES!

I mean, really. Text is great and all, but pictures make it livelier. Even the newspapers figured that one out decades ago.

Sure, it may be difficult to illustrate the topics that I write about (editing, writing, etc.). But that's part of the challenge now isn't it? And I love a good challenge.

So, have a happy Easter Weekend, everyone! May you gorge yourselves on chocolate, enjoy time with family and friends, and don't step on any of those rotten Easter eggs that nobody found from last year.

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Spotlight on Science Writing


My first "real job" out of college was as a science writer. I would go to the Harvard Medical Library, photocopy studies of interest, bring them back to the office, and write about them for a nonscientist audience at an 8th grade reading level.

It was some of the most challenging and interesting work I've ever done. I majored in Biology during college, and even though I decided that writing/editing was my true calling, I'm always interested in the latest scientific research and discoveries.

So I had to share this excellent article called "Do Cellphones Cause Brain Cancer?" To me this is an example of truly excellent science writing. It presents scientific findings in an interesting and relatable way, and explores all sides of the issue with journalistic integrity.

Monday, April 18, 2011

How Poor Editing Affects Your Credibility Online


It's Grill Season! (If It Would Ever Stop Snowing, That Is)

Yesterday my husband and I were at Home Depot looking to purchase a gas grill with our tax refund.

Like many modern consumers, we were looking at grills in person, then using our phones to go on the web and read reviews of those grills from people who already own them.

At one point, I wandered off with our two-year-old, who was eager to look at the "fires" (flowers) in the garden department. Meanwhile my husband stayed with the grills and his 4G phone.

When we came back, I asked what he thought of a particular grill. He loved it. "The reviews were great," he said. "There were one or two bad reviews, but I ignored them, because they were so full of typos and bad grammar that it was, like, you can't take them seriously," he said.

No Grammar = No Cred

I'm sure the hubs wasn't intending to give me blog material. But I had to pounce on this one.

When you read something online, and it's riddled with abuses of the English language (glaring errors in grammar, atrocious spelling, total ignorance of punctuation, etc.), does it cause you to take the writer's ideas less seriously?

For me, the answer is: Yes. But it depends on HOW bad the abuses are. A typo here or there doesn't bother me, especially on a friend's blog or other nonprofessional piece of content. Professional publications, however, should be editing what they publish.

And we've all seen those extreme examples. Some individual writes a product review, or comments on a news story, and their text has more mistakes than an alley cat has fleas. It's hard to take somebody seriously as a communicator when they pay so little attention to how they communicate. Subconsciously, I've even gone one step further and found myself forming an opinion of a writer's intelligence. I admit it. It's hard not to, when you can't even make it through what they wrote without pausing every other word to wonder what they actually meant to say.

It's the same with professional publications. If I'm reading a news story or other informational piece online, and it has obviously not been edited at all, my eyes flicker up to the domain name and the company logo. I'm likely to take the entire website/company less seriously. I'm even likely to avoid that website in the future because I consider it to be less trustworthy.

It's Not About the Mistake(s)

I always say, with grammar and spelling errors, it's almost never about the mistake itself. It's about how the mistake makes you look: rushed, uneducated, careless.

I realized that, as an editor, I may be more likely than most people to take error-riddled online content less seriously. What do YOU think?

Friday, April 15, 2011

Strange Sightings

While riding the L train to work this morning, I saw a strange thing.

Not one, but TWO people were reading newspapers. Not on their phones, either. Actual paper papers.

And both of them were under 45! Will wonders never cease?

Joking aside, I was surprised at my surprise. It doesn't seem like very long ago that half the people on my morning train were reading newspapers. Now it's rarer than a Jew at a high mass.

That was fast.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

E-Book Readers: Pros and Cons

Many of you who read this blog know that I am fascinated with e-book readers. I find it so interesting how these devices have changed (and will change) the way that people read books.

Despite e-book readers’ growing popularity, nobody in my close circle (i.e., people I see on a daily basis) has one. As a result, I haven’t been able to hold, touch, or play with one.

So I asked my 294 Facebook friends about it. Their answers were so interesting that I had to share them here.

Survey Says...

I asked:

Do you have a Kindle, Nook, or other type of e-book reader? If so, what do you love about it, and has it made you get rid of paper books? If not, do you ever see yourself getting one, or are you sticking to paper books forever?

Many people who responded did have an e-book reader and were in love with it. Others boldly took a stand that they would be loyal to paper books until the end.

Here are the highlights.

E-Book Readers: Pros

  • Nice to have on trips (most e-book owners mentioned this)
  • I like not having books cluttering my house… and my carry-on when I travel
  • I love being able to get a new book anywhere, anytime (Kindle)
  • I like the screen size and the matte background. I can't stand reading on a monitor, especially after sitting in front of a computer for 8+ hours (Kindle)
  • I can read it outside in sunlight (Kindle)
  • I can read in the dark (iPad)
  • I can borrow ebooks from my library with it (Nook)
  • I like making notes and keeping quotes in a file and using the dictionary option. (Kindle)
  • With work and research I have a ton of academic journal articles and books and literally don't have room for more on the shelves. I didn't want to buy books for fun because I had nowhere to put them.
  • Tons of free books (Kindle)
  • I read books on my iphone every night with the Kindle app… it's nice because you can set it to have a black background with white text (so no need for an exterior light to read in the dark)... But you can’t read in direct sunlight with the ipad/phone.
  • The Pandigital does movies, music, and pictures as well.

E-Book Readers: Cons (and Points in Favor of Physical Books)

  • I don't like that I can't share books. :( (Kindle)
  • It’s not flash capable and surfing the web on it is a bit cumbersome. (Nook Color)
  • It's not good in water (I destroyed my first one the second day I had it) (Kindle)
  • I like my hardcopies. There is something personal, unique, and intimate about the printed page and the markings, dog-earings, and stuff of life it accumulates.
  • Reading on a screen dries out and strains my eyes, giving me tension headaches. It is also difficult for me to concentrate when reading electronic documents.
  • As an author I just like the idea of publishing a physical, self-contained book. … For some reason, not willing to pay more money to buy a physical book, a little piece of art, seems disrespectful to an author.
  • I still buy comics in paper form, but mostly because most of the ones I like aren't available digitally.
  • The concept of paying for a file seems ridiculous to me… what happened to mp3's will happen to ebooks.
  • I end up spending too much money.
  • If I want to read a book but have no desire to add it to my book shelf, I'll just support my public library and check it out from there.
  • [My husband] has a Pandigital and he LOVES it, but he will not give up paper books. He likes being able to read more books more easily and will then purchase the books he wants to have for the shelves based on that.
  • I'm just not that keen on the Kindle when I have an attic full of books.
  • Paper books are pretty, and they smell good.
  • The "read to me" kid books are filmstrip like, so not a real bonus. (Nook Color)
  • The screen is not as responsive as I'd like, sometimes you push and nothing happens or you turn a page, then two sentences in you realize you just read that. (Nook Color)

The Most Telling Comments

Two comments really summed it up for me:

  • I've started coming around to the idea of an e-reader, if only because shelf space in my apartment is a finite resource and as much as I love reading and books, I'm starting to think that I'd rather reserve that space for the physical books I truly LOVE. I may enjoy re-reading my Valdemar books and the Shopaholic series as guilty pleasure "palate cleansers," but do I really need them taking up my shelf space? Nah. Keeping them on an e-reader seems like a good solution.

    Plus, I've definitely been guilty of keeping books, even though I'm likely not going to re-read them again, because it's a book one "should" read/keep on hand for reference (I mean honestly, I'd rather have my toenails pulled than read Moby Dick again, so why do I have it on my shelf??); something of the whole "look at my shelf and see how well-read I am!" thing. And really, I'm not an insecure teenager anymore. But I'd still like to have those books on hand, so again, e-reader material.

  • I've always been a die-hard paper fan... I fear change. However, having moved twice in the last 3 years and looking at maybe moving again soon it would sure be nice not to have to pack and unpack 9 boxes of books every time.

The finite nature of bookshelf space may be the most appealing argument in favor of e-book readers for me.

It’s also nice to think about moving house without having 20 very heavy boxes of books in the equation. This is already a problem, and I’m 34, and I expect to keep purchasing books throughout my life. By the time I’m 68, I’ll need an army of burly moving men just to haul my books.

I am also guilty of keeping books that I am unlikely to read again. I find it difficult to get rid of books. I’m not sure why. Sure, I paid for them, but that’s not the issue (with a couple of expensive exceptions, like my antique Complete Works of Shakespeare and my high school literature textbook). Part of it is a pack-rat tendency (“Well, I MIGHT someday read it again, or loan it to someone”).

Mostly I have trouble getting rid of physical books because the written word has been, and always will be, such an important part of my life. Books are an external demonstration of that. A bookshelf full of books says something about you: “I am literate and educated, and I value great ideas.” But perhaps an e-book reader says that about you too…

Then there’s the appeal of the physical book. Somehow, having an object that I can hold in my hand makes it more real to me, and therefore more valuable in some inexpressible way. I wonder if my daughter will feel the same way, or if a “book,” to her, will always mean just a long series of words on a screen.

Friday, April 8, 2011

That Dastardly Comma

At work yesterday, I was amazed (and somewhat delighted) when an entire discussion broke out about commas. Specifically, the use of the "Oxford comma," also known as the "serial comma," in a list of words.

If you need a quick refresher, here's what I am talking about:
  • Serial (Oxford) comma:

    I ate cookies, ice cream, and cake. (Comma before "and")

  • No serial comma:

    I ate cookies, ice cream and cake. (No comma before "and")
In our discussion at work, one gentleman insisted that the "Oxford comma" was the one, true comma. The one comma to rule them all. The way, the truth, and the comma. I mean, this guy was preaching the Gospel of the Comma. He waved a tablet with the 10 Commandments, and one of them was about commas.

For the record, he's wrong. Neither of the two options above is incorrect. Like many points of punctuation, it depends what style guide you are using. For instance, the Chicago Manual promotes the serial comma, whereas the Associated Press manual advises leaving it out.

So never fear. If you like to put a comma before the "and," it's cool. If you leave it out, that's cool too. And if some know-it-all tries to shut you down, just point to your style guide of choice and say, "SEE?"

Don't Quit Your Day Job

On a related topic, sometimes it amazes me how passionate people can get over punctuation, grammar, pronunciation and spelling (especially on the web, where it's easy to cast manners to the wind). The way some people act, you'd think you had spit on their grandmother rather than using "you're" when you meant "your." Fights break out. Name-calling ensues. I've seen it happen on many a web page.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying it's bad to care about punctuation and grammar. Far from it! But there is such a thing as caring TOO MUCH. My advice: If you are so full of righteous indignation and desire to improve the world that you must accost a stranger about points of grammar, join the Peace Corps. Leave the proofreading to the professionals, who will do it subtly, via tracked changes.

How Often Do You Blog?

Bloggers, how often do you blog?

Edit This Blog has been around for about six months now. Some months, I'm inspired, writing twice a week or more. Other months, a couple of weeks will go by with nothing new.

I suppose your answer to "How often do you blog?" depends on your topic, your audience, and how much free time you have (and whether you're paid to blog -- wouldn't THAT be nice!). I wish I had more time to write on this blog, but the mundane details of life often get in the way.

A related question: When you're reading somebody else's blog, how often do you like to see new entries? If new entries get posted seldom enough, do you get bored and give up on the blog?

Do you wish you had time to blog more often, like I do? Or do you feel obligated, because it's a blog, to write more often than you really want? Did you ever let a blog of yours perish by attrition because you just didn't have anything to say? Perhaps you "outgrew" it or moved on to another topic of interest in your life?

My favorite entertainment blog is Go Fug Yourself. It's my go-to site whenever I want a laugh and some eye candy. Those girls are on fire and post several times a day.

But if I'm reading a friend's personal blog, I realize that they all have lives and don't post every day. Even my friends who are writers don't blog every day. I bookmark their blogs and keep visiting them until something new appears. I'm as loyal to the blogs as I am to the friends.

Thanks for listening to my unorganized musings. I'm not trying to make a science out of blogs. I'm simply curious what other bloggers' experiences have been.

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Wednesday Funnies

(Thanks Michi for sharing this one) The top 10 best obnoxious responses to misspellings on Facebook.

http://www.someecards.com/2011/04/06/the-best-obnoxious-responses-to-misspellings-on-facebook


I do wonder what Miss Manners would say about publicly shaming someone for a misspelling. She'd probably think it very rude. I recall someone once asked Miss M whether it would be OK to nicely suggest to a stranger in a public restroom that they help the environment by taking fewer than 15 paper towels to dry their hands. Her advice was that Tree Hugger in Virginia should keep her trap shut.

Personally, I don't publicly shame people for spelling mistakes. People have all kinds of different abilities in this life and spelling may or may not be one of them. Unless I'm being paid to proofread, I don't really give a damn about pointing out a mistake (though I may snicker privately to myself).

Unless, of course, it's a mistake so humorous that I can't help myself. Consider yourself warned.