If you write in more than one language but don’t want to switch keyboards when you do, read on. I regularly write in French as well as English. Spanish and Italian also sometimes make their way into work product and correspondence. In those languages, certain letters are
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“Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.” ― Mark Twain I’m always looking for tricks to improve my writing. One trick I learned a long time ago involves culling excess verbiage from
Read more →Autocorrect features help you prevent misspellings, but they have other uses as well. For instance, you can create shortcuts to help you quickly insert: special symbols that don’t appear on your keyboard (like ©, ®, ¿ and ¡) boilerplate text emojis These features ship standard on every
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Do you have an office job that lets you work remotely? If you do, chances are you work not so much on your computer as you do through a secure “tunnel” into your company’s servers. Whether you use Windows or a Mac the work environment appears as
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I’ve been increasingly making phone calls using my Mac, without even touching my iPhone. FaceTime on the Mac makes this possible when my Mac and iPhone are connected to the same WiFi network. (Apple provides full setup instructions here.) It’s a great convenience. The sound is fine,
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Two weeks ago, I covered the basics of using Apple’s Dictionary.app. What I wrote covers the bases for my work as a journalist, technical writer and automotive reviewer. But as a translator, I need references that cover different languages. Fortunately, Apple enables me to look up terms in
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On any given workday, I wear one or more of the following hats: journalist, technical writer, translator, automotive reviewer, editor, student. The written word follows me all day long (or do I follow it?) My grasp of grammar and vocabulary are good, but there’s always room for
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Two weeks ago, I published a blog post explaining how I switch between English, French, Italian and Spanish on my Mac. Today’s post talks about similar options on my iOS devices. Switching keyboards in iOS When I type any sort of text in iOS, I need to
Read more →We all have issues with our computers from time to time. Sometimes those issues show themselves via odd behaviour on your computer’s screen. Odd behaviour like this is a great reason to take a “snapshot” of the screen. Screenshots let you show other people everything that happens on your computer screen,
Read more →It’s common for people to replace their computers every three or four years. They seem to believe performance degrades so much that they need new machines to gain speed increases. Sometimes that’s true. Hard disk drives,for instance, can wear over time. Inexpensive machines aren’t usually built to be upgraded. But
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