Posts

It's national epilepsy awareness day. It's all too common and is a life Channing disease. Get yourself aware. 

https://www.epilepsysociety.org.uk/seizure-first-aid

Thanks for the update. I don't find it too full of self promo but it very much depends who you follow I guess. I'm really enjoying it so far. It remains to be seen how my many leads it will produce but I believe it will be great. 

Gosh that sounds terrible! I feel for you. I would contact the CAB for free advice and also try calling a few solicitors as the majority offer an initial free phone consultation. Your local chamber of commerce may also have some great advice .

Very apt! Vinyl is getting more popular than CDs I think. Certainly cooler. 

Originally Posted by Barney

“Don’t know......... But looking forward to finding out.....”

Really? I'm still hoping it's all a bad dream....

The answer is £90 (ish). The World's top ten most expensive cities (and top ten cheapest) were announced. Paris was top alongside Hong Kong and Singapore. The cheapest place to live is Caracas in Venezuela. I had a friend at school who was born there as her dad worked for Shell, I have never been though. I have been to Paris a few times and it IS expensive. C'est la vie! 

Will Brexit affect any of this? Will London become more expensive? Nothing gets cheaper that's for sure. 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47617206

Here is the latest version, really useful when you need to know the dimensions for logos and cover photos etc. on various social media platforms. Care of LouiseM.com

It's not really as simplistic as that though Andy. We receive a great deal of funding back from the EU, the number of things that have been helped by EU funding is numerous in this country. And the laws we adhere to through them are things like human rights, it's not all straight bananas. 

Is the EU perfect? No. But is the free movement of people and goods worth it? Yes. Absolutely. In my opinion we're shooting ourselves in the foot. The anti immigration crew won't even benefit as we'll have to do trade deals with India and China, so we'll end up having to agree to unlimited immigration from those countries instead. 

This post was back in November yet nothing has actually changed....and it's nearly deadline day with the EU! All this time since the referendum of doom and nothing is sorted out at all. How ridiculous!

Does anyone think we will still leave? I still think they should abort. Then we can look back and laugh about it in a few years.

I could argue you always need a proofreader and you should in fact hire me to check your every written word. That would be preposterous and unsustainable as a business model, even if people were convinced! 

We all post a lot of text these days. There's WhatsApp (other messaging services are available), Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, of course LinkedIn and loads of other platforms I don't have. We send emails, we text the other half about what's for tea and for business we constantly communicate in the form of words.

 So what should you proofread? You can't get every tweet and Facebook post checked, you'd never post anything! Unless you're a proofreader or writer it's unlikely that grammar or spelling mistakes in everyday posting will affect your brand or business. Arguably even longer posts and blogs needn't be perfect (did I just say that? I feel a bit sick now..) IF they are well written. If you have a great style and lots of interesting things to say people will forgive a few grammatical errors. Although don't think they won't be noticed, some people will always notice. 

That's a big if though and I actually have a lot of respect for some great bloggers and social media influencers who have terrible grammar but don't care and it's almost part of their brand. Even if it does make me want to get my red pen out! But if you're offering any type of writing service, including web design, social media management or marketing it might be harder to find clients that don't mind about those mistakes. 

Websites are the biggest place I think you really need to get it right. That text stays there and it doesn't scroll away down a Twitter feed, people read it carefully if they want to know about your services and that website is as close to you as some potential clients will ever get. Obviously my eagle eye spots even tiny errors but you'd be surprised how many websites are littered with quite obvious mistakes. 

Anything printed you're in even bigger trouble, at least a website can be updated relatively easily (in theory), print is permanent. I'm sure we've all printed something then realised there's a mistake. I made my wedding invitations for my first wedding and nearly invited everyone to a gold club instead of a golf club ..... It's so hard to see the obvious when it's your own text, the brain sees what it wants to. Nothing worse than reading a self published book when they've skimped on the proofreading.... Because trust me you can tell (and yes of course there are worse things, don't get me started on menus!)

So do you need a proofreader all the time? No of course not and you may choose to never use one, but please get someone with some skill in the area to read through your blogs and web copy and anything you are getting printed, it may cost you not to.  Grammarly (free online grammar checker) and the spellcheck in Word are very useful tools but they won't spot everything. 

And if you need a proofreader anytime soon you know who to call, *points to herself*