Ah, yes, MS Word, my old nemesis … 
Source: Meredith Ireland
Categories
Category: Writing
I am a writer so tools, techniques and thoughts about writing are pretty interesting to me. This category is where I tend to group many of those posts about writing.
Appreciating our colleagues
We have an amazing culture at Automattic that includes giving each other kudos as one form of recognition for great work, whether that’s delivering happiness to a customer, or to each other.
Typically we use a Slack bot to share kudos, and that’s posted to an internal WordPress site dedicated to showcasing internal kudos.
At the Grand Meetup (which we attended in mid-September – I’ll probably share more from that soon), we also have the option of giving handwritten kudos to each other. I like the ease of giving digital kudos, and at the same time I really like being able to write a note to my colleagues to express my appreciation for their efforts.
This year I was fortunate to receive a few cards from my colleagues, and really appreciate each of them.
I decided against sharing details of all of the cards I received as the messages can be pretty personal. At the same time, I’m grateful for each card.
Here in Israel we have people who speak Hebrew, Russian, Arabic, and English (just to name more common languages). Keyboards sold here tend to have at least English and Hebrew layouts to cater for what are probably more typical requirements.
When I bought a new keyboard and mouse for our daughter (I went with a Logitech K120 cabled keyboard and mouse combo), I managed to buy a keyboard with English, Hebrew, and Cyrillic layouts.
I don’t speak Russian, so I don’t have a need for the Cyrillic layout. I’ve been using my daughter’s keyboard this morning, and having the extra Cyrillic layout is a little too confusing for me.
Featured image credit: Juan Gomez on Unsplash
Twitter threads make no sense to me. I also find then to be pretty frustrating.
I’ve read some really interesting, and engaging Twitter threads (you probably have too). Every time I read one, I ask myself two questions:
- Why is this person going out of their way to share this story/their thoughts on a format that breaks the flow with every tweet?
- Why doesn’t this person value their ideas/content/thoughts enough to give them/it a dedicated home on the Web that others can return to?
Sure, Twitter is great for firing off missives on the go. It’s both a real benefit, and the reason why Twitter’s becoming the seedy part of the Web.
It’s also a space that you don’t control, don’t own, and have no guarantee will still respect you in the morning. Taking the time to formulate your thoughts, and share them one tweet at a time, over multiple tweets, reflects a degree of dedication, and a determination to share them with the world.
Why, then, would you do the digital equivalent of carving your thoughts into beach sand, only to see it washed out when the tide comes in?
There are so many opportunities to share your ideas in a more resilient format, such as a blog, or even a collection of static HTML pages on a server somewhere. You can even tweet the link, if you want to get it out to your Twitter followers.
The cost of setting up, and maintaining a blog, are almost negligible. Do that instead. Your future readers will thank you.
Oh, and on a related note …
I occasionally come across tweets that attach images of typed documents. Please don’t do that. See above.
Featured image by drmakete lab
I keep wanting to buy more Field Notes notebooks, but I’m not going through the ones I do order fast enough to justify buying more.
In the meantime, I really should have chosen a faster shipping method for my Rams order. I’m nearly finished my current notebook, and my order hasn’t arrived yet.
I can’t decide which to use next: another Three Missions notebook or another Pitch Black notebook with dot graph paper (my favourite)?
Write is a curious product. The goal is to take your handwritten notes, and make them editable in a digital format. You have to watch the demo video to really see how this works:
I’m not sure what to think about it. I take handwritten notes quite a bit these days, so the idea of making my handwritten notes more useful to me than a static PDF or image (at the moment, I capture many of my handwritten notes into Evernote where they’re OCR’d – hypothetically).
At the same time, being able to edit my notes almost like I’d edit typed notes seems a little weird. One of the reasons that handwritten notes are helpful is because writing apparently helps improve retention, and because I don’t need to open an app on a device to take notes. I can just open my notebook and start writing.
Bringing those notes into a digital editor seems to remove some of the benefit of writing in the first place. Or perhaps a better way to think about this is to see it as a sort of post-processing stage where you take your raw notes, and finish them off in some way.
Now and then I feel like I need a refresher on how to use certain forms of punctuation. Today it was the semicolon, which I have abused on multiple occasions.
The most feared punctuation on earth.
I did a little Googling and found this awesome guide on The Oatmeal titled “How to use a semicolon“. Not only is this guide really useful and worth bookmarking, it is a reminder of just how awesome The Oatmeal is, generally.
Other terrific grammar guides include:
- How to Use An Apostrophe;
- 10 Words You Need To Stop Misspelling; and
- How to use the word “Literally“.
Even people who write for a living could use a reminder now and then. I certainly do.
It was the right thing to do. Often software only feels that way before you use it. The really good stuff feels that way even after you’ve settled in.
I like my software like I like good, new shoes: it feels good when I start using it and just feels more comfortable and natural the more I do.