Grammar Lesson in Capitalization

In my novel, there is a mention of the Internet. When editing, I stopped to ask, “Is Internet capitalized?” My memory said yes, but my inner three-year-old asked, “Why?”

Grammar Girl of http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/capitalizing-proper-nouns.aspx answered the question simply. Internet is a proper noun:

Most language experts including the Associated Press and the editors of the Chicago Manual of Style and the Yahoo Style Guide, believe the Internet is one big specific network that people visit, so they recommend capitalizing the word “Internet.”

On the other hand, the Web is populated by many different websites, so “website” is not capitalized. It is a generic term that can be used to describe many different locations.

“Internet” is a proper noun because it refers to something specific, whereas “website” is a common noun because it can be used to refer to many different places on the Internet.

As a Writer, What If I Am Just Average?

On WordPress, I continue to be amazed by the collection of talent. Sometimes an author’s writing floors me with its power, cleverness, raw emotion or beautiful use of language.

I am none of those things. I am a nerd who can correctly string together a series of words. As a writer–as a word artist–I am average.

How then do I expect to compete in the commercial marketplace? The same way an average employee competes in the workplace. By showing up. By giving my best effort. And like a tidal wave, by sheer volume. A dose of self-promotion is important, too. If I don’t market, I won’t sell. (Please don’t stop reading here. The best of this post is yet to come.)

I’ve said this before and I will say it again: throw enough at a wall and something will stick.

Part of succeeding as an average writer is finding my audience. I do that by writing in all the ways that appeal to me–short stories, haiku, flash fiction and novels. (In 2013, I hope to add internet content to the list.) Then I analyze. Of those things I like to write, what are people reading?

I need to look at my statistics. What do statistics tell me about what readers like in my work? Is it my true confessions? Is it self-improvement or how-to articles? Pop culture? Or factual pieces? Humorous stories? The off-the-wall?

Success is finding the match of my abilities with a need in the marketplace.

Ask the reader.

So I am asking you right now. What do you like best about this blog? Why do you stop by? Is there something which you’d like to see more often? Any answer is a helpful one. Silence hurts. So tell me something, anything, that will make this blog a better experience for you. Even if it is what you don’t like. Say, “Fay, dump this. Keep that.” Bring it on. Help me get better.

For me, that’s what it is all about. The best part is serving, helping, pleasing you, the reader.

The next best part is getting good enough to earn a paycheck! But that’s another post for another day.  🙂

Simple Ways to Protect Your Internet Privacy

Would you hang a sign in front of your house with your name, date of birth, social security number and private family information in large block letters for anyone driving by to read and record? No, unless you want a ton of trouble.

Sometimes those using modern communication devices like a smart phone, iPad or portable computing device hang information about themselves out there for the taking. Kashmir Hill of Forbes magazine offers tips to protect your privacy.

• Password protect all your devices. This keeps someone from casually reading your messages or documents. So many internet writers confess to reading other people’s messages when left alone with a friend’s device.
• Use Google Alert to find out what others are saying about you on-line. It takes 60 seconds to fill out the form. http://www.google.com/alerts
• Sign out when you finish on e-mail, bank sites, auction or retail sales sites or social media. This is especially important if you are using someone else’s device. Don’t leave the door open to your private information.
• Use cash to buy things. Data mining companies know about your on-line and credit card purchases and sell that information to others. Next thing you know, you are bombarded with ads from embarrassing vendors who bought your name from a list.
• Set your Facebook page to Friends Only. No need to share your private life with the world — or ID thieves.
• Clear your browser history and cookies routinely. Hackers love to snoop to see where you’ve been on-line.
• Use an IP masker to confuse those snooping on you. Check https://www.torproject.org/ for more information.

 

Stop Thieves from Stealing Your Content

Stop! Thief!

A reader sent me an e-mail with a link to a wonderful blog post with lots of information about stopping thieves from stealing your content.

Before I go any further, let me clarify something. If a blogger uses a selection — not wholesale copying of the entire work — from another blog AND attributes ownership to the rightful author AND is using the selection for educational purposes, it falls under Fair Use.  That’s the way I roll here — I tell you where the information comes from and tell you how it may help you as an author.

That said,  blogger “Between Naps on the Porch” (BNP) talks about nefarious sorts lifting multiple posts from BNP, stealing text and photos without any attribution, and re-blogging the entire content on a commercial site owned by the thief. BNP slowed the theft using several techniques:

• watermarking original photographs
• using plug-ins to attach messages that travel with content
• asking readers to report content theft
• including back-links to previous posts
• checking the site statistics
• hiring a programmer to write code to make it hard to steal things

and more. Go to the following BNP linked site to learn more about how to stop content thieves from stealing from you. It’s a long, detailed read that is worth your time.

http://betweennapsontheporch.net/stop-scrapers-from-stealing-your-content/

Primp Your Blog, A New Leaf

In an update on an old friend, Kira, the creator of Primp My Blog, has changed her website, suitably calling it “Her New Leaf.”

In her words:

While working on my blog’s redesign, it was a (lofty) goal of mine to do all of the design work myself. Considering I am a self-taught Photoshopper, have minimal HTML experience, and little to no CSS knowledge, this was a lot to take on. I found it really difficult to find the information I was looking for out there on the big, bad internet, and the information I did find was often too technical for me to understand or poorly translated to English. But I accomplished my goal, and I love my new blog, and in the true spirit of Her New Leaf, I learned a ton of new things in the process!

I’m excited to share my knowledge with you in a  feature called Primp My Blog. I hope to present the information I find all over the internet in an easy and readable way so that someone who is brand new to blogging can utilize it. Please let me know what you hope to learn, and I will do my best to learn it myself, then share here!

Go here to see for yourself. There are lots of tips and tools to help you make the most of your social media sites.

http://www.hernewleaf.com/primp-my-blog/

Bot-Bombed

When I first saw the term bot-bombed, I gathered it was a bad thing, but hadn’t a clue what it meant.  At ryan2pointo.wordpress.com I learned the damage a bot-bomb can do to a business. For authors, the bot-bomb damage becomes relevant when we have books to sell, and we need accurate tracking of  site traffic to gauge ratios of sales to traffic, etc.

Ryan Tracey of ryan2pointo.wordpress.com discusses the tools out there to fix the problem if you get bot-bombed. He also explains why bot-bombing may happen.

http://ryan2point0.wordpress.com/2012/09/03/ive-been-bot-bombed/#comment-3151