Blog – Page 2 – Margie Beilharz

Tips and tricks: Search all your open browser tabs or bookmarked pages

You’ll thank me for this one! As we know, writing and editing can involve checking a lot of facts, and the number of open tabs on my browser window can quickly spiral out of control. Then it can be hard to remember which of the open pages had a particular piece of information or topic. If only you could search all your open tabs at once rather than searching each in turn.

It turns out you can – and have been able to for a while, but I’ve only just discovered this Chrome extension called Search Plus.

Search Plus Google Chrome extension Continue reading “Tips and tricks: Search all your open browser tabs or bookmarked pages”

Tips and tricks: Google My Business

Have you noticed that when you google a search term you’ll often get a box with a summary of relevant information on the right of the screen? This is the knowledge graph (like this one here for editor and author Sophie Cunningham), which contains information grabbed from various sources on the internet.Continue reading “Tips and tricks: Google My Business”

Tips and tricks: Post to your blog directly from Word

I’m insanely pleased to have discovered this, even though I don’t actually blog very often. But I could have used it in jobs I’ve had in the past, and may even be tempted to blog more now!

Did you know you can post to a blog directly from Microsoft Word?

This is exciting for a number of reasons.

First, Word has a lot of formatting junk in it. Generally that means it’s not a good idea to cut and paste from Word directly into your web page. You can end up with a lot of messy html that mucks up your page.Continue reading “Tips and tricks: Post to your blog directly from Word”

Book review: Make grammar great again

What do you do when Donald Trump becomes president of the United States? Stop watching the news? Book a flight into space? Hope the next four years will pass really quickly?

Melbourne copyeditor Meredith Forrester took a more proactive approach. Irritated by the President’s language-mangling tweets, she took it upon herself to respond with corrections.

Tips and tricks: Showing off your mark-up in PDFs

This tip was written for the May 2018 Editors Victoria newsletter.

One of the funny things about working as a freelance editor is that often you are not sure how familiar your author or client is with some of the software and techniques we tend to take for granted. Even editors vary in how familiar with are with features in Word, like styles, macros and templates. And I’m constantly amazed at the imaginative ways editors and others mark up PDFs.

Editing Indigenous content and other tips

I include a regular ‘Tips and tricks’ column in the Editors Victoria newsletter, linking to many online resources and tools.

This month I wrote about editing Indigenous content [IPEd archive, members only] – highlighting a discussion and resources presented at the national editors’ conference in Brisbane last year.

Event: Finding work

The 22 February Finding work panel discussion (see previous post) was written up by Danielle Vecchio for the Editors Victoria March newsletter. You can read the summary of tips and ideas here.

[Updated to link to archives, which are available to members only.]

February 2018 Event: Finding freelance work as an editor

I’m looking forward to hosting a panel on finding work for freelance editors at the next Editors Victoria evening meeting on Thursday 22 February 2018, here in Melbourne.

I’ll be chatting with three experienced editors who have experience in freelancing and/or employing freelance editors (and all three have also taught editing):

Lorna Hendry, a freelance editor, author and designer
Lu Sexton, a freelance writer and editor with a background in performing arts, theatre and local government
Sandra Duncanson, who has recently begun a new role as a publisher at Wiley after freelancing as a writer, editor and educational consultant.

Reflections not resolutions

Happy New Year and all the best for a great 2018.

Rather than coming up with New Year’s resolutions – which we all know are very hard to keep – I’m taking the opportunity of the holiday break to reflect on what I can do to achieve my professional goals in 2018.

In short, I want to maintain (or enhance) my freelancing business. I’m not after more work – I have a nice mix of regular clients and new ones that generally lets me keep the work flowing without having too many crazy busy weeks – but could focus on jobs that are more interesting, better paying or going in directions I want to develop.Continue reading “Reflections not resolutions”

Review: Lots of tips and procedures for better onscreen editing

I wrote this review for the Editors Victoria January 2017 newsletter (updated link to IPEd archive, members only)

The title of Geoff Hart’s book Effective Onscreen Editing (3rd edition) by no means conveys the full gamut of what this book contains. Indeed, it turns out be over 800 pages long, covering topics as diverse as how to securely transfer files, set pay rates and help your eyes focus, as well as the topics you would be expecting, such as how to manage macros, styles, templates, shortcuts and Track Changes (plus much more).Continue reading “Review: Lots of tips and procedures for better onscreen editing”

Science and communication in Brisbane 2016

The Australian Science Communicators are holding their annual conference in Brisbane on Friday 11 March. It’s networking and professional development for people who communicate science and technology to the general public, students or other audiences. Registration is now open.

The trip to Brisbane will be doubly worthwhile as you can also go along to the inaugural World Science Festival Brisbane, presented by the Queensland Museum from 9 to 13 March.

I’ve just sent out the March 2016 newsletter for Editors Victoria. Here’s my intro: