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Microsoft Thesaurus

Super' computers are only as good as what's on them

Welcome to a Laptop Battery specialist of Hp laptop battery   First post by: www.itsbattery.com

Just remember this, you young computer geeks: Content rules and always will.

Let's say you were writing that college essay, or that big proposal, and you had the fastest super-Pentium available out there, and a gazillion-meg memory on that laptop.

What would it matter that you had that super-duper computer if, as they say in the business, your ideas were ... let me use the Microsoft thesaurus feature here, so I don't use an offensive word ... your ideas were ... horse hockey?

Sure, with all that computer power, you could download a lot of videos and music.

So what.

That doesn't get you a job. That doesn't get you into that graduate school. That doesn't impress that corporate bigwig.

That bigwig wants content, and the ideas that'll make money for him. And even right now, in the fabulous year 2002, unless you're doing graphics, that content could be written on a computer with a memory that'd only hold 10 pages of text which is what, 8K or 16K of memory?

Last week, I wrote about the original classic laptop, which was around back in the mid-1980s, and really only had a 10-page text memory. It was the Radio Shack TRS-80, and it came with a little gray-on-gray screen, and it didn't even have a hard drive. Radio Shack didn't keep sales figures for the laptop, but Rick Hanson, of Pleasant Hill, Calif., who runs a Web site devoted to the TRS-80s (www.the-dock.com), estimates 6 million of the laptops were sold, and that around 1 million still are in use.

Why? Here are excerpts from an e-mail I got from Ross Anderson, a former Times reporter. He used one of these (now worth $200) Radio Shacks back in 1997, when he did a 17-part series retracing the Klondike Gold Rush.

Ross wrote me:

"For the record, the fact that the TRS-80 was expendable was only one of the reasons I chose to take it on the trip. The others:

"The Times was willing to buy a state-of-the-art satellite phone, but the things weighed 50 pounds. I had no interest in hauling that sucker over Chilkoot Pass, or down the Yukon River. Besides, when I investigated, I learned that by the time you get as far north as the Yukon, the operative satellite is so low on the horizon ... I would have had to climb a mountain, which did not interest me.

"Secondly, all the highfalutin laptops have very limited battery life, 95 percent of which is used to drive the color screen. With 2 or 3 hours of battery, and only encountering an electrical outlet every 4 or 5 days, it would have been useless. The 'Trash80,' on the other hand, doesn't have a fancy screen, so it goes forever on four AA batteries such as Compaq Presario NX9000 battery.

"In any event, I wrote each night, sitting in a tent or on a log beside the river. ... The machine worked perfectly. And nothing else would have."

I had e-mails from people such as Mike Oswald, a retired airline pilot. He had bought a TRS-80 in 1984. He loved the machine, but one day found out his son had given the laptop to a friend who came from a poor family and was then attending Bellevue Community College. That kid used the little laptop to take class notes, and eventually ended up getting a scholarship to a big-name California college.

Jim Byron of Bothell wrote me about how Boeing in 1987 sent him to a management-training class at the University of California at Berkeley.

"Since the school wouldn't let us tape lecture notes, we all had to take lecture notes. Each day, I would type them into my Model 100. Since it couldn't hold all my notes, I added a floppy drive. It worked for me! My little laptop was the only one in the class and I was often questioned about how I could remember this or that fact. I did it without a hard drive and 1G of RAM!"

So listen up, you young computer geeks.

I'm not telling you that you should be using one of these old, ancient laptops.

What I am saying is that last year's model, and the last-last-year's computer model, and last-last-last-year's computer model is plenty fine. It's the ideas, not the processor speed, that count.

About the Author

Welcome to a laptop battery specialist of the Apple Laptop Battery   First post by: www.itsbattery.com

Why isn't there Australian English as a thesaurus option?

I have Microsoft Office 2007 Home & Student. In Word I can not get English (Australia) as an option, I have US English and UK English but not Australian. How do I get it or what should I do to make it show up?

You can edit the language settings to read English (Australian) by navigating through the following steps:

Go to START > PROGRAMS > MICROSOFT OFFICE > MICROSOFT OFFICE TOOLS > MICROSOFT OFFICE LANGUAGE SETTINGS 2007

In the “Editing Languages” box click on English (Australia).

If you have more questions, don't hesitate to visit Microsoft Answers, where the community would be happy to help answer your questions. You can find it here: http://answers.microsoft.com.

Cheers,
KIM
MSFT Office Outreach Team

Microsoft Thesaurus
MS POWERPOINT 2007 Thesaurus

The 5 most important writing resources

This is a general list of useful resources for technical writers, which may also be helpful to other writers and communicators. I’m not necessarily advocating any particular products, but the examples are the products I use myself.

1. Editor or Peer reviewer

All the books I mention below are of entirely no use if not opened and read so the contents can be put into practice. I am now a strong proponent of using peer reviews and having an editor go over your work—preferably both. There’s no substitute for having an editor set you straight when you make an error; you’ll remember the lesson.

At the same time, an editor or peer reviewer will comment on inconsistencies, awkward structure, spelling mistakes, all of the things that the following books will do for you. Another person has a significantly better perspective on the quality of your writing than you do.

2. Dictionary

As with an editor or peer reviewer, I don’t think I can stress enough the importance of a good dictionary. A writer must produce correct spelling, grammar and usage and a good dictionary provides all of these.

I will also stress the importance of always using the same dictionary. By using the same dictionary for all your writing, your writing will be much more consistent. And if you’re writing for a client, you can always defend your writing decisions by referring to your chosen dictionary.

Being in Canada, I use the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, but the Oxford Dictionary of English is also available as an excellent authority of the English language.

3. Style guide

A style guide is another resource of which I cannot stress the importance enough. Whether you’re using Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style, The Associated Press Stylebook 2009 or the Canadian Press Stylebook, you can ensure consistency in your writing. This works in your favour again by making it easier to defend your writing decisions.

Specifically for technical applications, I use the Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications (sorry, this links to the second edition, and I would definitely recommend the third edition). This is an excellent guide for writing documentation and communication for software applications.

I also recommend creating a personal style guide.  While writing, make notes about preferred words, terms and other usage. Are you going to use am and pm, a.m. and p.m. or a 24-hour system (08:00, 20:00)? How are you going to write time zones? How do you handle abbreviations? While making your writing more consistent, it also removes the need to make these kinds of decisions on the fly.

4. Usage guide

While a usage guide can often be replaced by a dictionary and style guide, it helps to make decisions about usage in new situations, or confirm usage in awkward situations.

While I’ve heard some comments against it, I prefer Fowler’s Modern English Usage. I’ve managed to resolve a number of usage conflicts using Fowler’s; for example, whether I can use nor without having previously used neither (yes, I can).

5. Thesaurus

I do not to use a thesaurus. To quote Stephen King:

Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.
— Stephen King, “Everything You Need to Know About Writing Successfully - in Ten Minutes”, 1988

In fact, I find that repeating words, while sounding obviously repetitive, is easier for a reader to understand and really drives home a point. As well, good keywords in website content should be repeated as much as is reasonably possible.

Conclusion

To conclude, you see that there aren’t many resources, and there shouldn’t be. The more you have to make reference to a book, guide or even your own notes, you slow down your writing. And, if you’re like me, you lose your train of thought and your writing suffers. You don’t have to use (or even like) the suggestions I’ve made, but sticking to specific resources will ensure your writing is consistent and any decisions can be defended.

About the Author

Craig McNaughton is a highly proficient technical writer and web developer based in Saskatoon. He completed his technical writing certificate program at Humber College in Toronto, graduating magna cum laude. You can find him blogging at The Technical Writer Blog or freelancing at craigmcnaughton.ca.

Microsoft Thesaurus