Blog

Do you run a business from your home office? Are you a freelancer? Consultant? Tutor? Music teacher? Craftsperson?  Translator? Baker? Artist?  Author?….   The list is almost endless. Given real estate prices in major cities and the costs and time involved in long commutes, more and more people – who have that option – are choosing to work from home, at least part of the time, while many work full time at a huge range of home-based businesses. Entrepreneurs, creative artists, and freelancers all have very different needs and may face different issues but some problems are common to all, whether you’re a best-selling author with a comfortable home office, a struggling musician working out of your parents’ basement, or pretty much anywhere in between.   ...

Find grammar nerds annoying? You’re not alone. Reasons for being ‘anti-grammar’ range from a strong dislike of being corrected through a dislike of people we consider ‘nit-picky’ to a feeling that obsessing over grammar stymies the creative flow. In all fairness, these are all reasonably valid reasons. Unfortunately, as an editor, it’s the errors in grammar or punctuation that leap out at me, even when reading an otherwise excellent piece of writing. I’m likely comparable to the woman (I feel this type is almost always a woman, though men may display similar characteristics in other circumstances) that walks into a seemingly immaculate house and immediately notices (and comments on) the one tiny area that has somehow escaped the cleaner’s eag ...

As we get into the second half of the year and relax into summer, we thought we’d take a break from grammar and punctuation tips and focus on a different topic. , How green is your workspace? As climate change no longer looms as a future disaster (because, of course, it’s here right now with many countries feeling devastating effects already), we can no longer ignore our carbon footprint in the workplace.   Encouraging climate- and planet-friendly practices at work is a no-brainer.   How green your workspace is will depend to some extent on just where you work. ‘Greening’ a communal space in a large office building, or a small cubicle in an open-plan office, requires a different approach than is needed if you work from home. One might hope that many corpor ...