I was musing on this over the weekend while warping up my loom: good project planning manages to avoid most snitches, just like keeping warp threads tidy. So I'm pushing the analogy: here is a list of must-dos for each.

Keep the warp tidy on the warping board, keeping an eye out for any flaws in the yarn.

Create a top-level plan of each stage from beginning to end, chunking into manageable items.

I spent Wednesday in London on the one-day course Efficient Copy-editing by Rosemary Roberts, organised by the Society for Editors and Proofreaders.

CPD means time out of the office, juggling the workload, travelling and being on the ball the next day. But however much we may dread making the commitment, my CPD day this week has proved how very important it is to make the effort.

Much of my work this week has been blending with new workflows in two ways.

(i) Less mechanical editing: because of the introduction of automated processing of reference/citation formatting and other mechanical tasks, my primary focus for one client has become checking language.

(ii) Using document management systems: a month ago, all of my work was sent and received by email. By this time next month, I'll be down- and uploading files with two systems.

There's a large set of ellipses since our last posts in February ... ... ... This is mostly because I've been engrossed in my role as voluntary director of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders (SfEP) -- for marketing and PR, somewhat ironically in that Reedmace's marketing has been rather passive. But it's time to now juggle both at once.

The latest news: you can find me on LinkedIn, where I'm now connected with colleagues and friends old and new.

Calling all geeks: we are nearing 1234567890 seconds from the time when the Unix clock started ticking at midnight on 1 January 1970. This is almost as exciting as the turn of the new millenium, and double that with the fact it will fall on Friday 13 of this month, at 23:31:30 GMT. We're watching the countdown here in the office, though I'll probably be at home for the big event.

I have recently found an eloquent description of why writers need editors.

"You hold the whole text in your mind, and you have developed its ideas in sequence right to its conclusion. You can't now put yourself in the reader's place by somehow 'unknowing' any of this. A copy-editor, though, will bring fresh eyes to your text, helping you to reveal your concepts in a logical order."

I’ve been trying ebooks and reading software today. This subject can become very involved, so this post is focused what is available for those without a dedicated ebook reading device. The hardware I had available were an iMac, Windows XP, Palm OS and Linux (on an Eee netbook).

First, let’s take a look at the PDF format to justify why looking at ebook formats at all.

Six weeks into having a wiki in the office and it has grown rapidly: we have over 70 pages, and another 20 or so calendar pages. So I'm writing here about how to manage your wiki so it is easy to view and navigate around.

Basically, there are two useful wiki features that allow you to take a glance at what your wiki contains and to help finding the information you need: lists of pages, notably here All pages, and the ability to categorise your pages.

For those of you who did not attend MSBC today, or for those of you who did and would like a record of my presentation, these are the salient points from my ten-minute presentation to the MSBC (Moray Small Business Club). I gave this presentation to share an idea as small business owner to small business owner.

We have all become used to reading on screen nowadays; we don't print to read an email, a blog, maybe even, for some of us, business or research reports, or news. So, how about using screens without computers, or reading books without paper? The technologies that are making electronic readers pleasant to use are starting to coalesce, and digital ink is rapidly becoming the accepted standard: no visual difficulties in bright or dark conditions.