A Last Look Worldwide Online Proofreader and Text Editor or Copyeditor
Use a "wordwright" in your write-right rites!
Navigation and Contact Information links
Reference and Search Sites
Search Multiple Sites
Dogpile Query multiple search engines at the same time.Searching for PeopleAnyWho, from AT&T Access multiple search tools plus AT&T services. A
All In One Access multiple search engines at one URL. Extensive search and research links of all kinds.
Internets Access to Multiple Search Engines for news headlines
Itools Access to multiple reference tools and search engines
Handy Guide Access to Multiple Search Engines
Bigfoot One of the original People Directories. Find e-mail addresses, street addresses or phone numbers. Also has connection to 1800ussearch.com, which is NOT a free service.Searching for BusinessesFour11 Directory Services Find e-mail addresses or phone numbers.
411Locate Find e-mail addresses, phone numbers, web sites or do reverse searches on e-mail address.
AT&T Toll-Free Phone Number Directory Search for toll-free numbers, or register yours.
Switchboard Find People, E-mail Addresses and businesses
The Big Book Yellow PagesThomas Register Search for American Manufacturers
Proofreaders Marks:
Proofreaders Marks (Merriam Webster)
Proofreaders Marks (U. of Virginia)
Proofreaders Marks (Prentice Hall)
Proofreaders Marks (Duke University)
Proofreading:
Definition New Jersey One Stop Career Center
National Independent Study Center Course
Cleveland State University Course
Copyediting:
Definition New Jersey One Stop Career Center
"The Slot: A Spot for Copyeditors" by Bill Walsh
"How to become a copyeditor" by Bill Walsh
Writing:
"How to Endear Yourself to Your Typist" by Janice Ramey, Ramey Technical Writing Services
Authors Guide for authors of Prentice Hall textbooks
Proofreading, Writing and Copyediting:
This searchable database contains common (depending on your background) acronyms and abbreviations."The Elements of Style"William Strunk, Jr. (Strunk & White) [The basic English style manual. Use other references for further study into English grammar and usage as stated in the Introductory section.]
"Questions on Typography" North Carolina State University.
Online Writing Centers on the Web University of Wisconsin
A-Z Printer's Handbook A to Z Printing
The ACS Style Guide Janet S. Dodd, Editor, American Chemical Society
Indiana University Style Guide
APA Style Resources American Psychological Association Links
Guide to Grammar and Writing Professor Charles Darling and Capital Community-Technical College
A Guide to Writing Research Papers Capital Community Technical College
Bibliography Styles Handbook University of Illinois
References
Bibliomania, The Network Library
Library of Congress WWW Home Page
Online Literary Resources Search multiple literary resources.
Project Bartley Archive Search your choice of multiple literary works, including "Bartlett's Familiar Quotations" and U.S. Presidents' Inaugural Addresses.
OneLook Dictionaries [Dictionary] Access multiple dictionaries at the same time.
Galaxy Dictionaries [Reference] Foreign Language Dictionaries
A Web of On-line Dictionaries Search over 500 dictionaries in over 140 languages.
The Word Detective The online version of a newspaper column answering readers' questions about words and language.
Purchase the following References at Barnes & Noble, and help support A Last Look.
You must click on these links on this page in order for me to get the referral credit, so please bookmark this page or place it in your "Favorites Folder" if you're not ready to buy right now. When you're ready to buy, click on the bookmark and come back here to select your book. Thank you for your patronage.
The Gregg Reference Manual
Looking for a grammar book that is supremely easy to use?A Good Unabridged DictionaryThe "bible" of secretarial schools and offices across America since the early 1950's, this has to be the handiest of all the "grammar" books around. Now in its Ninth Edition, this book has excellent look-up features that help you to easily find not just rules, but examples that will show you the rules in action.
Among other things, you can find abbreviations, time zones, and area codes for the American states and territories; examples of proofreader's marks; and formatting styles for letters, memos, and reports. It comes in a spiral-bound version that I find particularly handy in a small workspace.
Here is a list of topics: punctuation, capitalization, numbers, abbreviations, pleurals, possessives, spelling, compound words, word division, grammar, useage, editing, proofreading, filing, letters, memos, reports, manuscripts, notes, bibliographies, tables, other business documents, and forms of address. It also contains a Glossary of Grammatical Terms and a Glossary of Computer Terms.
When I first began as a Medical Transcriptionist, I had no use for such a tome. I was into Medical Dictionaries, Medical Word Lists, and Drug References. Style was dictated by the institution in which I worked, and by the physician dictating the report. Only the most minor of grammatical or punctuation points ever came into the picture.
However, when I switched from straight transcription to an administrative-assistant position, all the language I had been taught as a child (and had ignored over the intervening 20 years since graduation from high school) suddenly became important again. Buried in my mind under all those medical, laboratory, and drug terms, the finer points of the language troubled me deeply. Then I found The Gregg Reference Manual (an ancient copy) in a desk drawer at work. It took just seconds to find what I needed. I ran out and bought the latest version, and I've been updating my own copy to each new version of the book ever since.
There are so many ways to find what you're looking for that you can't miss. There's the topic list with corresponding "thumb tabs" if you just want to review a general topic. Then there's the Quick Guide to Key Topics by paragraph number and, of course, the Table of Contents and the Index, but also cross-indexing within the text.
Ten years ago, at the time I became hooked on this book, I had a Chicago Manual of Style, a Harper's Contemporary Usage, and one other style manual that I can no longer recall. The Gregg Reference Manual was by far the easiest to use, the most thorough, and the easiest to understand. Click on the underlined book title (below) and get this indispensible aid for writers, proofreaders, and copyeditors for yourself. Over the long run, it's a lot cheaper for you writers than paying me
!
The Gregg Reference Manual
The other indispensible tool for a writer, proofreader, or copyeditor (BTW, for those of you who care, copyeditor and copy editor are both correct) is a good unabridged dictionary of the English language. It's hard to "get it absolutely right" and hard to set yourself up as an expert helping others with the language if you don't have access to all of the language.Unabridged dictionaries help you avoid embarrassing yourself like a gentleman did recently when he chastised me for using the word "enquire," which he was certain was a misspelling of "inquire." If he had looked in an unabridged dictionary, he would have seen that it is an alternative spelling, not a misspelling. While I usually stick to the "preferred" spellings, I sometimes use alternative spellings to wake up my readers to the fact that "my way" isn't always "the only way."
I have benefitted greatly from my unabridged dictionary. I can find 99% of all the terms I am concerned about, which saves me research time. Needless to say, it doesn't contain all technical terms for all fields since the technobabble changes daily, but for most business and personal documents, it's much better than just a "desktop" or "collegiate" dictionary.
When I started, I used Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary, which is a relatively cheap dictionary produced for Barnes & Noble by Random House, based on The Random House Dictionary of the English Language, the Unabridged Edition, copyright 1993, 1987.
When that became outdated, I switched to the updated CD version and I love it!
At any rate, below you'll find my search link for Unabridged Dictionaries at B&N ("Search for an Unabridged Dictionary"). If you're smart, you'll invest in one of them like I did, and, if you're kind, you'll purchase it through this link, so I can benefit from helping you. The only reason I don't recommend any particular dictionary is the cost. I'm not sure if "you get what you pay for" or if the cheaper version is just as good for business or personal use. You'll have to make that decision for yourself.
Search for an Unabridged Dictionary
There is a lot of information on this site. Different visitors will find different information useful, and I'm sure no visitor will care to read it all. For that reason I will attempt to provide clearly identified links to information of interest to specific classes of readers. If you want to contact me, please follow the instructions below. If you find this site useful, please tell your friends using the popup form triggered by clicking on this button:
Navigation and Contact Info:
Contact Person: Lynda Karr (FYI: Mrs., but we don't stand on ceremony around here.)
Contact Preference: E-mail--see instructions below.
Confidentiality
All communications of any type with A Last Look are private and confidential, and may not be stored by any means or shared in any manner with anyone else without the written permission of Lynda Karr. Communications from you are accorded the same rights. Your e-mail address is never shared with anyone else without your express permission except as demanded by the law. If you receive a communication from me by mistake, you may not use anything in it for your personal gain or for the personal gain or detriment of others, and you should notify me at once, delete the communication, and ignore its contents.Message Instructions: I'm eager to hear from you, but thanks to UCE/SPAM and address-harvesting robots, I had to devise a method of masking my e-mail addresses and/or weeding out serious inquiries from junkmail. My method is to (1) provide a new e-mail address whenever spam overtakes me and (2) provide subject lines for you to use that robots can't use.
(1) If you don't need me now but think you might in the future, bookmark this page and come back here to click on the current e-mail address when you need me. Once you become a client/networker, you'll be given my permanent address.
(2) To enable my e-mail program to filter your message properly, please type or copy-and-paste one of the following subject lines into the subject line of your message. I look at messages with these subject lines first and the rest of my messages when I get around to it. Once I become familiar with your address, you won't need to worry about this step.
I may need a proofreader and/or copyeditor.
I am a proofreader and/or copyeditor.
I'd like to be a proofreader and/or copyeditor.
I have a comment about A Last Look and/or your Web site.Then click on the "Send e-mail" link.
Once you've clicked on the link, your e-mail program will pop up. Right-click in the Subject line, and click paste to enter the subject line you chose from those above (or just type it in). Then, compose your message including how I should address you in my response, at least your general location (city, time zone), a phone number at which you can be reached in case e-mail ceases to work, and a short outline of what you are hoping to accomplish. If you are requesting a free estimate, please attach your project file(s) or a file containing a few pages from the middle of your project.
Send e-mail
To send a personal message, write a subject line that includes the name I would know you by, like "Do you remember Lynda Sandford, from Maple Shade, NJ?", and click on the following link: Hi, LyndaHaving trouble? If mailer daemon returns your message or if the links above don't appear to work for you, send your message directly to me at dzntwrk (means the link or your e-mail "doesn't work") @alastlook.com, but please don't forget the subject-line instructions above.
If you are a potential client and do not receive a reply from me within one business day, it may be because your e-mail host treats mail from Yahoo.com as spam. Check with your provider to see if placing my yahoo address in your filters or address book will negate that block. If so, send me a message telling me that, and I'll send you the yahoo address to put in your filters or address book (via my ISP e-mail, currently handtechisp.com). If putting my yahoo address in your program won't work, please resend your request, and tell me your e-mail host won't accept yahoo mail. Hopefully your e-mail host will accept mail from my ISP. I move around a bit and my ISP can change, so I prefer to use stable, continuous, able-to-be-reached-from-any-computer Yahoo.
If you are a potential networker or newbie/wannabe, you won't hear from me until network activity increases and I am once again accepting applicants or I have new pages on the site that may be of interest to you. I will keep your information on file for that purpose and that purpose alone.
Thanks so much! I look forward to hearing from you, even if it is to complain about my site (grin)! If you know what you want and I know who you are, you can use the following buttons to fund your retainer.
$18.00 (one hour of my time) $25.00 Retainer $50.00 Retainer $100.00 Retainer $500.00 Retainer
