Technology and writing – Virginia S. Anderson

New Shares at Just Can’t Help Writing: Stop By!

Don Massenzio has tips for book formatting to make life easier for you and for your readers. Some good questions answered here.

Louie Cronin, aka Cronin the Barbarian from Car Talk, tells us about her experiences rejecting people for the show—and why we shouldn’t be downcast! She makes rejection fun!

Writer Unboxed has been on a roll recently. Here’s a great post with some clues that you might want to skip that writing contest you just found.

I weigh in on this post from Adirondack Editing, via Chris the Story Reading Ape, on split infinitives and dangling modifiers. I ignore one and screech when I find the other. Check out which is which.

Four Great Shares at Just Can’t Help Writing!

What should writers know about trademarked names or brand names? How should you handle these names in your fiction? Adirondack Editing, via Chris the Story Reading Ape, helps out!

Phoebe Quinn at A Writer’s Path has a list of seven writing mistakes that are all too easy to make—and some ideas for improving. See if you spot yourself in this list! I did.

And if, unlike me, you’ve been struggling to keep up with SEO, here’s some good news: SEO tricks we writers can let go of, from Torque.

Speaking of tech stuff, I found this post from Bookworks on basic tech skills for writers more than helpful. Check it out!

CHECK OUT THESE GREAT SHARES AT JUST CAN’T HELP WRITING!

Think you know SEO? Chris the Story Reading Ape passed along this comprehensive list from Mostly Blogging: How to be Found on Google Today, 17 Powerful Tools.Some I bet you’ve never even heard of!

Then there’s How to Write a Press Release from The Happy Self-Publisher. Instructions, templates, examples galore! Help yourself!

And what about “stupid writing rules”? Colleen Chesebro at the Fairy Whisperer proposes a list of 12 Dumb Things New Writers Tell Each Other. I added one of my own. What would you add?

AT COLLEGE COMPOSITION WEEKLY: Digital Badging as Assessment

In the November College English, Stephanie West-Puckett argues for “digital badges” as a means of encouraging participation among teachers and students as they design writing assessment practices that work toward social justice.

THIS WEEK’S POST AT COLLEGE COMPOSITION WEEKLY: “Devilish Smartphones”

Jenae Cohn, writing in the December Computers and Composition, provides case studies of student digital literacy narratives to study how the “addiction trope” influences student views of their social-media use.

THIS WEEK AT COLLEGE COMPOSITION WEEKLY! Privatization in Higher Ed

In the September 2016 issue of College Composition and Communication, Tony Scott argues that composition scholarship has little impact on the “neoliberal” privatization of writing instruction because it fails to “see” the disconnect between innovative scholarly ideas and the material environments in which they will be enacted.

THIS WEEK AT COLLEGE COMPOSITION WEEKLY! AUTOMATED ESSAY SCORING!

Noreen S. Moore and Charles A. MacArthur, writing in the Journal of Writing Research, explore how 7th- and 8th-graders respond to computer feedback and scoring when they revise their writing.

CHECK OUT MY BEGINNER’S INDESIGN CHEAT SHEET!

Check out the latest in my series! I’m telling everyone what I learned formatting my own POD interior for King of the Roses. InDesign doesn’t have to send you into a tailspin. You CAN do this yourself.

LATEST AT COLLEGE COMPOSITION WEEKLY: Fanfiction as a “Gift Economy.”

In the June 2016 Computers and Composition, Brittany Kelley analyzes the Ashwinder archive in the Sycophant Hex Harry Potter fanfiction site to posit that such sites function as “gift economies” rather than as “commodity cultures.”

MORE “DIGITAL HUMANITIES”: Finding Genre Signals

Ryan Omizo and William Hart-Davidson, in a special section of the Journal of Writing Research, present a tool for digital text analysis that detects the differences in novice and expert academic citation practices, helping graduate students understand the genres relevant to their fields.