The first essay I wrote at university was returned to me with the phrase ‘awkward prose, needs work,‘ scrawled on the back with a thick pencil. I was mortified, thinking at the time that I was hot stuff and would carry all before me with the power of my pen. Even now, the subject of that one essay is still fresh in my mind, while the years that followed are no more than a hazy memory.

Embarrassing as it was, this episode was my introduction to the painful process of editing, and I’m thankful it happened at a young age. The essays that came after were hacked half to death, reading more like crisp technical manuals than lively historical arguments, but things settled down after a year or so, and the prose became more readable.

We all need to be told our writing is clumsy and awkward at some point, otherwise we carry on in blissful ignorance, inflicting our barely coherent ramblings on the world. When I began work on PageFour, there was no intention of addressing the editing process, my thinking was that this was something every writer must tackle themselves. Instead, the primary focus has always been to improve the writing environment, and remove whatever distractions might exist to interrupt the writer in full flow.

But now I face a dilemma. For the past few weeks, I’ve been thinking of introducing a feature into PageFour that would step over this line.

From my own experience, one of the more common problems tackled when editing, is repeated words and phrases, where the same two or three words appear many times across paragraphs, pages and chapters. When this is not intentional, it can be incredibly difficult to catch, often slipping through many editing iterations.

Computers however, have no interest in how smooth your prose reads, and would flag these potential problems in a heartbeat. So the question is, should I implement this feature?

I’ve already designed the user interface in my mind, and it looks good - tucked away out of sight until it might be needed. The way I see the feature working, a single page or a number of pages would be read, and a list of two, three, or four word phrases that appear more than a certain number of times would be displayed. It would then be up to the writer to decide if these needed to be looked at in any detail. An additional linked feature might be a similar list of words or phrases used at the beginning of sentences.

Up to now, I’ve based the design of PageFour on what works for me, but I fully realise that implementing a feature that plays a part in the editing process may prove a serious turn off for many people.

Is crossing the line into editing a step too far?

I have a dark, shameful secret.

No, I’m not a closet ABBA fan, and I don’t watch Dirty Dancing every Saturday evening with the curtains drawn. My secret is far more embarrassing, and I’ve managed to hide it from the world for years. I can’t spell.

Once I passed the age of ten, and stopped learning lists of words from the little red spelling book, my ability to remember new words simply died. There’s a lot to be said for learning things by rote and getting your knuckles rapped in class the next day if you fail. The same goes for multiplication tables. After six years of primary school, asking me what nine eights are is like asking me my name, and I don’t forget that too often, but ask me seventeen times fourteen and I’d need about ten seconds to work it out.

Like a functioning alcoholic, I’ve managed to hide my shame for years. Here’s a few tips for the similarly afflicted:

1. When posting on a message board or discussion forum, always write into a word processor with a spell checker first, and re-read the post a dozen times - even for short one liners.
2. Treat email the same way. Email lends itself to quick response, which means the results will not be good when you hit that send button.
3. Make www.dictionary.com your best friend, or better yet, install the Firefox plug-in or Internet Explorer toolbar.
4. At work, try to position your desk so no one walks behind you - this way your co-workers will never catch you looking up a four letter word in the dictionary.
5. Make sure your web browser is configured to not remember previously entered text or searches, otherwise your wife could easily stumble across a drop down list of words you can’t spell.
6. Keep a list of the words that always confuse you, like license and licence. You would not believe the problems these two words cause me every time I release a new version of PageFour, and there is no reason for it. Advise and advice have never given me any trouble. Maybe they were in the little red book?

One of the first tips given to small software companies is to release early and release often. For me, my affliction meant that this was not possible - I simply could not bring myself to let that early version of PageFour go without a spell checker.

So what’s next? Well, the first step is always admitting you have a problem. So here I am, standing up and announcing to the world: “My name is Darren, and I can’t spell.“

Do you buy books on a whim?

I do this all the time. Late night browsing on Amazon after a few too many glasses of wine has led to some strange deliveries. A couple of weeks ago, I splashed out a whopping £23.66 on The Chicago Manual of Style. Nine hundred pages of reference material for writers, editors, publishers, and pretenders, clearly compiled by geeks with too much time on their hands.

Every question you’ve ever asked about how to string words together is answered here, and you would not believe how wonderful the pages smell. It’s a luxury item to be sure, but a little luxury never hurt anyone.

Marketing was never my thing. I’ve posted here before about the major shortcomings of small software companies; that we understand the developing of the product all too well, but that what comes next - the hard sell - is where so many of us fall down.

Every few days I get an email from someone telling me how much they love PageFour, how it’s so much better than other software packages aimed at writers, such as Dramatica, Treepad, and such. Downloads are increasing, and sales have definitely picked up, but it’s all happening very slowly, and for this I can only blame myself.

There’s never been any real momentum building around the product - no buzz. It’s had mentions on the odd discussion board, and an appropriate number of downloads as a result, but that interest is rarely maintained once the initial posts become old.

I’ve been considering offering free licenses to anyone who blogs about PageFour.

Similar strategies have been tried before by other software companies, and with mixed results. Recently, a company called Axosoft shifted over 2,500 copies of its flagship product by offering them for five dollars a copy, with the five dollars going to the American Red Cross. This generated huge interest and featured on many prominent blogs, as well as leading to a front page post on del.icio.us.

So the question is, could this strategy work? The product is strong enough now to come under any form of scrutiny, so I’m not particularly worried about people trying it out and hating it.

Is there a downside?

There is no direct link from PageFour’s commercial web-site to this blog, so any offer made here would be unlikely to prevent genuine buyers from paying for the product. The only negative I can see would be a slow or non-existent response to such an offer, and though that may be a little embarrassing, it would hardly have an adverse effect on the business itself.

PageFour needs exposure - not enough people have heard about it, so not enough people are trying it out. An offer of a free license to anyone mentioning the product on their blog could provide this exposure, and as long as there was a time limit on the offer, I don’t see how it could have a negative impact.

What’s the worst that could happen?

When I heard about cyclone Larry headed for the Queensland coast, my first thought was that it was a pretty wimpish name for a cyclone. It just didn’t seem to pack any punch. Now, if it had been called David or Thomas, I would have been prepared for a storm of great magnitude and power.

My sister Susan lives in Innisfail, which right at this moment is in the eye of the beast. I had an email from Susan early this morning, while her mad Australian husband Joe was busy boarding up windows, and doing strange storm related things to livestock. I’m not sure what you do to cows when a big wind is coming your way, but whatever it was he was out there doing it, and you have to admire that. According to Susan:

The plan is to camp in the wardrobe with a mattress to protect us…We have a food and water supply so time will tell now. I won’t be working for a few days as we will be flooded in. Joe’s sister has been evacuated from her home as she lives close to the beach.

They must build those wardrobes sturdy in Australia, but she seems upbeat about it all. The indomitable spirit of the Irish maybe - standing tall in the face of famine, adversity, and Englishmen.

My brother Colin lives a couple of hours north of Innisfail, where the phone lines still work. Normally a call from Colin means he’s had three drinks too many, but he sounded strangely sober this evening - drunk on adrenaline and the prospect of a violent end maybe. Things are chaotic out there and the full force of the storm has yet to hit. Innisfail is cut off - the phones are all out, and no one knows the state of affairs, not to mention the state of the livestock.

Only time will tell now, and fingers crossed that the wardrobe lives up to its early promise. With 180 mph winds, that’s a whole lot of promise.

Every other week I stumble across web-sites that prove invaluable. At the time, I’m left wondering how I could have missed them for so long, and once noticed they seem to pop up everywhere. Here are 5 sites I use on a regular basis. Each one has had a major impact on my online activities:

1. iStockphoto - Massive resource of photos from amateur and professional photographers. Before finding this site, sourcing images for use on web-sites and blogs was always a problem. Do you have rights to use the image? Should you just ‘borrow‘ it and say nothing? Most of the images sell for $1, and are royalty free. Once you set up an account, downloading the odd image is a one click process.
2. Bloglines - I have a list of about 30 blogs I watch regularly. Until I started using Bloglines to keep me updated on changes, I had to click on each bookmarked link every time I wanted to see if a new post had been submitted. The beauty of using an online service like Bloglines, is that you can access these favourite blogs from any PC, and you’re immediately notified not just of new posts, but changes to existing posts as well - always interesting to see how other people edit their work. Try it out, and don’t forget to add me to your list.
3. Copyscape - Have you ever had your work copied and posted somewhere else? Copyscape is a simple site that scans the web for complete or partial copies of anything you post on your blog. It’s useful to track down plagiarisers, and other writers who are quoting and commenting on what you’ve written. The first time I used it I found this - a word for word copy of one of my own posts.
4. Squidoo - The premise behind Squidoo is that search engines now return so many results for any query that they are fast becoming meaningless. Far better to have a single page written by an ‘expert‘ on a particular topic with further links to articles, books, blogs, and other resources. Anyone can be an expert and create a lens on any topic, from links about your own product to resources for eBay sellers.
5. Ping-o-Matic - Most blogging environments like Wordpress automatically ping all the relevant sites after you add or change a post, but every now and then the ping seems to get lost along the way, and sites like Technorati fail to display your stunning new post. Entering your URL into Ping-o-Matic allows you to send the pings yourself, at any time.

What else am I missing out on?

PageFour has received its second five star review on Download.com, which is very welcome. I’m always slightly scared that someone will hate the product and post a terrible review, but it hasn’t happened yet, so fingers crossed. Reviews by users have a big impact on the number of downloads - I often use them myself as a guide to whether something is worth trying out or not.

What PC have also reviewed the product and awarded it five stars. When it comes to the multitude of smaller download sites, I’ve always taken the reviews and awards with a pinch of salt, as they tend to award every submission the same high mark. They appear to be designed to keep the developers of the product happy rather than guiding the potential user. What PC seems to be a little different as it awards a good proportion of low marks, so I’ll take it as a compliment.

People are always going on about their Irish Catholic childhoods, and how thirty years later they’re still living in fear of eternal damnation. I don’t remember it being like that at all. Oh there were priests and prayers alright, and strange ceremonies where you wore a grown up suit, even though you were only six years old and shouldn’t have been wearing a suit of any kind. But I never felt I was bound for hell, and I never felt any of the overpowering guilt so many people talk about.

Browsing through some old photographs the other day, I came across pictures of myself and my brothers making our first communion. Looking back on those events as a slightly more mature and rational human being, I can’t help but think how crazy the whole thing was. We looked like dressed up dolls - six years old, barely able to see over the top of a table, and dressed in brand new miniature suits and ties. The girls had it worse, decked out like child brides taking part in a mass wedding, complete with veils and sparkling white shoes.

The superior Irish education system prepared us well for our first communion. Instead of learning six times tables, or how to spell difficult words like ‘statue,’ we were trained every afternoon for weeks in the proper way to eat the Body of Christ. It’s a surreal memory: all of us lining up in the classroom, and Miss Lally standing by the blackboard feeding us bits of paper and mumbling “Body of Christ.” We pretended to eat each piece, always careful not to let it touch our teeth, because if it touched your teeth it was destroyed and you had to get another. We were too afraid of Miss Lally to ever ask for another, and it was only paper anyway so we didn’t really care.

One afternoon a few weeks before our communion, (more…)

The new printing options in PageFour have finally been put to rest - for the time being at least. Version 1.42 is now available for download, and I’m more than happy with how it’s turned out.

This version makes the construction of the print templates simpler and easier to understand, and adds a new feature for anyone with multiple printers or print devices such as PDF writers.

Feedback, as always, is more than welcome.

I always hated shopping. Battling the hordes of full time mothers armed with pushchairs, and roaming bands of giggling teenagers comparing mobile phones was never my idea of fun. It reached the stage where buying a new pair of jeans, or searching for a cheap toaster had become a chore of galactic proportions. There were occasions when after just five minutes on the high street I’d say screw this, return to the car, and drive home.

I could never understand what all those people were doing roaming around like sheep, plastic bags dragging the ground as if it were Christmas in July. Retail therapy? Doing this on even a semi-regular basis would put me in therapy. Which is why I’ve been having a long term love affair with the internet. And I’m not talking one stand stands either. I’m fully committed to our relationship, and prepared to invest the time and resources necessary to make it work. The benefits of abandoning the aging high street in favour of a sexy young broadband connection are many.There are no glares from FTMs screaming: “I’m a mother. I have a BABY. Get out of my way!” Tesco can switch the food aisles around for no apparent reason as often as they like without offending me, and never having to park in Kingston town centre on a Saturday afternoon does wonders for the blood pressure. The shopping experience becomes truly spontaneous. If a blogger in Sydney recommends a particular CD at four in the morning, I check it out then and there, listen to a couple of tracks, and make the purchase or not.

One of the side effects of my long term commitment to internet shopping has been selling the car. Now, this is not as crazy as it sounds. When the car no longer became necessary to carry stuff around, it tended to sit there for days or sometimes weeks on end, going nowhere and looking just a little lost. It’s in a better place now, with an owner who fully appreciates its load carrying abilities.

Public transport in London is really not bad at all, and I get a big kick out of looking at my shiny wad of brand new fifty pound notes. Though my motivations in selling the car were financial, it’s had the unintentional side effect of making me a poster child for the Green movement. I can live with this.

It’s seven in the morning and I’ve got about five minutes before I need to get ready for work. Just enough time to do the big monthly food shopping.