I took child psychology in my sophomore year of college. The one thing I’ll never forget about that class is taking Myers-Briggs Type Indicator for the first time along with other personality and learning style tests. The result? ISTJ (Introversion, Sensing, Thinking, Judging). And I’ve tested ISTJ every time since then.

Even my daughter is into the personality test and came close with her guess that I was an ISFJ. She probably thought we were opposites since she’s an ENTP (Extroversion, iNtuition, Thinking, Perceiving). Introversion and extroversion don’t mean you’re shy or outgoing. Instead, they represent where you draw more energy from. Check out the 16 type descriptions. If you don’t know yours, this might give you a clue.

“The Secret to Helping Your Child Excel in School and in Life” at Lifehack introduces another test where you can learn more about yourself and multiple intelligences. This shows what areas we tend to easily understand and what areas are harder. The website explains, “For some of us it is relatively easy to understand how a flower grows but it is immensely difficult for us to understand and use a musical instrument. For others music might be easy but playing football is difficult.”

I test strong on intrapersonal and logical. Zilch on musical (no surprise). The only surprise is the linguistic score. These results reveal your stronger and weaker learning styles. For a good explanation of the intelligences, visit Family Education.

All of these assessments help us understand ourselves better and how you can better work with others once you figure out what they are. “The Secret to Helping Your Child Excel in School and in Life” gives an example of a teacher discussing the topic of  “the law of supply and demand” and how the teacher can best reach a child from each of the different intelligences.

Fascinating stuff. Here’s another to check out: True Colors.

Have you ever taken a personality or style assessment? What was it? What did you learn?

And now for your weekly links …

Brain food …

• Grammar Lesson – The Mistake That Bugs Me the Most. Good explanation of objects and subjects.
• How to Create a Social Media Marketing Schedule. Excellent tips that most people can implement to manage social media time.
• 5 email newsletters worth reading. And of course, I recommend Professional Services Journal from InternetViZ. (Disclaimer: OK, so the guy behind the company is one of my first clients and I’m a contributor. Seriously, it aims to deliver valuable info professional services providers can use. Want an email newsletter? Contact Hank.)

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No, not in St. Louis! Texas State Fair in Big D! Late with the links because of Blog Action Day and being exhausted from the fair. More deets in the next edition of links. On with the show!

OK, so you can barely see us... but gotta have the traditional photo with Big Tex

Brain food…

• Web Pages Are from Mars, Blog Posts Are from Venus: Short, powerful blog post on the difference between blogs and static pages. I never considered that web pages were men and blog posts were women
• Nine Quick Tips to Identify Clutter: I’m finally gonna get rid of that cookie decorator kit. I have never used it. I remember buying it at a big sale. Well, jolly good it did. Never used it. I hate wasting money, but it’s taking up space and will pay off more with a begone.
• How “Fun” Can Be Your Best Discipline Technique: So simple, yet tired parents may struggle to remember these things when they need it. (Goodness knows, I have selective memory… when I am in a situation, I can’t recall any of the tips.)
• 7 Ways to Keep the Sales Rolling in Your Small Business: Melinda Emerson, author of Become Your Own Boss in 12 Months, gives you seven ways to evaluate your marketing strategy’s effectiveness.
• 7 Tips for Work-Life Balance: Good reminders of what’s important. I’m lucky to have a the best partner in life in Paul, my husband. It does make a difference.

For fun because we’re allowed…

• Quotation Marks Fail: Grammar cops… get ready to wince.
• Exploding Dog Inbox Cartoon: Inbox zero… not the ideal way.
• Weird and Wacky Travel Signs: Sure fire way to laughter no matter how deep the doldrums. Seen any hitchhiking butterflies? Better warn ‘em it’s not a good idea. [Link: Paul Steele]
• License Plate Win! I love discovering and deciphering personalized plates.
• Do you have a flow chart? [Link: Guy LeCharles Gonzalez] Does your brand need a new logo? Use this chart to find out.

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• Photographic dictionary: Very sleeky and useful. I know the word “blurry” too well.
• Social Butterfly Does bad grammar make you [sic]? [Yes!]
• Your Writing Is Killing Your Writing: I’m a perfectionist, hear me whimper. But I’ve learned to let go. Even if the topic doesn’t interest you, check out the picture.
• How to Handle Monumental Screwups When They DO Happen.
• How to Increase Revenue Fast! See #6 for an amazing and creative tip. Another goodie from same blog (TPE guy is awesome!): 163 Ways How To Become An Entrepreneur.
• RevenueTwoPointZero: Offers four strategies for funding journalism.

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• Photographs of residents in their flats in Hong Kong’s oldest public housing estate: 100 rooms, each 100 square feet in size. And to think some of us complain about 2,000+ sq. feet homes?
• FunPhotoBox: Easier and funner than Photoshopping your photos.
• Font Game: Can you figure out the fonts?
• Illusions Database: A new illusion every day.

• Getting Things Done with Twitter: Don’t like the idea of paying through Twitter.
• Twitterfall: A New Twitter Tool for Journalists: I get nervous about new twitter tools because they can boost your addiction and time spent on twitter [Link: Esther]. And a link to Twitterfall.
• Becoming a Great Programmer: Use Your Trash Can by Esther Schindler.
• What the Hashtag? Can’t figure out what the # means in twitter? Wonder no more.
• Word Count Plus FireFox Plugin: Counts number words in selected text and total.
• How to Be Likeable: 10 Things You Can Do Today [Link: GL Hoffman]
• SPOGG: Society for the Promotional of Good Grammar
• Poll: What is the first media outlet you look/listen in order to get your news on a daily/consistent basis? Saddened (but not surprised) to see print low on the list. Created with twtpoll (multiple choice only).

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• 12 Awesome Foosball Tables: WOW. Hubby would love one of these, but they’ll remain admired from afar just like his favorite Corvette ’61.
• The Great Pyramid PC Mod: Cool.
• 10 tips to give up Facebook during Lent
• Evaluate tech purchases: Retrevo and Wize [Link: Web Worker Daily]

Just had to share this grammar blooper from PC Magazine’s Mother’s Day article. Perhaps, the magazine wanted to emphasize Mom belongs to you in superlative terms.

Of course, I wanted to know what gadgets they recommended for us geeky moms.

Updated: 16 November 2010 (100+ resources)

I had planned on putting this list up ages ago, but kept adding more. It could take a long time to capture many resources, so this is a living entry that I’ll update as soon as I get new resources.

Blogs

1. About Freelance Writing
2. All Freelance Writing
3. Be the Story
4. The Blood-Red Pencil
5. Bob Bly
6. Book Marketing Bestsellers
7. The Book Sistah
8. C. Hope Clark
9. CatalystBlogger
10. Christina Katz
11. Confident Writing
12. Copyblogger
13. The Copywriter Underground
14. The Copywriting Maven
15. Copywriting That Sells High Tech
16. The Creative Penn
17. Crime Fiction Dossier
18. Daily Writing Tips
19. Diary of a Wordsmith
20. Evil Editor
21. Freelance Parent
22. Freelance Writing
23. Freelance Writing Jobs
24. Get Paid to Write Online
25. Grow Your Writing Business
26. How Not to Write
27. I’d Rather Be Writing
28. Inkwell Editorial
29. Jane in Progress
30. Joel Falconer
31. Joe Wikert’s Publishing 2020 Blog
32. JohnAugust.com
33. PoeWar
34. Macabre Ink
35. Mad Young Thing
36. Men with Pens
37. Michael Hyatt
38. Mike’s Writing Workshop
39. Newbie’s Guide to Publishing
40. Paul Conley on trade journalism
41. Publishing Careers
42. Problogger
43. Robust Writing
44. Quiet Rebel Writer
45. Quips and Tips for Freelance Writers
46. Rachelle Gardner
47. The Renegade Writer
48. Remarkable Communication
49. Rogue Ink
50. Sites and Soundbytes: Library blog that began as a list of cool places online now features many resources and online references that would prove useful to writers.
51. StoneWriter
52. Storytellers Unplugged
53. The Struggling Writer
54. There Are No Rules
55. Tumblemoose
56. Urban Muse
57. The Wealthy Freelancer
58. The Web-Savvy Writer
59. Web Writing Info
60. The Well-Fed Writer
61. WOW! Women on Writing
62. Words for Hire
63. Words on the Water
64. Word Sell Blog
65. Write from Home
66. Writer Beware
67. Writer Dad
68. Writer’s Digest Writing Blogs
69. A Writer’s Words, an Editor’s Eye
70. Writer’s Helper
71. Writer’s Notes
72. Write to Done
73. Write Well Me
74. The Writing Journey
75. The Writing Life
76. Writing on the Web
77. Writing White Papers Blog
78. Written Road

Resources

1. 100 posts and articles worth link love: Great selection of articles and content related to writing, business, blogging, and freelancing.
2. 150 Writing Resources: Organized by categories.
3. A to Z of Alternative Words [pdf file]: Why “utilize” when a simple “use” will do?
4. AbiWord: Open source Word
5. About Freelance Writing: Job postings, articles, and more.
6. AbsoluteWrite: The first place I recommend to wanna be writers. Of course, it’s great for experienced writers.
7. Alex Catalogue of Electronic Texts: Collection of about 14,000 “classic” public domain documents from American and English literature as well as Western philosophy.
8. American vs. British Grammar: Differences go beyond color vs. colour, optimize vs. optimise.
9. Authors of Historical Fiction resource
10. Bartleby: Resource has been around for a long-time that contains reference and verses for writers, researchers, and the “intellectually curious.”
11. A Beginner’s Guide to the Business Side of Freelancing: From creating a business plan to dealing with taxes.
12. CARRIE: Internet’s first full-text online electronic library.
13. Community Mottos and Nicknames. Great info for stories and inspiration for names.
14. Confusing Words: Over 3000 troublesome words.
15. Digital Library of the Commons: An archive of full-text articles, papers, and dissertations; the Comprehensive Bibliography of the Commons; a Keyword Thesaurus, and links to relevant reference sources on the study of the commons.
16. Disability Writes: Site to help people with disabilities overcome barriers in getting support and encouragement to write.
17. e-write: newsletter, courses, articles, tools, resources, challenge.
18. Etymology: Study of word origins.
19. For Copywriters Only: Articles and newsletter.
20. The Free Dictionary: Dictionary, encyclopeida, thesaurus, and more. Huge resource.
21. Freelance Folder: More about the business of freelancing, but writers benefit greatly.
22. Freelance Writing Success: Articles and resources.
23. FundsForWriters: Articles, newsletters, and more.
24. Fun with Words: Wordplay
25. Google Book Search: Access thousands of books based on your keywords. How much you get depends on the book and its copyright.
26. Guide to Grammar and Writing: Guidelines and resources for writing proposals.
27. Little Known Online Research Sites: List of online research sites and apps.
28. Long Story Short: Ezine with book reviews, excerpts, interviews, articles, poetry, writing school.
29. Luciferous Logolepsy: Collection of obscure English words.
30. Manuscript Analyzer can help dump those trouble words and phrases. It looks for frequently-used words and “identify junk phrases, ‘frequent offender’ word patterns, and adverbs.”
31. NewsTrust.net: Discover good journalism based on quality not popularity.
32. OnceWritten.com: Introduces new fiction writers, contains a community, and provides resources for contests and marketing.
33. ParaPublishing: Newsletter and resources.
34. Phrase Finder: “Search beginnings and endings of phrases.”
35. Publication Coach Newsletter: Power Writing newsletter provides quick tips.
36. Publishing Central: Find articles from around the Web on just about every topic related to publishing.
37. The Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL): Superb resources covering writing, research, grammar, and MLA and APA style.
38. ResearchCopyright.com: Learn about copyright law in simple language.
39. Research Guides from New York Public Library: New York Public Library research guides in alphabetical order by topic.’
40. That White Paper Guy: Articles, FAQ, and other great white paper writing resources from Gordon Graham.
41. Top 25 Books for Writers and Writing-related Topics: As voted by writers.
42. The Ultimate Writing Productivity Resources: Top ten lists for free apps, online apps, bookmarks, communities.
43. Visuwords: Online graphical dictionary.
44. The Well-Fed Writer: Site behind the books of the same name. Sign up for the free newsletter.
45. Writing for Dollars: Articles and newsletter
46. WhitePaperSource: Excellent resource for white paper writers.
47. Worldwide Freelance Writer: Markets, newsletter, and articles.
48. Writer Magazine: Not only a print magazine, but also has lots of online articles.
49. Writing White Papers: Everything white papers including a community, blog, links, and newsletter.
50. WritingSpirit.com: Resources, strategies and support for writers.

Tools

1. About Writing Tools: Best writing tools on the Web.
2. Abbreviations: Search and browse abbreviations.
3. Anagram Genius
4. Cliche Finder: Identify and kill cliches.
5. ClicheSite: Cliches, euphemesms, and figures of speech.
6. Chris Pound’s Name Generation Page: Includes fantasie, parodies, and more links.
7. The Editorium Freebies: Tools and templates for Microsoft Word.
8. The Free Dictionary: Includes English, Medical, Legal, Financial, and Computer Dictionaries, Thesaurus, Acronyms, Idioms, Encyclopedia, and a Literature Reference Library.
9. Freelance Switch Hourly Rate Calculator: How much should you make an hour? Complete this form to find out.
10. Global Acronyms: Search for acronyms.
11. Good Keywords: Find the right keywords.
12. Google Docs: Online-based word processor
13. Instant Anagrams
14. Instant Rhymes
15. Microsoft Word Shortcuts: Exactly as it sounds.
16. The Naque: Tools for coming up with names.
17. NetLingo: Online text and jargon.
18. The Passivator: Eliminate passive phrases.
19. Phrase Finder: Find phrases and their meanings.
20. Reference.com: Dictionary, thesaurus, encyclopedia, reference material Wikipedia and Lexico’s On This Day.
21. Rhymezone: Tool for finding words that rhyme. Also includes other resources such as Shakespeare, quizzes, quotations, Mother Goose, and famous documents.
22. Scrivener Gold: Helps writers organize projects — for Macs. Apple Matters review gives it a rating of 9 out of 10. Scrivener requires a Mac running OS X 10.4 (Tiger).
23. Seventh Sanctum: Name generators (look on the left).
24. Text Block Writer: A virtual index card program.
25. ThinkFree Office: Free “Office” application.
26. Tools for Creating Ideas: Nice list of ideas of what you can do to brainstorm and come up with new things.
27. U.S. Newspapers: Find Web sites for US newspapers.
28. VocabTest.com: Boost your word power.
29. Wordsmith: Love the site’s anagram server. Also has A Word a Day, Wordsmith Chat, Wordserver and more.
30. World Newspapers, Magazines, and New Sites in English: Nice resource that sorts resources by categories.
31. WordWeb: Thesaurus and dictionary accessed with one click.
32. Zoho Writer and other apps

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Came across this unfortunate spelling error that I see often (click the little green box below to view larger). This could happen out of habit since we’re used to simply adding “ed” to change a word from present tense to past tense. I’ve caught myself doing this on occasion. Sometimes my fingers have a mind of their own. I’d be thinking, “You won’t find any there.”

My fingers decide to type, “You won’t find any their.” Eww. I immediately catch my error most of the time, but when I don’t — talk about horrified. No spellchecker can save me hear (yes, pun intended).

We’ve discussed apostrophes many times here, and we’re not going to stop anytime soon as long as the abuse continues. WikiHow’s How to Use Apostrophes mentions the frequent use of “photo’s” and it’s true. I know a few PTA parents who add an apostrophe in photos. I don’t understand why. It’s not as if it looks weird like saying your child gets straight A’s. Never been a fan of A’s, B’s, C’s… but As can be hard to distinguish.

Ew. Is anyone bothered by this recommendation? “Similarly, apostrophes can be used when talking about a word (e.g., this list contains a lot of do’s and don’t's) but quotation marks can make it clearer (“do”s and “don’t”s).” I think the use of “” looks worse than without it. Typically I use “dos and don’ts.” The adding of an “s” to indicate a plural on a one or two letter word looks awkward, but “do”s is horrific. Other than that nitpick, the article contains helpful advice.

Be careful when using here’s especially when you’re referring to more than one item. Here’s does not represent “Here are…” I’ve been guilty of this one — habit!

A sign in Beijing’s airport says, “Careful Landslip Attention Security.” With the Olympics coming to Beijing in 2008 and over 500,000 foreigners, officials promise to take care of the bad grammar according to this CNN article. They’ve gone so far to ask for help from the public to watch for poor grammar. Other poorly translated signs:

* On a billboard, “Shangri-La is in you mind, but your Buffalo is not.”

* In an elevator, “Please lead your child to tare the life.”

* Danwei (top 10 volunteer for helping correct poorly worded signs) has a photo of a sign that says, “Racist park.” Yikes! Beijing International explains it’s the Park of Chinese Ethnic Minorities along the Fourth Ring Road in Beijing.

* “Oil Gate,” “Parking this way,” “Export” and “Goods Return” from CCTV.

This podcast with David Tool, also known as Du Danwei, discusses his helping with English and putting the spotlight on the issue of more wheelchair accessibility.

Pick the Brain nicely abstracts George Orwell’s 5 Rules for Effective Writing and provides the link to the original essay. I just came across this tool that helps you eliminate cliches from your writing. This helps with Orwell’s first rule of avoiding the use of metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech that you’ve seen in print.

Rule #2, use short words instead of long — “use” works better than “utilized.”

Rule #3: Cut out a word. Less is better. So eliminate “very,” “really,” “so,” and “much.” Really, the sentence sounds better without them.

Rule #4: Active not passive voice. Came across another tool to help with this: The Passivator.

Rule #5: Use everyday English instead of jargon, foreign words or scientific terms. Many of us had the flu works fine. Using “influenza” won’t go over well.

Unless you’re following specific rules for a college paper or a technical paper, keep it simple. No one thinks less of you for using simpler words and shorter sentences. These rules help smooth the reading experience.