Carpenter Document Consulting

Elicit and illicit are two commonly confused words with very different meanings. Here’s the difference:

• Elicit (verb): To draw forth or bring out
  Example: The controversial newspaper article elicited a huge response from angry readers.
• Illicit (adjective): Not permitted
  Example: Students who participate in illicit activity will be suspended.

You’ll never get these words confused again!

Spring semester is over, but our workload has not slowed down here at Carpenter Doc. Currently, our schedule is full through May 25. We are accepting new projects, but any major projects (theses/dissertations) will not be started until next month. After delivering this batch of projects back to clients on or before May 25, we will be on vacation from May 26 to June 4. We’ll be responding to emails, so please continue to send us your projects. Note that any major projects submitted during our vacation will be started the week of June 4.

Thanks to our loyal and growing client base for keeping us busy as we move into summer. Keep those projects coming!

Much of our editing work is with graduate students on their theses and dissertations. Formatting these large documents often becomes a major source of frustration for our graduate student clients. Developing automated frontmatter, dealing with page breaks and section breaks, and inserting page numbers aren’t tasks that many Word users innately know how to complete.

During the spring semester, we  were introduced to formatting guidelines for several new schools. It’s always interesting to see schools’ style guides and formatting guidelines because they often vary greatly. Two ideas jumped out at us as highly beneficial.

First, a dissertation template, created in Word, can be very useful for students who just want to write and don’t want to deal with formatting their document. The dissertation template can include heading styles, page numbers, page/section breaks, and placeholders for frontmatter, thus eliminating the need for the students to create these items. Students can simply add their content to the template, and their document is formatted per the school’s guidelines. There’s always a bit of work on the students’ end, such as establishing heading levels and generating the table of contents, but a Word template can take much of the guesswork out of the thesis/dissertation submission process.

Giving students an example of a formatted, approved thesis or dissertation that aligns with school guidelines is another helpful tool. Students can compare their thesis or dissertation to the example, allowing them to identify and correct any discrepancies before format review. The more resources schools give graduate students, the less confusing the thesis/dissertation submission process will be.

Thanks to our dedicated client base, Carpenter Doc has been enjoying much success in 2012. Our schedule has been booked for weeks at a time for several months now. As the business grows, we are always evaluating the best way to manage the workload and ensure that our clients’ projects are completed before deadlines. For clients who are under a tight deadline, we offer a rush edit option, and we’re establishing some new policies regarding rush fees.

Projects that fall under one of the following categories will be charged a rush edit fee:

• Projects with an expected turnaround time of 24 hours or less.
  Example: A client delivers a 25-page journal article on Wednesday afternoon that is due on Thursday at noon.
• Projects that are delivered and require completion on Saturdays and Sundays.
  Example: A client submits a project on Friday evening and needs to submit it Monday morning.

Due to our increased workload, we cannot guarantee that every project that has a deadline of 24 hours or less or requires weekend work can be completed. However, the rush edit fee allows us to prioritize our workload, putting your project ahead of others in the queue. While you are paying a premium for this service, it is money well spent, as your project will be completed in a timely manner. At Carpenter Doc, we are committed to helping you meet your deadline. Rush edit fees help us achieve that goal.

Fees vary depending on the project. Contact Barbie for more information!

The spring 2012 semester was our busiest yet at Carpenter Doc! Congratulations to our many clients who are graduating in the coming weeks. In total, we worked with students and professors from 11 schools from across the country:

• Barry University
• University of Central Florida
• Nova Southeastern University
• University of South Florida
• Florida International University
• University of Massachusetts Amherst
• University of Kentucky
• Eastern Kentucky University
• University of Utah
• University of Phoenix
• Capella University

The spring 2012 semester ended with more than 60 projects from clients from these schools as well as several businesses and websites!

We look forward to continuing to build relationships with clients from schools across the country. Contact us today to line us up as an editor for the upcoming semester! If you’re writing this summer, we’re editing!

We’ve made a few updates to the website and wanted to share this news here on the blog as well. Check out the changes:

• The Rates page now includes our writing package option. If you’re ordering articles in bulk, we can bundle the articles for one reasonable cost. The cost of the bundled writing package will depend on the length of the articles and the amount of research required.
• Now that we are an LLC in Kentucky, we must charge 6% sales tax for all services rendered for both in-state and out-of-state clients. Please note that the 6% Kentucky sales tax will be added to all invoices effective immediately.
• We added two more style guides to the list on the About page. Recently, we have been working with American Medical Association and Harvard style guidelines, and we can help format your papers for these style guides.

Admit it: Your list of references can be a pain. Compiling all of the sources you used during your research and then finding all sorts of information for each source — from the editors and translators to the publisher, location, and year — is a time-consuming task. There are bound to be some mistakes in this tedious work. That’s why it’s important to have an editor who knows your style guide meticulously review your list of references.

Here are some of the things we check when we’re editing references:

• Do the links work? We copy and paste every link into a web browser to ensure it’s up to date.
• Are the right number of authors listed? Each style guide has different rules for how to list authors. We make sure they’re correct.
• Is the source reputable? Anonymous blog posts and sites like Wikipedia aren’t reliable sources of information.
• Is all of the right information included for each source? For example, journal articles require an article title, journal title, volume and issue numbers, page numbers, and often a URL.
• Is the information formatted properly? APA calls for book titles to be italicized and sentence case, while journal articles are normal text and sentence case. Journal titles are italicized and title case. Confused yet?

A lot can go wrong in a list of references. We can make sure your sources are right. We know AMA, AP, APA, MLA, and Chicago. Contact us today!

In its attempt to bring high-quality websites to your search results, Google continues to change its algorithm. This week, Google highlighted the ways it will reward high-quality sites. SEO is the hot phrase when it comes to developing content on the web, and some websites and articles optimize articles for searchability without providing any real content. Google’s algorithim change attempts to weed out these keyword-rich, content-free articles, which it calls “black hat webspam.”

So, what does this mean for website developers and web content writers? Content that is relevant and useful shouldn’t be affected by this change. Web pages that are solely focused on populating content with SEO keywords to boost the site’s rankings are going to take a hit. As someone who writes plenty of content for the web, I’m not concerned. My clients are focused on developing rich, relevant content for their websites. Sure, they might use keywords here and there to boost the site’s searchability, but the articles aren’t spam. Keep doing what you’re doing web writers; if you’re writing for legit sites and developing helpful content, Google will find you.

As mentioned in last week’s post, business is booming here at Carpenter Doc! Our schedule is currently booked through May 7. We are working on dissertations for several spring and summer graduates, not to mention continuing several ongoing writing projects for some long-term clients.

Please continue to submit your content, but note that any lengthy projects will not be started until the week of May 7. Because our student clients are always under tight deadlines, we complete projects in the order they come in. Even if your document is not ready for us yet, contact us now to line up your edit. We are booking projects through May 25.

We’ve noticed writers confusing “dialogue” and “dialog” in a few projects lately. Understand the differences:

Dialogue: A written composition, a conversation, or an exchange of ideas

• The professor welcomed the dialogue with his students.

Dialog: A shortened form of a dialog box, a window on a computer screen

• Click OK to close the dialog box.

If you’re a student writing a dissertation, you’ll probably be using dialogue. If you’re a technical writer developing a help manual, you likely will use dialog. If you aren’t sure, just check out the definitions here.