Brightwheel reports:
"You’ve made the big decision to start a daycare business. Whatever your reason, whether you’re a childcare professional with a vision or a parent who sees a need, you’ve got your work cut out for you. First things first[,] though, you’re going to need a business plan. This is a big task, but due diligence and hard work at this stage will inform the rest of the process. You’ll need to do your research, with a focus on gaining a deep understanding of what you’ll need to successfully launch and run a daycare business. Before you get started, find out about licensing guidelines in your area. Your local government will have rules and regulations that will govern you as a small business owner and as a childcare provider, and you want to strictly comply with [both. Start] by checking out Child Care Aware of America’s licensing guidelines, and then research your specific state and city. If you’re in California the Child Care Resource and Renewal Network should have all the info you need. Once you’re clear on licensing guidelines, you’re ready to get started on your daycare business plan...Start with the basics–what are you planning to do? The exercise of detailing out exactly what service you’re offering will help you shape a clear plan for your business. You might want to write some goals or even a mission statement, outlining your purpose and motivation...Start by looking at general childcare industry trends, but then narrow it down to looking at the childcare offerings and choices in your local area. You’ll need to figure out who your target customers are, and confirm that there really is a need in your community. Are there a lot of young families in your neighborhood? Is there a particular age group that has a need for childcare? Are you located somewhere convenient for commuting parents? Also, check out the competition. Do some research on the existing daycare options in your community. How will you differentiate yourself to attract customers?...Developing detailed budgets will guide you in the logistics of running your small business. You’ll need to figure out cash flow vs. expenditures, and build in a plan for unexpected costs. How many children do you need to serve to be able to pay your bills and stay afloat? ChildCare Aware offers some terrific planning worksheets for this process...Depending on the type and size of your daycare, you’ll need insurance policies of several different types, including liability, property, workers’ compensation, and business insurance. Check the licensing requirements for guidance...Write out policies, procedures, and handbooks for your staff and families. Again, ChildCare Aware offers a detailed guide to this process. Verify the licensing requirements for staff ratios and teachers’ educational backgrounds. Childcare staff are subject to criminal background checks and fingerprinting, and be sure to rigorously verify references and education levels. You’ll also develop a disaster or crisis management plan and health, safety, privacy, and nutrition protocols, all under the guidance of your local childcare licensing requirements...Decide what type of advertising will put you in front of potential customers. List your daycare in any local directories of childcare providers and participate in parenting events in your area...Run a social media campaign focusing on your target population. Another big piece of marketing will be to consider how to differentiate yourself from other childcare businesses. These days going high-tech is a surefire way to please families with young children." Ellie Williams reports:
"If you're a senior citizen job seeker, your biggest challenge may lie in adapting your resume to depict you as qualified for the modern workplace. Instead of focusing solely on job experience, tailor your resume to showcase what skills you have to offer and downplay information that portrays you as overqualified...Don't limit your qualifications to what you've done professionally. All of your skills and accomplishments are relevant, so include them on your resume if they relate to the jobs you're applying for. If you've taught yourself computer skills, a foreign language or any other talent, include it even if it wasn't part of your job duties. Emphasize your knowledge with a skills-based or achievement-based resume. Instead of just listing your jobs chronologically, lead with a section featuring three or four [skill] sets that apply to the job you're applying for. Describe how you used those skills at your previous jobs, and include specifics such as 'increased sales by 15 percent.'...You don't need to list your entire work history, especially if it dates back several decades. A lengthy work history draws attention to your age, and some experience may not be relevant because of changes within the industry. You only need to list your most recent 15 to 20 years of experience or your most recent three to four jobs. If you include older jobs, omit the dates of employment and also omit college graduation dates...If you've primarily held high-level positions such as vice president or chief operating officer, employers may think you're overqualified if you're applying for something lower on the corporate ladder. Many senior citizens, especially those who have retired, want to remain in the workforce at least part[-]time, and seek lower-stress jobs than they held as a full-time professional. However, if your most recent job was as a CEO, employers may hesitate to hire you as a retail sales associate. If you're seeking positions of a significantly lower stature than your most recent experience, soften the job titles...If you haven't worked in several years...downplay the gaps in your work experience. Instead of saying you were unemployed, describe what you did during that time and how it applies to the jobs you're applying for...Also include part-time and temporary jobs." Sarah Vrba reports:
"Writing a connection paper, also known as a synthesis paper, requires drawing conclusions about multiple sources. These sources can vary --- from fiction to academic articles. In any case, drawing strong connections, as well as differences, between multiple sources is a valuable exercise in learning how to construct an argument and develop an understanding of the value of the sources you are dissecting. Connection papers are a great way to investigate a new topic and learn about the work, which has already been done in the field. Create an outline of the sources you want to draw connections between. Note down the main arguments, plots and content of the sources. For fiction, think about the plot and the characters; for academic items, note down the main argument and the use of sources. The idea behind this step is to get a sense of the overarching arguments and goals the authors have. Open the paper with a clear introduction. The introduction should introduce the items you will be making connections between and end with a clear statement that reflects your overall view of the connection paper...Write the body of the connection paper by using a single point of comparison or contrast for each paragraph. For example, if you are discussing two novels, you may use a paragraph to contrast the two leading characters of the novel. Other topics could be the overarching plot, the use of language or the organization of the two novels. In each case, begin the paragraph with a clear topic sentence, which introduces the element you will be discussing...Give specific examples to support your main topic sentence. Conclude the connection paper by restating your main thesis from the introduction. At this point in time, you can do a recap of the main connections between the sources but refrain from recapping every topic sentence; only include major points that bolster your main thesis statement. The conclusion should also suggest other themes, which could be discussed in future connection papers." Jonathan Dorf reports:
"Finishing a first draft of a play is great. But it's like building a house. If you tried to sell that 'first draft' house, buyers would wonder why you're selling a house without wiring, plumbing, coverings on the walls ... you get the idea. Ninety-nine percent of the time, you only get one shot to sell them the house, so wait until it's absolutely ready...Often, the play you start writing isn't the one you finish writing; it takes the process of writing the play to figure out what the play is really about. Then, the job becomes to make the beginning, when you didn't know what you were writing about, more like the ending, when you did know. I call that process 'recentering.' So you spell-check, you proof, you clarify, you recenter, you polish—you've done all you can on your own. Now you need help. You're ready for a reading. To hold one, all you need are a bunch of actors, chairs and a room. While you may be able to get scripts to the actors ahead of time, it will probably be a cold (unrehearsed) reading. It's nice to have a few audience members, people who are committed to your work and whose opinions you trust. Your objective: to listen to the play. Hearing it aloud is a great way to know if the dialogue works and to get a sense of the play's rhythm. You may wish to hold a brief discussion afterward...A few rules to make the discussion more useful:
Missy J. Talbot reports:
"An informative speech is one that is full of information on a given topic. The purpose of the speech is to inform the listeners, and an informative speech can be made on just about any topic. If you are writing an informative speech about a city, there are going to be many specific details you want to include so that your speech contains as much information as possible. Write the name of the city, and then give a description of where it is located. This might include the county and state, the country...or even the geographical location...Give a short description of the city's main specifics. This includes the size of the city in terms of miles or kilometers, the population of the city and any ways in which the city is important...Talk a little bit about the city's history. Some ideas might include when the city was founded, any historical events that took place in the city and whether the city was ever a part of another state or another country. Discuss famous buildings or attractions that are found in the city. Depending on the size of the city, you might have one or two things to talk about, or there might be so many famous things that you'll have to choose a few that are very prominent. Give a short description, and tell a little bit about why the building or attraction is famous. List several famous people who are from the city, or who resided there in the past or live there now. Depending on how much time you have left, you can talk about one or two, or even a few more. Discuss any important events that take place in the city, such as yearly festivals or conferences, or that have taken place before, such as the Olympics or an important rally or event." Will Charpentier reports:
"Business has elements in common with a war, including the need to move supplies in and goods that fill a demand out. To satisfy this need, you must develop a logistics support plan that identifies your logistical goals based on your customers’ needs, the appropriate modes of transportation available and the levels of service available...Understand your customers’ delivery needs. Once you know when your customers want to receive the goods they order from you, you can identify the mode of transportation needed, based on the distance from you and the time required to transport your goods. How quickly customers want to receive the goods they order from you influences how much they are willing to pay for transportation...Discuss delivery speed with your customers...A shipment to a distant location, delivered the next day, travels by air express and costs more. The customers' needs -- not their desires -- are the essence of good logistics. Once you identify those needs, you can identify the modes of transportation that are cost-appropriate for your customer and cost-effective for you...There are five modes of transportation – air, truck, rail and ocean, or the combination of modes, called intermodal freight. Not all are appropriate for every shipment. You can transport small quantities of goods across town by truck more quickly than when you send the same goods overseas by ocean freight. Intermodal freight uses a combination of the other four means of shipment to provide loading dock-to-loading dock freight movement with minimal interruption...Assemble the information for each customer. Match each customer’s needs to the appropriate transportation mode based on the customer’s location and the required speed of delivery. Determine what cost a customer is willing to pay. Fine-tune the plan as needed. Adjust the mode of delivery for each customer, if necessary, based on the customer’s transportation budget. If a customer’s transportation costs are more than the customer is willing to pay, adjust manufacturing or shipment schedules to match the customer’s needs." Lara Willard reports:
"Does all of your dialogue sound the same, no matter who’s talking? Have you had feedback saying that your dialogue is awkward or unrealistic? Nearly any book about writing fiction will have a section on dialogue. Consider this a quick reference or summary...Fix the awkward syntax, the too[-]perfect grammar, the long-winded response. A breath unit is the number of syllables a reader would have to read aloud in one breath. Readers take breaths at punctuation marks. Try keeping to 20 syllables or fewer per breath unit (25 is pushing it), and vary the lengths. Too many long segments make your reader lose his or her place. Too many short ones are choppy and jarring, like using exclamation points after each sentence...Use a journal or tape recorder. Consider the era, location, and culture of your character. Then find diaries, spoken interviews, or You[T]ube videos of people with a similar background. Study their vocabulary and the way they string words together. What kinds of idioms do they use? What kind[s] of words do they leave out? Record their speech and then craft similar sentences in the same style...While I think reality television is 98% garbage, it does give you an idea of how people actually talk. Just try to find one that isn’t obviously scripted. Note that quotes in newspaper interviews are often edited. You want unedited speech, so try to find interviews you can listen to...Bottom line, if it’s hard to read, you’re doing it wrong. If someone speaks with an accent, that’s a good time to tell us rather than show us. Misspelling words to show pronunciation at best is confusing to some readers, and at worst it’s offensive. Diction (word choice) and syntax (word order) are your tools. Vary Latinate and Anglo-Saxon diction, vary sentence length, and switch up word order until you get a distinctive (but realistic) voice...Dialogue is the meat of a screenplay. Screenwriters know how to convey tone, conflict, backstory, motivation, and more through dialogue...Acting will show you how to get into your character and make them sound and act realistic. If you can become your character, if you can live inside your character’s mind, not only will your dialogue be realistic, [but] your plot will also ring true...Eliminate all empty words. Realize that subtext is even more important than text—what isn’t said is more important than what is said. Think of dialogue as an espresso and each dialogue tag as a slap in the face...If the character already knows it, then why is he or she stating the obvious? Dialogue has two functions: to characterize and move the story forward. Not backward. If you can characterize the protagonist through the interchange, then do it. If your information is absolutely necessary, but doesn’t characterize more than one character, summarize." Bill Spooner reports:
"If you’ve ever worked on a development team, or even looked back at some of your old code, there’s probably a chance you came across a certain block of code that looked like someone had a fight on a keyboard while the text editor was open. Messy syntax, unclear variable definitions, and jumbled, cramped code can be a pain to read through — not to mention a nightmare when you’re pushing deadlines and are tasked with sorting through someone else’s sloppy code. So spending some time and learning to keep your code neat, concise, and easy to read is well worth it. Sometimes it can just flow as you’re coding and thinking at the same time, but nothing stops you from going back and cleaning it up once the code works. With a bit of practice, writing clean code will come naturally (and your coworkers will thank you for it)...Using a naming convention is a great way to get started — it keeps things clear and lets you know exactly what you’re working with. It also means you won’t accidentally try to use a string of text in a math equation. A naming convention basically means you decide you’ll call your variables by names that adhere to a certain set of rules...[T]o keep it simple, just make it as clear as possible what type of variable it is, and keep naming consistent...The next thing, which follows nicely from using naming conventions, is using a convention to indicate variable scope. Again, there are no rules, and everyone has their own way of doing it — as long as it’s consistent throughout all of your code, it will always be clear what can be used from where...[T]he most important thing is to have a clear and consistent style. If someone else is looking at your code, they shouldn’t be caught by things not being as they expected...Easily the most frustrating thing for another developer looking at your code is seeing a variable with a misleading name or, worse, named with a single letter. The names you give your variables and functions are incredibly important — it should leave the reader with absolutely no doubt what the variable is used for or what the function does...Using whitespace can be incredibly powerful and normally has absolutely no downside. Sometimes in languages like JavaScript where the file size of the source code itself is important, you might want your files to be small, and that whitespace can add a few extra kilobytes. For the most part, this won’t be too much of a problem, but in the cases where this is important, I would still suggest keeping all your whitespace during development so the code is readable. Then, use one of the many smart little programs that go through code and chop out all the whitespace just before you upload it. So, in general, if you’re writing lots of things together in one block, and then try to separate the code chunks into logical pieces, maybe have all of your code that positions some text fields, then a line of whitespace, and then write another chunk where you assign them all a value. Things like this might seem annoying at the time of writing, but are crucial when trying to quickly find something in a large section of unfamiliar code...Adding comments to your code can be invaluable — they can quickly show what a complex function is doing, or maybe even explain why certain things need to happen in a certain order. They do have a downside, though, because too much commenting can have the opposite effect and actually make for messier code...Comments should be used only when they are needed to describe functionality, or perhaps to remind other programmers of information they otherwise would not have access to at that point...Writing slightly more technical code doesn’t mean it has to be less readable. Lines and lines of duplicate code are not only harder to read than a concise and elegant solution, but also increase the chance for error. The great thing about programming is that you can express complex commands in tidy, reusable, and clever ways...When you have a code block with multiple loops one after the other, you need different iterator variables. There is always debate about what to use, and the answer is slightly subjective, but when they’re one after another, it makes sense to declare your iterator outside of the loop and reuse it. It’s not only better to look at, as it’s always clear that 'i' is your iterator variable, but it’s also slightly more efficient...When your projects start to get larger, your classes will likely have many variables. First, you should be keeping all of your variable declarations at the top of the page, or at the very least all together somewhere — this speeds up any kind of searching when you need to find something. Second[ly], even though they are all together, it often helps to arrange them in such a way that makes them even easier to comprehend...Mile-long function definitions are an easy way to clutter your code. Normally it’s best to take a look at what’s actually being done. If a function is doing more than its name suggests, then perhaps some of the excess functionality could be split out into its own function. This can often help the rest of your code, too, because it becomes easier to look at. And if smaller functional chunks can be used on their own, then it means other parts of your code can use them without the need to duplicate code...Similar to the functional problem, if there’s a large amount of functionality you’re keeping all in one place, it could be better to create a separate class just to handle that functionality. Again, this is all about reusability and keeping your programming tidy — maybe some other classes are using the same functionality, so wouldn’t it be better if, instead, they all accessed a single place that was handling all of these things?...These are just a few different ways to clean up your code — they’re not concrete rules and, of course, you’ll find your own style and way of doing things. Just remember to keep it tidy, clearly sectioned, and consistent. Anyone working with your code will appreciate the effort, and might even learn something from your example." Andy Walton reports:
"Using the three-page format allows you to create professional-looking folded pamphlets from a single sheet of paper...[It] sees your pamphlets divided up into three separate columns, which can be folded on top of each other to create a gatefold effect. In order to create a three-page pamphlet in Word, you will first need to use the 'Columns' feature to divide your page. You will also need to configure the software to print your work double-sided, as trifold pamphlets almost always have content on both sides of the paper...Open a new Word document and then click the 'Page Layout' tab. Click the 'Columns' option and then select 'Three' from the drop-down menu to format your document into three vertical columns...Click the 'Insert' tab and then click 'Page Break.' Word will insert a page break into your document, creating a second page. This page will also be divided into three columns, and will act as the reverse side of your pamphlet...Create your pamphlet's content. You can use any of Word's features with your page divided into columns, including different levels of heading, background colors and embedded graphics...Click 'File' and then select 'Print.' Select 'Manually Print On Both Sides' from the 'Print One Sided' drop-down menu...Click the 'Print' button to print your document. Word will print out the content on the first page and then display a dialog box asking you to reinsert your paper...Take the paper out of your printer, turn it over and then put it back into your printer's feed tray. Click 'OK' to print the reverse side of your pamphlet on the reverse side of the paper...Fold first the right and then the left columns of your pamphlet inwards along their edges." Cecilia Harsch reports:
"A writing impression is often left on the underlying paper beneath the page that was originally written on. This does depend on how hard the author pressed down on the original document. There are procedures that make the imprinted writing visible on the underlying paper that you can try on your own...Lay the paper on a flat surface. Remove any lamp or light shining directly on the paper...Hold a lamp or other lighting source next to the paper. Shine the light across the paper at a low angle, adjusting the angle and the distance until shadows form in the imprints...Take a picture of the paper with a digital camera to capture the shadows. Print the picture to read the imprinted writing...Remove the page from the tablet and lay it on a flat surface...Sharpen a number two pencil...Rub the pencil lead lightly across the page. The lead shades the raised areas on the paper and leaves the indentations from the original writing clear." |
Writing and editing can be pretty rigorous processes if you want to do them well, but that's what this page is here for. Check out the latest tips here. Archives
April 2024
CategoriesJ.D. Parsons
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