Stop the urban legend sprawl

Gotta love XKCD.

It’s the sort of thing that makes me want to reconsider giving out my email.

A few times a week, a message pops into my inbox – usually from certain retired relatives of mine – that claims reading it will save my life, or it’ll be the most amazing thing I’ve ever heard, and if I send it to 15 of my closest friends plus the person who sent it to me within the next hour something spectacular will happen to me in five days.

The dreaded hoax email.

I’ve received so many of them over the years that it’s come to be like the boy who cried wolf – eventually, I stop paying attention – so much so that these days I won’t even look past the subject line. If it starts with FWD and continues with a phrase like “YOU WON’T BELIEVE THIS!!!!” it’s gone without a second glance. Should it have any amount of truth in it that’s worth my worrying, I have enough faith in the CBC that I’ll hear about it from them.

Which brings me to the last assignment of my Editing Print and Online Media course, where we’re looking at urban legends and the ways that editors can determine whether or not someone’s trying to pull our leg.

However, just because you’re not an editor, that doesn’t mean you’re off the hook. As soon as you type in a name in the addressee box, you’re directing your message to an audience, and, just like an editor, you have the responsibility of A) making sure what you’re sending out is newsworthy, not a waste of their time, and B) that it’s true.

You don’t have to become a human lie detector. There are quite a few great websites dedicated to debunking urban legends and Internet hoaxes which are kept rigorously up to date, Snopes being one of the best, about.com another.

Even a quick glance through the top 10 on these sites shows the range of these stories – from the moderately believable to the downright obscure (Lady Gaga amputates leg for fashion!)

Whether meant as a joke or intended to cause alarm, both me and my inbox agree, things are getting just a bit ridiculous.

So save your friends and relatives both time and frustration and do a little fact checking of your own. Together, maybe we can stop this madness.

Voulez-vous parlez francais?: A resource list for learning French online

The incentive

People learn French for many reasons: they love the language; they’re going to France in a few months; they’ve chosen it as their college thesis.

Well, maybe that last one just applies to me.

Actually, all of them apply to me: Near the end of this past semester, my parents surprised me with summer vacation plans: we’re going to Paris (volcano permitting)!

It was a bittersweet moment. It’ll be my first trip overseas, and will add some real French flavour to my audio documentary. It also means I’m starting my project three months early so I can have something to show when I step onto French soil.

But that’s step one: you need an incentive.

The Search

When it comes to online resources for learning French (and other popular languages), quantity certainly isn’t a problem, but you will need to spend a good amount of time researching and narrowing down your choices.

The easiest (and most important) way to do so if by being attentive to what your needs are.

For instance, how much time are you willing to devote to the task?

Learning to speak French is not instant. Many of these resources are intended for daily use, but the actual length of time you spend with it varies. Michel Thomas’ audio lessons are one hour per CD; Pimsleur CDs are organized around 30 minute lessons; while Coffee Break French podcasts are kept around 20 minutes each, designed to fit nicely (as the name suggests) within your office coffee break.

Another important need to consider is where you’ll be learning French.

If you’re on a computer (or iPod) with Internet, the sky is pretty much the limit in terms of podcasts, videos, games, and learning communities. If you plan to learn during your commute, you’re a bit restricted as driving limits you to audio (podcasts, CDs) played through your car stereo or iPod. If you want to learn on the move, or in small bites, and have an iPhone or iPod Touch, there’s numerous French language apps.

For the purposes of my project, I’ll be trying a wide variety of resources so I can get an accurate take on whether or not new media is an effective way of learning a language.

I’ve listed the materials I’ve chosen to work with below, along with my timeline, to give an idea of the work involved and where you might look to get started if you’re interested in learning French online.

The List

1. (June) Michel Thomas: Speak French (for Beginners):

• 10 CDs, 1 hour each
• MP3 format, downloadable to iPod
• classroom style (you’re taught along with two other students)
• Grace Kelley, Woody Allen, Barbra Streisand, and other celebrities were taught through the Michel Thomas method.
• not free (unless you borrow from the library, like I did)

2. (July) Coffee Break French & Walk, Talk, and Learn French:

• audio podcast and video podcast from the popular Radio Lingua Network
• 80, 20-minute lessons (audio), and 10, 7-9 minute episodes (video)
• audio podcast is informal classroom style (one other student)
• video podcast focuses on French grammar in the “real world”: straight from the streets of Paris, but in an entertaining style (complete with Scottish accent)
• both downloadable to your iPod

BYKI (Before You Know It):

• flash card program for learning French vocabulary
• ”Lite” version is free
• recommended by about.com and my high school French teacher. ‘Nuff said!

3. (in Paris) Twitter and iPod Touch apps: for me, work doesn’t stop when I’m on vacation! I’ll be testing out the on-the-go effectiveness of the various iPod Touch/iPhone apps and Twitter pages devoted to learning French.

4. (August/September) French in Action OR Ma France:

• FIA (52 half-hour instructional videos) to improve fluency and introduce French culture (con= c. 1987).
• Ma France from the BBC (24, 8-minute clips) focus on scenarios (shopping, eating out, dating). For the post-beginner.

French for Beginners (link will open iTunes):

• 200+ 5-10 minute podcasts spoken entirely in French focusing on “real life” conversations spoken at a more closer-to-normal pace.

Skype language groups: the best way to learn French is to practice with other people. If you don’t know any francophones who could help you in person, Skype offers an alternative. Sign up for an account and make a post in the online forums requesting to chat in French. Also recommended by about.com

I’ll be posting my experiences with each of these resources as I use them.

Have any tips or suggestions? Leave a comment below!

A word on screwups

In my Editing Print and Online Media course, we’re encouraged to look for “screwups”, or editing mistakes, in published material and boy you’d be surprised how many you can find if you set your mind to it. But if there’s ever a place to avoid them...

it's in the lone headline on a front page:

... and in the Canadian Press Stylebook (i.e. the journalism rulebook).

Oops.

From print to screen: five ways to please your readers

The shift from sitting stationary in front of a paper or book, to sitting stationary before a glowing screen changes many aspects of your readers’ behaviour. They’re more impatient; more easily distracted; and aren’t as comfortable reading big blocks of text, to name a few.

Taking all of this into account and adjusting your content to make it easier for your readers to engage is what editing online media is all about.

This Tuesday, the online editor for the Winnipeg Free Press - Wendy Sawatzky - will be visiting our class to talk about what her duties involve (and, I also suspect, the need for newspapers to go online).

In preparation, I’ve done a Glenda Ollero and compiled my own list five of online editing/website principles:

1. Use PDF for downloads, not .doc files. Many websites allow you to download documents from their computer to read; for example, restaurants may upload their menus online. For sites like these which are open to the general public who use a variety of word processors and operating systems, use a format like PDF that is compatible across the board. Lots of websites still use .doc for their files, which is inconsiderate to those who don’t use Microsoft Word, or use a newer/older version of it. Trying to then read these files, with all their odd spacing and alignment issues, is frustrating and a waste of the reader’s time.

The guilty party: Dessert Sinsations. (Even more frustrating is they’ve taken the time to convert their dessert menu into PDF, while everything else is a .doc file. All or nothing!)


2. Avoid heavy graphics, or provide a “skip” option. This one also falls under the category of being considerate to your audience. While online text can be improved with interactive graphics, not everyone has lighting speed broadband or a computer with a large graphics card. This doesn’t mean you have to avoid all those fancy effects altogether: provide visitors with an option to skip past the graphics, or have it require the user to press play to activate them (especially video).

The guilty parties: Data Just Data Inc. Albeit an extreme example, but they take the prize not only for the worst flash intro, but for blatant spelling mistakes.


3. Ensure hyperlinks work. This one is in the CP Stylebook for a reason, and it’s summarized quite eloquently: “Test links regularly to make sure they still work. If it doesn’t work, readers will be annoyed.” Even better, the technology is out there so you don’t have do check links manually.

The guilty party: The Brit Cafe. Their link to view their starters/soup and salads/sandwiches has been broken for at least 3 months (although it’s worth the trip to taste what’s on the menu).


4. Check spelling/grammar before publishing and correct mistakes. Nothings says unprofessional like poor spelling and grammar. Sometimes people underestimate their power but the fact is, your credibility goes way down when it’s obvious you didn’t take the time to proofread.

The guilty party: again, The Brit Cafe. I used their website for one of my “Spot the Screwup” assignments as the spelling and grammar here is really quite atrocious. The best screwup?: favourites is spelled “favorites”, even though the owners are British.


5. Rearrange big blocks of text. Whether it means adding subheadings, a bulleted list, or cutting out sentences, find a way to break up large chunks of text. The CP Stylebook warns that almost 80 per cent of online readers scan pages first, and if they aren’t engaged immediately, 70 per cent will move on. Online editors – especially those putting print publications online – must recognize this change in their readership’s behaviour and adjust accordingly.

The guilty party: Winnipeg Free Press. Organizing a restaurant review like this would make for easier reading, rather than republishing the article from the print edition verbatim.

Want more tips? Check out the World's Worst Website for more what-not-to-dos.