THE INTERNET GUIDE FOR WRITERS

Malcolm Chisholm
How To Books
£9:99
ISBN 1 85703 715 4

Review by Jean Currie

A book of this kind needs a comprehensive glossary to enable the reader to understand any jargon and a detailed index to allow quick and easy locating of answers sought. This guide has both.

Malcolm Chisholm assumes that his reader knows little or nothing about the Internet and begins at the beginning, explaining what is essential and what is meant by different terms. He has an excellent method of identifying unfamiliar words and phrases that can be found in the glossary; they stand out in bold type so that the novice can immediately look up - MODEM, DOWNLOAD etc.

Because the Contents page lists exactly what can be found in each chapter, anyone who has been sending and receiving electronic mail for years can skip and move on to Chat Rooms, Newsgroups or surfing the World Wide Web.

Interspersed in the chapters are handy hints, for example in the "Surfing The Web" chapter:

"With Internet Explorer hold down SHIFT as you click on the hot link and a new window will open, leaving the search page still accessible in the background. If you use this you do not have to wait to go back to the search page. You can also have several pages opened at once and switch between them."

And to save the ever-mounting phone bill:

"Once you have received a page, save it to read or print later when you are offline. On the FILE menu, click SAVE AS. Use the dialogue box to save it in your preferred folder."

In "Advanced Searching Techniques" Malcolm discusses Search Engines and how to make the best use of them - with or without capital letters, quotes, signs etc.

"On-line Help" gives details of numerous sites offering help to writers: Universities, OWLS (On-line writing laboratories), Local Writers' Circles, On-line Writers' Circles, Mailing Lists, Reference Sites such as dictionaries and Translators. All include addresses. For established writers who want to publicise their work "Your Own Web Site" and "How the Internet Helps You to Sell" give invaluable guidance and tips.

This book is packed with facts in clear language, a wealth of useful addresses and the secrets of Winzip, that magical system that allows files to be compressed so that they take up less space on a disk or less time downloading. An excellent guide for writers with little knowledge as well as those with more experience.