Thursday, February 17, 2005

Working with Google

I'm working hard at the proofreading job, and since I have absolutely nothing interesting to say because my brain is full of confusing statistics, I thought I'd pass on a few Google tips instead. Most of these are things I'm finding very useful as I work.

1. You know to use double quotes if you want to search for a phrase rather than a word, right? You didn't know? Well, say you want to look up post-listing negative drift. Try it without quotes, and with quotes. See the difference? The first one will give you about 150 hits, and the second, one hit. (And that one hit, incidentally, was exactly what I was looking for.) NOTE TO TEACHERS: This feature is very useful for tracking down plagiarism.

2. Google Scholar. For academic searches. Brilliant.

3. If you don't know the meaning of a word, go to the Google search page and type define: word into the search bar. For example, if you type define: opportunist you will get five definitions, of which the second is my favourite.

4. A search page for Mac users.

5. And one for Swedish chefs.

Back to work.

6 comments:

apples said...

1. don't tell them that!
2. heard about it..
3. :D
4. don't use it
5. sweden? I'm norwegian. swedish chefs no thank you

Daryl said...

I use Google as my calculator these days - just type in anything (I gave it 45! / (39! * 6!) most recently) and it returns the answer. And I use it especially for metric/imperial conversions. Sure, I can remember 2.54 cm in the inch, but how would I know how many ml in a quart? So one quick "1 quart in ml" and the answer's there. The calculator even knows the answer to life, the universe, and everything

Badaunt said...

Thanks - I didn't know that one! (What does it mean when you know Swedish Chef but don't know something useful like the calculator function?)

Anonymous said...

>>>A person who starts taking bath if he accidentally falls into a river.<<< Nope, that's the definition of an optimist (someone who makes lemonade when life gives him lemons). :)

Anonymous said...

I google-defined "writer" (blogger had no entries) and found this at the end: >>>a person who is a practicing graffiti artist<<< Talk about devaluing the meaning a word!

Anonymous said...

How 'bout this daffynition of "student"? >>>Lowest form of life at Oxford, but some aspire to greater things<<< LOL!