Actually, there are elements of the freelance life in existing courses: I’ve been booked to talk to students about writing for a living. But The Freelancer website’s Danielle Corcione has written a funny, incisive and rather smart prospectus for a proper course. It begins with a module on Self-Care for Emotionally Unstable Writers before it goes into practical issues of money.
Have a read. By the end, you’d sign up for this course if she ever really ran it.
Hard to tell whether this means text-speak kids are growing up or not but reportedly it’s now rare to see LOL written on Facebook. It’s not that the world is any less laugh-out-loud-able, it’s more that we’re using that archaic but multi-meaning ha.
Facebook’s researchers explain: “The most common are the four-letter hahas and hehes. The six-letter hahaha is also very common, and in general, the haha-ers use longer laughter. The haha-ers are also slightly more open than the hehe-ers to using odd number of letters, and we do see the occasional hahaas and hhhhaaahhhaas. The lol almost always stands by itself, though some rare specimens of lolz and loll were found. A single emoji is used 50 percent of the time, and it’s quite rare to see people use more than five identical consecutive emoji.”
‘Haha’ Has Killed ‘LOL’ Says Facebook – James Vincent, The Verge (10 August 2015)
Read the full piece.