Typing for Students

I thought I would repost this article as I am getting quite a few requests coming in from students looking for assistance in typing their Assignments.

When typing for students the first thing you need, whether doing copy typing, formatting or transcribing student files is the student’s guidelines from their professors on what they want the document to look like/layout, formatting etc. Each student receives the guidelines before they start writing up assignments.
Most students follow the Harvard Business methods and Academic writing methods with their assignements (there is copies of these documents in our Tavasa files online in our Yahoo group.

Referencing:
Referencing must be a specific way: (placing of brackets around references)

• start of a sentence, example: Malcolm Knowles (1984)
• middle of text, Lieb (1991: 1),
• end of a sentence, example: (Jarvis, 1987: 185)

University Professors are very fussy when it comes to references and students often get marked down on their referencing.
You can assist your student by checking that the references at the end in the reference list, link back to references within the document. With each reference listed within the text there must be a final reference for it at the end of the document in the reference list.

Example of Harvard Business method reference style:
Wayne, S., Liden, R. & Sparrowe, R. (2000). An examination of the mediating role of psychological empowerment on the relations between the job, interpersonal relationships, work outcomes. Journal of Applied Psychology, 85:407-416.

Put the book or journal title in italics the rest of the reference is not in italics.

The students,  professor Guidelines will give you instructions on:

• Font
• Spacing
• Underline, Bold and Italics
• Justification
• Bullet points.

Your first page which is normally the student details, student number, title, the title page is normally not numbered, hidden number, your second page onward including table of content should be in roman numerals, then the page that your assignment, thesis, dissertation starts should be on the first page number 1, and carries on with ordinary page numbering.
Any tables, figures, drawing within your document, must be listed underneath the reference list at the end of the document. Each table, figure, drawing within the document must be named underneath or above it, example, Table 1, Graph of Trends, Table 2, Three Hats etc.
Underneath reference listing you should have:

List of Tables:
Table 1, Graph of Trends
Table 2, Three Hats

The same applies to appendices.

Make sure you proof and grammar check the assignments etc. At the end of your typing always read through your work to make sure you have missed nothing and reading through gives the addition of proofing after doing a spell and grammar check.
The one thing that I find it a hassle to use is Track Changes, I never seem to be able to switch it off and every time you open the document the track change come on, you then have to Review, and Final, this then closes Track Changes until the next time the document is opened.

If you want to add anything to this article or have additional comments please email me at amftyping@mweb.co.za or alison@amftyping.co.za, or skype: amftyping.

Question and Answer

Question: I truly love your site.. Pleasant colors & theme. Did you develop this web site yourself? Please reply back as I'm planning to create my own personal website and would like to find out where you got this from or what the theme is called. Appreciate it!

Answer: Thank you for the comment. My theme is from the Blogger's own themes. All the content on the site is my own words, There may be an occasion article on the blog from a few others, it is 90% my own content. This is not a website it is a blog and I choose the template from what is available from Blogger. regards Ali amftypig@mweb.co.za or alison@amftyping.co.za

OIVAC Early Bird Special catch it before 15 April

Are You the Early Bird?  http://oivac.com/register/


The OIVAC is launching its 8th Annual Online International Virtual Assistants Convention (OIVAC) May 16; it will run through May 18, 2013.
We’re doing a shout out to all “early birds” to grab your rod and grab your seat for the OIVAC, -- before April 15--to receive a $50 discount from the original “sign up” price.
This year’s Convention, themed, Building Business Success in the Virtual World, is designed and the presenters assembled to guide Virtual Assistants at all levels of their business, so they can do their building and maintaining on a foundation strong enough to last for years to come.
Now, in case you may have forgotten even one of the benefits you’ll get in on by attending OIVAC here are some teasers for this year’s events:  http://oivac.com/register/

• 45+ hours of training, best practices seminars, networking and workshops

• Learn how to get new clients, to make your current clients happy, and how to grow your business by leaps and bounds.

• You connect with like-minded colleagues and find new opportunities to branch out

• Recordings available.

• Intro to the VA Industry session – for new VAs or people thinking about entering the industry

• Awards presented to two Virtual Assistants for the footprints they’re leaving on the industry

• Events are presented completely on line in PC and Mac compatible VoIP meeting rooms

• Pay one fee to cover the entire convention. (No hotel, travel, food, babysitting or loss of business while attending).

• Network with and exchange ideas with people from all over the world

• Sessions all hours of the day and night (across continents and many time zones)

• As the Seasoned VA sessions, a panel of experienced, expert VA

• And more  http://oivac.com/register/

If any of the above “speaks to you” and if you’re inclined to see a $50 savings in your hand, be an “early bird” and click the button now (and definitely before April 15th) to register for the 8th Annual Online International Virtual Assistants Convention.  http://oivac.com/register/
By clicking the “buy now” button, you’re not only saving $50, you’ll receive access to the Private Convention Facebook Group where you can ask questions and connect with other VA participants. Click it now, and we’ll “see you on the other side”.

http://oivac.com/register/

How easy is it being a Virtual Assistant?

Being a Virtual Assistant (VA) is not all about the client sending you typing, you do the work and send it back, there is much more involved.
As a VA we do many things, there is month end administration with invoices every month so no matter how busy you are, you stop and do your invoices, it is important to be paid for the work we do. You set aside a day and get your invoices out. Bookkeeping and updating your schedules. This is just one part of our administration another part is, we need to push clients and contractors for payments and invoices, we have to battle with clients who do not want to pay, who query what we do.
One of our aims is to keep our clients happy all the time, we need to keep that client as they provide us with ongoing work so we nurture that client; our clients are our bread and butter. We need to liaise with our clients often.
Managing many clients work is not an easy task. Keep their work in separate folders also in my documents have client folders and in email. With regular clients it is best to invoice monthly. All my clients are regular so I prepare all their invoices at the end of the month and get them all out at the same time so that I can monitor payments coming in. This is where my work log comes in handy as I document all work incoming, and I check back against this when doing my invoicing for each client.
Administration as we call it is a major part of being a VA. We need to market continually, our company needs to be out in the public eye and be seen. Our websites/blogs need to be updated. We continually look for new avenue’s to market our work to. Networking is just as important, there is always the need to tell everyone and anyone what we do, who we are, get the word out there. Any person you talk to could be a potential clients or referral, that’s why it is important to talk about your business no matter where you are, when you can and who you are with. We continually need to look for avenue’s to advertise our companies.
Often we need to do debt collecting with clients who do not pay, this is not a nice part of the job but we must do it, we need to be paid for what we do.
Managing of contractors, when a VA is overloaded we then get the opportunity to help out newbie Vas by contracting to them or helping out established VAs with a bit of extra work. Contracting work out is not as easy as you think. We are on our contractors backs to get them to keep in touch, they need to meet our deadlines, what if the contractor decides she is not doing the work or cant for some reason then we need to find a replacement in the middle of the work that is time taking. Paying of contractors on completion of work.
Another favourite is quoting for work, often ad-hoc jobs come in and we need to arrange a quote, quoting is not quick we need to ask questions to be able to place a price on the work, very time consuming especially with larger jobs.
Filing must be done as with any job, the office administration as seen above is often the hardest part of our job to do, but that comes with running any company/business. There are still many other facets about being a virtual assistant, the best way to learn about doing this type of job is to talk to established VAs as they know what they are doing and they can give you valuable information.

So you see it is not all about sitting and typing, it is about running a full time business/company, and these are only a handful of the tasks we do.

Written by Alison Fourie VAcertified
AMF Typing Service cc

Question and Answer

Q. Could you list of all of your shared sites like your twitter feed, Facebook page or linkedin profile?


A. I dont post info about my articles on twitter, linkedin or facebook or post the links there for articles I write. regards Ali amftyping@mweb.co.za or alison@amftyping.co.za Here is a link to go and view my website http://www.amftyping.co.za Im not that keen on social media and also just don't have the time to keep up with it.