Tham khảo tài liệu 'writing skills in practice health professionals phần 9', ngoại ngữ, ngữ pháp tiếng anh phục vụ nhu cầu học tập, nghiên cứu và làm việc hiệu quả | 17 Getting the Best Out of Your Personal Computer Most writers nowadays make use of a personal computer to write and prepare their manuscript for publication. There are many advantages in terms of both cost and time. Revisions are far easier with many writing tasks automated for example checking spelling and grammar doing word counts. Computers with a modem also offer another mode of communication via e-mail and access to research material on the Internet. This chapter offers an introduction to making the most of your computer as an author. Organising your work File your work Create individual files for the chapters or sections of your book. Keep these in one or more folders so that you can easily locate your work. Check with your publisher s guidelines about any limits on the size of files. This is usually measured by the number of characters or words per file. Database A database is a program that helps organise information in a similar way to a manual card index. Information such as names addresses dates and titles is entered onto individual records. Each of these records has a number of allotted spaces known as fields which contain the individual data entry. For example one field might have the name while another has the address. Data is easily sorted searched and edited using the different fields. For instance the records can be sorted to appear alphabetically or a search carried out for all records containing the same name. A database is particularly useful for compiling bibliographies or reference lists. 254 GETTING THE BEST OUT OF YOUR PERSONAL COMPUTER 255 Storing your work Memory Data in the form of text and graphics is stored in the memory of the computer. There are two types of memory Random Access Memory RAM - this is the memory your computer uses to hold the text graphics and instructions that you input as you are working on a document. Read Only Memory ROM - this is used to store information such as the programs used to run the computer. RAM is lost
