Most of you folks use MS Word as your main word processing tool. Often, you contact us to say that you have lost data. Perhaps it was not saved where you can retrieve it, or you suspect a virus interfered with your computer’s functioning. How can you avoid these problems?

First of all, we want to make it clear that we realize that some of you really encounter software issues that prevent you from meeting a deadline. But we also can clearly see that others of you freelancers out there cite software problems as an excuse to delay submission.

This is either because you are struggling with time management, or because life, as they say, “happens”!

In any case, most likely you will be fined for such instances, either by lateness fines, or by separate fines imposed by the QA Dpt., depending on the frequency of such occurrences. We cannot determine the truth of your assertions, so any fines, most likely, will be applied to all of the cases.

There are ways for you to prevent many such troublesome issues.

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As freelancers with us, it is clear that you deal with new work all the time. You are doing one assignment after another on widely differing topics, under tight deadlines. Furthermore, you are usually working by yourself. It is really hard to do this all without guidance, or a lot more detailed instructions than we usually receive from customers!

A lot of you use samples, as a visual aid to structure your work, or to help understand a particular topic. But some of you, sometimes, take this practice in the wrong direction; by using these samples as your own work, or simply ripping them off.

Shame on you, if you actually use the text of a writing sample in your own papers. You need to realize that you are committing plagiarism by doing this is illegal. That poses a huge risk to your position with us.

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You know how some folks are always vocal about our democratic rights and Constitutional freedoms being” taken from us by our government”. Well, in some places around the world, the government is actually doing the opposite!

For example, I stumbled upon a series of articles highlighting the national referendum in Kenya which was to decide whether the citizens should accept a new Constitution. Kenya, like many other countries on the African continent, is far from democratic. With its crime levels and corruption, it struggles to achieve a decent level of stability.

That is why the new, updated Kenyan Constitution was crafted to overhaul the way the country is governed. It may have a wider impact in the whole region. It is considered to be a progressive document, for the most part (although it has been criticized both for giving special preference to Islamic law, and, on the other hand, for allowing any abortion at all).

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