WHY JUST GOOGLING IT ISN’T ALWAYS AN OPTION

When I was a kid in school, when a student asked the teacher how to spell a word, the teacher usually responded with “look it up”, implying that the student should look for the word in the dictionary (which was, in those days, a comically large, hard bound book in the back of the class. A common response might have been “if I could look it up, I would know how to spell it”. The same is true with the modern-day equivalent when dealing with software or computer problems. Answers are often a Google away. Even IT people with engineering degrees will just google how to do something if they don’t know the answer. The difference between them and the average user however, is that they (computer pros) have the vocabulary to know which words to search for. Vocabulary is key in the world of software and the ever upgrading computer tools. If I want to do a thing, for instance, “text wrapping” in Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel, and I don’t know what the thing is called, I am going to have a hard time figuring out how to do it on my own. But If I know all of the terminology, I may get my answer in 30 seconds with a Google search.

So what do you do when you don’t have the vocabulary to Google it?

I utilize Facebook groups and Reddit frequently when dealing with software issues. I have joined a Facebook group and/ or subreddit for every important software that I use in my career as an audiobook narrator. Every now and then while I am working, I’ll accidentally hit a keyboard shortcut that “Ctrl z/ Command z (or undo) will not solve. In that case, I might take a screenshot (which fortunately I know is called a screenshot in case I ever forget how to take one) and then post it to the group/ subreddit with the headline “HELP! WHAT DID I DO AND HOW DO I FIX IT?!” It’s a bit clunky but I can usually get a response within minutes. The problem is that when it happens again, (and I either remember it happening previously, or I don’t), I have to go back to the group (unless I wrote it down somewhere and have the insight to look for it) and feel silly asking for it again. To make the situation less embarrassing for myself and for future me, and easier for other people having the same problem, I try to be as descriptive as I can about what is in the screenshot. For example, “My whole screen turned orange and all of the words are in bold print”. Then the next time it happens, I can do a search for those key words: “orange”, and “bold print”. Hopefully my solution (sometimes responses to my post from last time) will come up. Other times, I don’t have the option of being able to describe it very well in short terms, and a screenshot is worth a thousand words.

If I don’t get my answer there, reaching out to someone from a younger generation and asking “what is the terminology for…” and then describing the thing I want to do, usually gets me much closer to my solution.

Here are some of my go-to groups that I use often for support for software that I use in my audiobook narration/ voice acting career, and general freelancer:

Studio One (DAW) Studio One Narrators, VO & Podcasters

Isotope RX (Audio clean up) Izotope RX Audio Rescue: Voice Over Enhanced, Repaired, Saved, Recovered

Canva (For Visual Design Stuff) https://www.reddit.com/r/canva

Elementor (WordPress website builder) https://www.reddit.com/r/elementor/