What specific accomplishments must I achieved so to have the "Green screen" removed from appearing when I write quizzes?

Is it a vauge "when things look better"; or, is it a clear "after five error free quizzes are submitted then the green screen is removed"?

star

Hi star,

There isn't a clear "after five error-free quizzes" rule. However, yours will probably be gone soon, considering that your errors weren't anything unfixable. Plus, you haven't had the screen that long (though it may seem that way). Sometimes editors wait for a few error-free quizzes before removing it.

Thank you.

This is so humiliating!

Please don't feel that way. Some of our most popular writers have had it in their early quiz writing days. ;-) That being said, you can always send a private message to an editor instead of using this forum for personal questions.

I wouldn't say I'm a popular author but I will freely admit to the fact I've had the green screen in my early writing days - my quizzes were pretty crap. I wouldn't say it's humiliating star_gazer and it is more than possible to get rid of it. I had the green screen and more recently some nice and anonymous person has put me on the best author's list - so keep at it!

Yeah Star_gazer, I think that is why I don't sit down and write a quiz. The Green Screen! I already have it and I've never written a quiz! Sorta sends shivers down my spine. Besides, it would take me two or more weeks to write one 10 question quiz, what with all the re-writes, 10 gazillion proof reads I would do, then re-thinking and re-writing questions. It isn't a task I would take lightly, but as others have said, that Green Screen can go away! Hang in there, and more power to you!

Let's put it in a different category -- it sounds more like a pop band! "Questions You Never Thought You Would Ask" album by "The Green Screen!" lead singer, Eddy Tor.

Jar, you don't have the "green screen". I think you are confused with the Author Central page, which has a green background (for everyone). You can't get the green screen if you haven't even written a quiz yet!

That could be Pagiedamon. As much as I've looked into making a quiz, I could be in a completely wrong area!

Well, after taking a look around (my, haven't things changed since I last looked in that area!) you are absolutely right Pagiedamon. So now that I see no Green Screen, what's keeping me from writing a quiz? Wellll, maybe a few more questions first.

Dear Stargazer,]
If it is any consolation, I had the green screen for a good bit when I first started writing quizzes. The smartest thing I did was to get a spell checker (I actually paid for mine!). When the editors saw that I had fewer typos and various other errors, they removed the screen. Don't be humiliated!

On this subject (but kind of off topic) does anyone know a good free spellchecker that does UK English. I'm Australian so use UK spelling but my spelling is often atrocious (point in fact right on that word - I know it doesn't look right!)

I write in my word program (OpenOffice)but the spellchecker is US English which is really frustrating to have to keep clicking 'ignore' etc. I can change it to UK but only for that word not the whole document. (Unless someone knows a way to change that!) And if I've spelt it 'wrong' as in the US way it doesn't pick it up as needing correcting. I know both spelling is accepted but I think it should all be one or the other LOL

For OpenOffice, there should be a place in the settings that allows you to do either US English or UK English. I have OpenOffice at work, and will take a look when I get there...which is in about seven hours.

I know that if you highlight your whole document and then select the dictionary or language settings in some word processors, the spell-checker uses that for all words and not just the word you're on at the moment. Maybe this program is the same. Good luck!

Midget what a lot of people like to do (including me) is compose the quiz in a Word document, which has a spell checker. Then I copy and paste the corrected document onto a quiz template.
My spelling is pretty good, but I'm in the running for the world's worst typist!

Having a cood laugh at myself because I misspelled compose!

I'm loving Firefox with the spell-checker included. I even installed Brit English so I can switch to it when editing a quiz spelled that way.

The Google Toolbar spellchecker accepts UK English spellings, I'm fairly certain. It's been a little while since I've used it, but I don't recall it not liking words like colour or favour, I know I would have been annoyed with that, so I would remember if it didn't accept them.

Thanks a lot for all your helpful answers - I'll have to try some out and see what I can find. I will be extremely grateful if something works!

Don't know why I'm so bad at it now - I was great at school and I'm an avid reader so words are definitly my friend LOL

And a secondary issue with writing in a Microsoft Word document and using its spellchecker is that some punctuation does crazy things. I have found that I need to replace every ' or " after I copy and paste questions and information from a Word document, or they will inevitable eventually turn into ? and make the quiz totally unintelligible! I still do it as a good way to organise and edit the quiz, but find that putting it into my template can be quite time consuming.

Very good point, looney_tunes. Spell-checking software is a great tool, but it is not a substitute for proof-reading.

I had this same issue with Microsoft Word when I first began to write quizzes, and I discovered that all I had to do was disable the "smart quotes" feature.

The steps may differ slightly depending on which version of Word you use, but here's how I did it:

1. Go to "Tools" -> "AutoCorrect Options".

2. Click on the "AutoFormat As You Type" tab.

3. Under "Replace as you type", remove the check or tick mark in the box next to the "Straight quotes" with "smart quotes" option.

Once you do that, your quotation marks should remain as straight quotation marks as you are composing your quiz in MS Word, and they will "paste" that way here on Fun Trivia as well.

Hope this helps!