Ever heard of the “long tail”?

It’s something Amazon.com and all big retailers are aware of and work to use effectively. To give a quick definition, it’s where the collective demand for less-popular items (say, “Fly Fishing” by J.R. Hartley) can be greater than the demand for the most popular items (the Harry Potters and Dan Browns) added together.

How can this be?

It’s because there aren’t that many really popular items, but there are loads of less popular (but still profit-making) items.

So whereas the big-name items get all the publicity and marketing efforts directed towards them, a lot of the real money gets made in lesser-known, less-competitive markets.

This can apply equally well to your website and the phrases you’re hoping to be found for on the search engines. You’ll have your big-hitter keywords and keyphrases, sure, but there will also be a much greater number of word combinations people will use to reach you that you weren’t even aware of.

Until now.

If you're responsible for your site's optimisation, I’m about to recommend that you try using a bit of paid-for online software called “HitTail”. I’m not associated with them in any way and can’t guarantee that your particular site will be a perfect match for what they offer, but give 'em a try.

HitTail lets you know in real time how people are finding you and gives suggestions on promising keywords and keyphrases that you might think harder about working to optimise. Some of the suggestions might be slightly off base -- it’s an algorithmic bit of software, after all, not put together by humans -- but a lot will make you think “Aha! Hhhmm, hadn’t thought of that one before. I’ll try it!”

It all helps your website to be found on the search engines, which can’t be bad. Give it a go! They offer a 21-day trial, so at the very least you’ll have three weeks of free suggestions.

Here’s the URL:

http://www.hittail.com/

It’s pretty easy to set up on your site -- all you need to do is add a tiny bit of code to the site's background HTML -- so g’wan!

Is it Mr. or Mr? Ms. or Ms? Mrs. or Mrs?

Which should I use? In other words, "to dot or not to dot"?

You know what? Both ways are acceptable. In American English (in other words, the wrong way*) they keep the dot — in other words, they write "Mr.", "Ms." and "Mrs." — and in British English we mostly just write "Mr", "Ms" and "Mrs".

As you no doubt know, "Mr" is an abbreviation of the word "Mister". The word is an alteration of the original "Master". Nowadays you would use "Master" to refer to a young boy: "Young Master Daniel looks so handsome with his curly hair". (I used to get that a lot, believe it or not.)

The plural of "Mr" is "Messrs", pronounced "messers" (as in, people who mess things up), which comes from the French "messieurs" (meaning "gentlemen").

"Miss", "Mrs" and "Ms" are all abbreviations of the word "Mistress". With the modern meaning of the word "Mistress" giving connotations of illicit, extramarital affairs, you don’t tend to hear it that much these days. Except if you’re an over-officious protocol droid, of course, in which case you’d probably use it a lot.

The plural of "Miss" is "Misses", although I can’t ever remember hearing it; the plural of "Mrs" is "Mmes", an abbreviated form of "Mesdames", from the French, er, "mesdames" (meaning "ladies"); and the plural of "Ms" is "Mses", although "Mesdames" can also be used.

The default way to refer to a man would be to use "Mr & Surname", unless you know he prefers to use a different honorific, such as "Dr". More and more these days, the default way to refer to a woman would be to use "Ms & Surname" (unless, as above, you know she prefers to use a different honorific, such as "Dr"), and that sounds right and proper to me. It’s bizarre that men’s marital status doesn’t ever come into the equation, while up until relatively recently you’ve been obliged to use "Miss" for unmarried women and "Mrs" for married women. Who cares whether or not they’re married?

*Hee! Kidding.

Postscript revision! My good friend Claire (who's a wonderful copywriter and is about to launch her own website) reminded me of the "Pride and Prejudice"-era form of using "Miss + Surname" for the eldest unmarried daughter of a family; every other unmarried daughter would be know as "Miss + First Name + Surname". So you'd have, for example, "Miss Jackson" and her younger sisters "Miss Claire Jackson" and "Miss Marguerite Jackson".

Now that I've switched hosting company I've got image rotation on tap (thanks, Weebly!), but if you are trying to figure out how to make your website do its very own slideshow using just the code you give it, here's the way.

First thing, though: why do a slideshow?

• Maybe you're a designer and want to show off your portfolio without making people click to a load of different pages.
• Maybe you think your site looks a bit too static and you'd like some movement.
• Or perhaps it's a site you're creating for your extended family and you'd like to be able to share family pictures.

I think there’s some truth in the old cliché about a picture being worth a thousand words. What about if I could show ten pictures, then, eh? How good would that be?

Here’s how you do it. I’m assuming that if you’ve read this far you’ll know what I mean by things like "<head>" and "<body>", yeah? It’s to do with the HTML code that makes up your website. All the code I've suggested below is stuff that needs to go into the background HTML that makes up your website.

1. First thing: DON’T PANIC. My coding skills are pathetic on a good day. Everything I’ve written here is stuff I’ve blindly copied from somewhere else. But it works. That’s the only thing that matters to me. If you copy the code below, it’ll work for you, too.

2. Paste the following code into the <head> section of your page. Change the names and paths of your images, but otherwise copy exactly as it is:

<script language="JavaScript" >

// <![CDATA[
function RE_OnLoadHandler()
{

}
// ]]>

var Pic = new Array()

Pic[0] = ‘YourImage/pic1.jpg’
Pic[1] = ‘YourImage/pic2.jpg’
Pic[2] = ‘YourImage/pic3.jpg’
Pic[3] = ‘YourImage/pic4.jpg’

<!--  I’ve assumed four pictures there, but of course if you wanted more you’d simply add Pic[4] = ‘YourImage/pic5.jpg’ and so on.  -->

<!--  Set slideShowSpeed (milliseconds) – make it quicker or slower by adjusting this figure: -->

var slideShowSpeed = 5000

<!-- Duration of crossfade (seconds) – make the fade from one image to another quicker or slower by adjusting this figure:-->

var crossFadeDuration = 3

<!--  No need to edit this bit; just leave it as it is-->

var t
var j = 0
var p = Pic.length

var preLoad = new Array()
for (i = 0; i < p; i++){
preLoad[i] = new Image()
preLoad[i].src = Pic[i]
}

function runSlideShow(){

if (document.all){
document.images.SlideShow.style.filter= "blendTrans(duration=2)"
document.images.SlideShow.style.filter= "blendTrans(duration=crossFadeDuration)"
document.images.SlideShow.filters.blendTrans.Apply() 
}
document.images.SlideShow.src = preLoad[j].src
if (document.all){
document.images.SlideShow.filters.blendTrans.Play()
}
j = j + 1
if (j > (p-1)) j=0
t = setTimeout(‘runSlideShow()’, slideShowSpeed)
}

</script>

3. Still with me? Okay, next.

4. Make sure the following is put inside your "<body> tag:

onload="runSlideShow()"

5. Decide where you want the rotating images to go on your web page. Put in your starting image and name it "Slideshow". Here’s an example of what you might do:

<img src="YourImage/pic1.jpg" name="SlideShow" width="500" height="350" />

So where I've written the path and name "YourImage/pic1.jpg", you’d substitute that for your own. The other images will rotate automatically; you don’t have to specify them here, as they’re already specified above.

6. Finally, put the following code snippet at the very end of the page, just above the </body> tag:

<script language="JavaScript" >
<!–//
   
init();
//–>
</script>

And that, my friend, is that. The rotation works in all browsers.

I switched to a new web hosting company recently so that I could update my site more easily. It all went very smoothly (and the site looks a bajillion times better), but it meant that my old blog stopped working. Gah!

So here's the new one.

I'll be writing about Internet tips, some SEO now and then, how to write English what is wrote good and correct and everything, and maybe from time to time there'll be something about some of the obsessions you can see on the banner picture at the top. I promise not to make it too Halle Berry-centric.

Mm. I promise to try not to make it too Halle Berry-centric. No guarantees.

Stick with me, peeps!