I charged by the gross line and made more money that way.

• Curious, do most IC's usually charge by the gross line or 65 character line? - MT'ing
  • I charge by 65-character line (sm) - Apple Scruff
    • Ditto. nm - MTMonkey
  • not OP, but what is standard font for gross line that most are using? sm - curious
    • regarding smaller font - Patti
  • I charged by the gross line and made more money that way. - mm

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I'm very sorry that your lines are 90 characters line and you get paid by gross lines.  You are cheating yourself - that's not my fault.  You cannot change the definition of a gross line.  So I gues I'm not understanding what you are trying to say.  Now if you are trying to say that your line equals 90 characters and that's how you figure your lines, than you are not using gross lines.  You have defined a line to be 90 characters, whereas most MTSOs define a line as 65 characters.  If that is the case, then I must say again, you are cheating yourself.

So which is it, do you get paid by gross lines or by a 90 character line?

Can someone explain the difference between these two?  I am assuming that the gross line is better than the gross character line.  How much better is being paid by the gross character line than just by the standard 65-character line?  Does anyone know how much difference it would make in dollars and cents?

Thanks.

You can get an idea in the difference using documents you have already created, assuming you're working in Word. Simply open a document and check the properties. Click on the statistics tab and you will see the number of lines as well as characters with and without spaces. If you're currently getting paid by the line and a line is 65-characters with spaces, do the math and see how that number of lines compares with the number of lines in your stats.

One thing to keep in mind: if you have a blank line between paragraphs, instead of hitting the enter key twice, format your document to give the appearance of blank lines between paragraphs.

A gross line is anything on a line versus 65 gross characters per net line the other way.  You make more money working for the gross line than for the 65 gross character line, as long as the line rate's OK.

Mebbe just got my first OWN ACCOUNT YAY!  He said to charge him the "going rate" since I pay him that.  This could be the start, baby!  (I hope)

for instance...

MEDICATIONS:

Effexor

Prevasid

A 65 character line without spaces is black marks on the page only and 65 w/spaces is everything... tabs, spaces, numbers, letters, bold, etc.

I am thinking of taking a job that pays by the gross line and not a 65-character line.  I have never worked this way.  Does this literally mean if there is one little word on a line you get paid for it?  I have not pinned her down on a line rate but I am just thinking I am going to be comparing apples to oranges and am wondering how to accomplish that. 

Thanks for any help!

x

spaces really don't matter in a gross line count.

Wow, you must have had your own accounts independently then, right? It seems with some of today's trends in the MT field, that the pay will be not as good as it was, or harder to make equal to or close to what an RN would make. 

if I were doing it over again I would have finished my degree (which I am doing now).  I have been an MT for 25 years, as a hospital MT and an MTSO.  The money has been very good.  Being able to be home with my kids through the years was good.  But in other ways being home has been bad - for one not being able to walk away from work and leave it at the office.  I feel like I should always be working because there's always more money to be made.  I know over the years I have thrown 100% into my business and home/family have suffered.  I really think that other than being physically available for my kids, my home life was better when I worked in a hospital - because then when I was off work, I was off.  I came home and started dinner and cleaned the house while it was cooking and settled in for a relaxing evening.  Now I am often still working at 6 or 7 p.m., fast food dinners, house not cleaned, etc.  Yes, it's POSSIBLE to organize yourself so that you take care of those things too when you work at home, but I think for a lot of us we get into a rut.  I feel psychologically healthier getting out of the house, etc.  Which I am doing now that I am back in college and I will never go back to just being at home full time again.

Another downside - weight gain from being sedentary!

I got 13 cpl.  But the doctors said the same things over and over and there were I think only 6 or 7 ER doctors for that hospital.  I worked 4 hours a day, 7 days a week, and made $1000 a week.  Loved it!

T-chart changed all that. 

if I had it do over, no I would not go into MT.  I would have finished college and gotten my degree instead.  I am back in college now to get my degree, but it would have been so much better if I had done it years ago.

I agree with the MT who says after 25 years she is working harder and making less.  It's the same for me.  I am getting burned out after all these years, I can't type the long hours I once did, I can't see doing this for another 20 years.  If the money was there like it used to be, that might be different.

was for a hospital that had all these kickass "normals" for OP notes.  The docs would say, "Please use my _____ template" and that was it.  Some ortho templates were an instant 100+ lines and they took mere seconds to zap in!  Those days are long gone for me but I remember them fondly.    

I bill for gross line which means each line counts whether there are 10 words or one word each line counts.  So when I type in a smaller font, there are less lines than in Courier.  I do not take the characters and divide by 65.   Hope that makes sense.  So the smaller font, the less lines.  So when I contract with a client I tell them that my price per cpl it is a 65 character line in Courier font.  If they chose to use Ariel 10, I will type in that for them but the line count is done in Courier or at least Ariel 10.