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Provocative Words
Welcome to my “Ode to the Thesaurus.” One of my favorite Facebook pages is The Writer’s Circle. I always seem to glom onto their lists of Other Words For <fill in the blank>. I’ve several of them clipped into my Blog Ideas notebook in Evernote. One I’ve been looking at a lot lately is for…
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Writing, Editing & Word Smithing
I recently let my sister rant about the term Value Proposition and why it annoys her. And a very good rant it was. I try to allow my sister her opinions (like I have a choice) and yet, I must defend the term “wordsmith.” Jen defined “word-smithing” as editing. There’s actually more to it. Dictionary.com…
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Is it Really Redundant?
I was reading an article on dailywritingtips.com called Let the Word Do the Work about redundancy. The author, Maeve Maddox, does a great job making her point with examples of the more common redundancies we run into – such as “free gift”– as well as some more subtle examples, like “maroon-colored.” (Only when someone could…
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The Culture of Writing
Especially for larger software companies, documentation is something management easily outsources. The problem with outsourcing writing is that the culture of the writer and the culture of the reader frequently don’t match. The truth of the matter is that most Americans only go to the documentation when they are stuck beyond all reason. At that…
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1 Space or 2, Lives in the Balance
My sister recently posted an article from January 2011 on my Facebook page about how two spaces after a period is absolutely the wrong thing to do. My friends generally agreed. Because said social media wouldn’t let me find the post again, I went to everyone’s buddy, Google, and searched for it. One result was…
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Worthless Writing Words
In my last blog, I mentioned that people keep sending me things about words. One that I really enjoy is 10 Words to Cut From Your Writing from entrepreneur.com. This blog on copy writing tips really appealed to the editor in me – maybe because people frequently come to me to reduce their word count.…
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The Writer Can’t Write, She Implements
To be clear, I can write. I just have a heck of a time writing for myself. Sort of like the cobbler whose children have no shoes. When I started writing this blog entry, I was going in a totally different direction. And I hit a brick wall at about 75 words. Goes to show…
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Explanatory Writing, Is Your Message Clear?
I frequently describe my writing style as “explanatory,” but then I have to explain myself. The topics I write about best are the ones that explain: who someone is, what they do, what their product is, why the product is great, how something works, how to make something work, and so on. Why I’m Passionate……
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Writing Powerful Blogs
I was wandering around the web doing some personal growth homework and I found an article about powerful blog writing. I found it impressive that write.com seems to mirror my thoughts in the Writing Powerfully blog – although I used significantly fewer words. I became a professional writer because I am passionate about clear communication…
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Writing Powerfully
Updated: 6 October 2020 Writing powerfully is not the same as having a powerful message. Instead, it is conveying a message – any message – in a way that everyone who should understand it does understand it. Power Rule #1 The first rule is to Be Clear. Do not use technical language unless you know…