OK, the obvious does apply here. Typos, misspellings, and bad grammar are the easy answers for why anything written needs editing. However, most spell/grammar checks will alert a writer to the worst of those. And going back over what you write can also catch a huge number of errors. And if that was my only… Continue Reading
After writing my “Ode to the Thesaurus,” I started to think about how I could write a multitude of such Odes and have a great time. The problem is that I’d probably lose my readership. This left me at a bit of a loss for blog topics. Recently, I bought a second pack of colored… Continue Reading
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… Continue Reading
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… Continue Reading
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… Continue Reading
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… Continue Reading
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… Continue Reading
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.… Continue Reading
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… Continue Reading
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…… Continue Reading