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Tag Archives: writing

Provocative Words

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… Continue Reading

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… Continue Reading

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… Continue Reading

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… Continue Reading

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… Continue Reading

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.… Continue Reading