So, as I prepare to launch this freelance writing business of mine (coughstill-so-lostcough), one of the vital elements, of course, is a Services page. You may have noticed the very lame Services page I recently added, just to have something there. How do I know it’s lame? Because, well, have…
MM: Fontastic
How often do you think about the font you use? I’ve been thinking about them a lot lately–mostly because I think they’re fun–but like all good things, they can be used well, or they can be used very, very badly. Fonts, or typefaces, are the actual shapes of the letters…
MM: Do You Say Thank You?
Simple question today: When somebody does something nice for you, do you say, “Thank you?” It seems such a simple thing, but it is so often forgotten or ignored by those people who feel entitled to anything their little hearts desire, and therefore see no need to thank anyone else…
Soliciting Advice and Encouragement
When I was in college, and in the habit of studying and learning new things every day, I could sometimes–don’t ask me how–shift mental gears so that I was thinking at a higher pitch than usual. I couldn’t keep it up for long, but if I concentrated hard enough, I’d…
Briiing! How and When to Phone in Your Writing
I know, you’ve been thinking to yourself that it seems like I’ve been phoning it in this last week. You know, not actually showing up and putting forth my best effort, but just going through the motions. And, you’re not totally wrong, either. For the last week, I’ve been working…
Got Grammar Questions?
Well, here’s a great place to go–Daniel Scocco put together a fabulous post covering all the basics of English grammar. No, really. Go check it out.
Baby Talk
So, if people don’t learn grammar in school any more, and they’re not bothering to read the handy usage guides that are in the bookstores, how DO people manage to speak and write correctly? Mostly, it’s in the ear. It’s a fascinating phenomenon, how we humans learn language. Babies begin…
Mozy Rant
We take time away from this friendly little writing blog for a rant…. Have you heard of Mozy? It’s an online backup service for your computer, where you sign up, set up a schedule for backups and … that’s it. Your computer henceforth automatically runs backups to Mozy’s server so…
Purposeful Complexity
Kenneth over at Manage Your Writing spoke the other day about the importance of keeping things simple. He reminds us that, “Some research shows that when readers and listeners can’t understand your sentences, they think of you as less intelligent, not more.” I certainly agree with that. Unnecessarily complex sentence…
In the Beginning
I saw this at Brad‘s. So, there’s a project over at “Get Paid to Write Online,” asking people how they got started with their blogs. Well, my story comes in two parts. First, there was knitting. (Yes, you heard me. Knitting.) In fact, my very first introduction to blogs at…
What Makes a Writer?
Okay, so when you try to identify a “writer,” the first problem is the definition. What is a writer? Someone who makes their living by writing? A novelist? Newspaper journalist? Poet? Advertising Copywriter? Resume-writer? Or someone who writes because they love it, regardless of whether they get paid for it? Because,…
Blog Showing
Remember the other day? When I told you about Liz‘s “Blog-to-Show”? It was so wildly successful, she’s already planning for the next one. Anyway, the list is a great one–a fantastic mix of different kinds of blogs. I admit that I’ve only been to about 60 of them so far,…
How to Be Convincing
Suppose that you’re writing to convince people of something. Suppose that you’re making your living writing sales copy. Suppose that you have the best product ever and you want to spread the word to as many people as possible. GET PEOPLE TO STOP What do you do? How do you…
Open House
I just saw this at Lillie‘s last night. Liz Strauss over at the Successful Blog is having a show-and-tell weekend, called Blog-to-Show, where bloggers like myself who don’t have a huge readership can have an open house, sponsored by Liz herself. So, if you found your way here from Liz,…
Linguist vs Grammarian–The Fallout
We said last time that we should examine some of the more far-fetched traditions of hidebound grammatical rules and march bravely into the future. But, there is one more thing about ignoring traditional grammar rules you need to be aware of before you go striding off into the unfettered future.…
Linguist vs. Grammarian–Tradition
As we said last time, many of the The Rules that we (supposedly) live by, grammatically speaking, were arbitrarily created by literary men of the past who were trying to organize the English language. Then, as time passed, the rules became venerated. Never use a preposition at the end of…
Linguist vs. Grammarian–Making Language GO
Another post inspired by that excellent book of David Crystal‘s, where he mentions that–in an ideal world–we would raise our children to be linguists rather than grammarians–so that they would know the reasons the language works, not just the rules. Personally, I think that’s a wonderful idea. I’ve always been…
Verbal Wardrobe Maintenance
So, we talked last time about the idea of casual and formal writing, as filtered through a wardrobe analogy. (A good image that I can only say I wish I’d thought of myself.) I want people’s writing style to be neat and clean, not all tattered and ragged around the…
How to Prevent Equipment Failures from Ruining Your Writing
There’s nothing more aggravating than having your writing flow interrupted by bad equipment. It doesn’t matter if you are writing a blog post, a letter, an article, or your doctoral thesis. Interruptions by people are bad enough, but having your equipment let you down is just one, long frustration. So,…
Dressing Up Your Casual-Wear Writing
I’m in the middle of reading a book called The Fight for English: How Language Pundits Ate, Shot, and Left by David Crystal, about language and the way we use, need, and apply rules. His premise is that grammar pundits who insist on rules are not acting in the best…
Link-Love Pep Talk
If you want to make a stab at Confident Writing, it helps to give some thought to what you’re doing, because Writing Thoughts lead to a Writer’s Words, and without them, you will never move your Writing Forward. If you inspire yourself with Daily Writing Tips, soon you’ll be Writing,…
MM: It’s a Date
Have you ever given any thought to how you write the date? 365 (or 366) days, broken out into 12 months, of 28, 29, 3o, or 31 days, all sequentially counted in groups called years. Now, the months themselves may be spelled out, so that this month is written as…
Once Upon a Time…
Most people will tell you that, if you want to write, you should read. A lot. That there is no better training for being a good writer (other than the actual writing part). Now, reading a lot has never been a problem for me. Quite the contrary–my problem has always…
Criticism
Did anybody else read Copyblogger today? Brian Clark collected a fantastic group of quotes demonstrating how even the brightest people can lack foresight in matters of creativity, and reject things that would have made them (more?) famous, rich, or renowned. His point is that you shouldn’t make assumptions, but my…
Sorry
Sorry, folks, no Mangled Monday post today for two reasons. One, it’s taken me over 24 hours to get this far into writing a post, but two, mostly, because I have a fever today and am not thinking as clearly as I need to be to write a post worth…
Simplicity
I’ve talked about not over-using the same, tired words, which ties into other, earlier posts that stressed the importance of a good vocabulary. Having a healthy variety of words to play with can only help the quality of your writing, right? Well, yes, but here’s the Catch-22. I’m sure that…
MM: Simply Capital!
So, Brad was wondering what words in titles need to be capitalized. This is actually one of the topics I keep meaning to write about, so I’m glad he asked. Here’s a quick overview for you: You capitalize the first and last words, all the nouns, verbs, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs,…
Good Writing Equals Professionalism
I’ve got an object lesson for you today, so let’s start with a story: I recently bought a new camera (a Nikon D40 DSLR, which I love, thank you), but I’m irritated with Adorama camera. Even though we’re in different states, they charged me sales tax. I sent an e-mail…
OT: Inhale Now
As a purely side note, because I’m a good daughter, I’m attaching a link here to my father’s website, InhaleNow.com. He started it because he’d been looking for air purifiers to help with my asthma (because he’s a good dad). Providing a link was the least I could do, since,…
Context
I was visited by the Language Log yesterday, and it was not a friendly visit. Back in 2007, I wrote about the venerable Strunk and White grammar book, and in that post mentioned in passing that the authors were against split infinitives. Geoffrey Pullum, in his post yesterday, was apparently…