Reading time: About 1.5 minutes If you’re looking to build a new website, here’s a radical idea: build a blog, instead. Even if you don’t want to blog! Here’s why…. Does your company or organization require a new website? Here’s why you should think about a WordPress blog instead. 1) Blogs can look just like websites. […]
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Reading time: About 1 minute I like to share interesting pieces of figurative language I encounter in my reading. I write today about a metaphor from Lauren Collins. My husband is the tennis fan in our family. I didn’t even know the name Novak Djokovic until I read Lauren Collins’ evocative profile of the man
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Reading time: About 1 minute Increase your vocabulary and you’ll make your writing much more precise. That’s why I provide a word of the week. Today’s word: bardo. I read the novel The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt while on holiday last month. All 771 pages of it. It wasn’t the kind of book I’d ever
I’ve been in a kind of bardo state Read More »
Reading time: About 3 minutes Does your failure to do adequate writing planning ever lead to catastrophe? I know mine sometimes does… I have the kind of voice that often makes people ask me if I’ve ever worked in radio. I wish I could answer yes! My deep alto, with reasonably crisp articulation, would have
What a recording studio taught me about writing planning Read More »
Reading time: About 1 minute This is my weekly installment of “writing about writing,” in which I scan the world to find websites, books and articles to help other writers. Today I discuss an article written by Saul Austerlitz. I read a New York Times Opinionator column headlined “The Lost Art of the Condolence Letter,”
An opportunity to play geographer… Read More »
Reading time: About 2 minutes Some skills are extra important for any corporate communicator. Here’s a quick primer on one of them: how to write key messages… If you’re forced to make a big announcement for your company or organization, you need some key messages. Essentially, these are statements that answer the obvious questions. For
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Reading time: Less than 1 minute I like to share interesting pieces of figurative language I encounter in my reading. I write today about a simile from Chad Harbach. I’m not much interested in sports (and I’m especially incurious about baseball) so I can’t figure out how the novel The Art of Fielding ended up
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Reading time: Just over 1 minute Increase your vocabulary and you’ll make your writing much more precise. That’s why I provide a word of the week. Today’s word: suppurate. When I worked in the daily newspaper business, I spent an occasional few hours in the photo studio. I was helping to edit a cookbook and
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Reading time: About 3 minutes You’ve probably heard the charge that many academics write badly. You may even have said it yourself! Here’s why… A group of doctors paid me to edit a report a few years back. Their work — not a medical study, but a document aimed at making a political point —
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Reading time: About 1 minute This is my weekly installment of “writing about writing,” in which I scan the world to find websites, books and articles to help other writers. Today I discuss six writing tips from novelist John Steinbeck…. It’s been several decades since I read East of Eden by John Steinbeck (1902-1968). I
Forget your generalized audience… Read More »
