Word count: 279 words Reading time: Just over a minute If you’ve read my book, you’ll understand that I’m a zealot for readability statistics. These handy dandy numbers rate the readability of your writing. How do readability statistics work? Well, the various indices look at the length of words, sentences and paragraphs and the volume […]
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Word count: 204 Reading time: Less than a minute Every Friday I present a sentence of the week I’ve discovered in my reading. Reading closely will help you become a better writer. I must fall into the 1% of the population that has never seen the James Cameron movie, The Titanic. This wasn’t so much
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Word count: 719 words Reading time: Less than 3 minutes Do you recite your writing ALOUD before submitting it? You should! Read on to learn why…. I grew up in a family that didn’t eat turkey for Christmas every year. My favourite holiday entrée? Fresh crab! We never wrapped gifts properly — in fact, we
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Word count: 598 words Reading time: About 2.5 minutes Do you use readability statistics to help improve your writing? If not, learn how to use them as quickly as possible! Here’s the reason why… I understand that not everyone likes readability statistics. These handy-dandy tools, that measure the readability of your writing (by calculating sentence
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Reading time: 2.5 minutes Did you read last week’s excerpt from William Zinsser’s book? If not, I provide a link to it, below. Most importantly, I give you the grade level at which it was written. Read on for the final part to my series on how to edit like a professional. In last week’s
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Reading time: 2.5 minutes Have you been wrestling with the idea of readability statistics? Do you see them as unfair? Unliterary? Even illiterate? Here is part 3 of my series on how to become your own best editor. Just about every time I write about readability statistics I hear back from people who are concerned.
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Do you struggle with rewriting yourself? Here is part 2 of my series on how to edit like a professional. Following up on last week’s column about how to edit, let me revisit the passage I rewrote and explain what I did and why. Here again is the original piece, excerpted from an interesting but
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Do you ever struggle with rewriting yourself? Here’s the first installment in my 4-part guide on how to edit. There are pros and cons to moving house, as I did recently. On the one hand, you inevitably lose some stuff. I’m still mourning the disappearance of my Kitchen Aid dough hook — where is that
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Reading time: about 2.5 minutes Do you have a supermodel you can consult with? Headline notwithstanding, I don’t mean Claudia Schiffer, Naomi Campbell or even that inimitable diva, Tyra Banks. (I call this column the Tyra Banks approach because I’m Canadian and irony is in my nature.) What I’m talking about today is having a writing
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