Find a mentor in your favorite communications
I recently sent one of my email pals a plea for holiday reading recommendations. “Read The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron,” he responded.… Read the full article
Ann Wylie’s blog of writing tips
How to read like a writer
Make Churchill your muse for executive sound bites and more
Edward R. Murrow said of Winston Churchill: “He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.”… Read the full article
How do you read like a writer?
Read for technique, not just for information and entertainment
Years ago, I ran across this passage Stephen Schiff wrote about Australian film director Fred Schepisi for The New Yorker:
As Schepisi talks, his hands play along: they’re the nipping boat, they’re the foaming river; when they clap, they’re the waterfall.
… Read the full article To become a better writer you must read
Take it apart; put it back together
In her memoir The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion describes a moment with her late husband, the novelist John Gregory Dunne:
“When we were living in Brentwood Park we fell into a pattern of stopping work at four in the afternoon and going out to the pool,” she writes.… Read the full article
How to revise your message
4 steps to Cutting Through the Clutter
You’ve prewritten and freewritten your message. Now it’s time to rewrite it.
Here’s where you’ll edit, hit readability targets, and nail spelling, grammar and punctuation.… Read the full article
Grammar and spell check double-check
Don’t forget to use your brain, too
Spel chekers, hoo neeeds em?
— Alan James Bean, American astronaut
I’m sure you caught this news item last month.… Read the full article
What is the best marketing email length?
People average 11 seconds with marketing messages
Tick tock. People spend, on average, 11 seconds reading email blasts or updates, according to a report by Litmus.… Read the full article
Don’t forget to hyphenate compound modifiers
Hyphens change your meaning
Yes, “anal-retentive” is hyphenated. But the folks in my state — Missouri — apparently don’t care.
State officials recently left out the hyphen for the Show-Me State’s new license plates.… Read the full article
How to use air quotes
Don’t.
No punctuation transgression amuses me quite as much as the extraneous quotation mark. Because, “really,” when you inexplicably put “quotes” around a word or phrase, what is it that you’re “trying” to “say”?… Read the full article
What is the rule about splitting infinitives?
Is this approach still a grammar don’t?
It may be the most famous split infinitive of all time — Star Trek’s opening-sequence voice over:
“To boldly go where no man has gone before”
That’s a split infinitive, because the adverb “boldly” separates, or splits, the verb “to go.”… Read the full article