Half of U.S. adults read at basic level or below
Let’s start with the bad news: More than half of American adults have basic or below basic prose skills, according to the Department of Education’s latest literacy test.… Read the full article
Writing and editing
End with a bang
Leave a lasting impression in the kicker
Think of the kicker as the fireworks display at the end of the Fourth of July picnic. It’s the reader’s reward for making it to the end of the piece.… Read the full article
How to write a conclusion
Leave a lasting impression with these 2 key elements
It’s easy to end an inverted-pyramid story: Stop typing.
Sadly, coming to an abrupt halt doesn’t work for feature-style stories.… Read the full article
Turn populations into people
Help readers see a classroom of children
Compare the impact of this statement …’
“Each day, we lose 30 children to gun violence.”
… to the impact of this one:
“Each day, we lose a classroom of children to gun violence.”
Tough nut to crack
Put your story into a nutshell in the nut graph
If I came to your house and told you to grab your things and follow me, how far would you go?… Read the full article
The cost of bad writing
It’s a $37 million-a-year problem at one organization
Bad writing causes 40% of the cost of managing business transactions, writes William H. DuBay, a readability expert at Impact Information, in Working with Plain Language (PDF).… Read the full article
Search and destroy conjunctions
And, Or and So can increase sentence length
Sentences too long? Use Microsoft Word’s “find” function to search for conjunctions. They include:
- And
- Or
- Also
- But
- So
- Then
- Plus
When one of my writing coachees tried this trick, she found 23 “and’s” in a 500-word article.… Read the full article
Rethink the release
Focus on the reader, not on PR 101 approaches
When Rachel McGrew, manager at Osborn Barr PR, wrote a press release about a client product, she didn’t rely on the PR 101 approaches she learned in college.… Read the full article
Increase reading with your writing structure
Use a structure that’s been proven in the lab to increase reading
What if I told you there was a free tool available that would help you convince readers to read your messages more often, read them more completely and spend more time reading them?… Read the full article
Choose a writing structure that’s more memorable
Features ‘cement main points into readers’ memories’
The feature-style story structure — aka the “stack of blocks” — is more memorable than the traditional news structure.… Read the full article