How to achieve continuity in your writing
Continuity in your writing is important. By continuity, I mean the easily followed flow of each sentence, paragraph, and section to what follows it. I don’t remember reading about this topic before I encountered a section on “The importance of continuity” in John R. Trimble’s Writing with Style. Here are four techniques that support continuity. […]
MISTAKE MONDAY for December 30: Can YOU spot what’s wrong?
Can you spot what’s wrong in the image below? Please post your answer as a comment. If you sometimes make mistakes, as I do, I hope you feel a bit better once you realize that a big organization that employs proofreaders also makes mistakes. I post these challenges to raise awareness of the importance of […]
Picture one person your work will help
Do you sometimes get stuck in the middle of writing something? Writer’s block and challenges with time management are common problems. I found a tip that may help in When: the scientific secrets of perfect timing by Daniel Pink. The book discusses how to act at the right times, and how to overcome challenges at […]
4 tips for trimming extra words
Bryan Garner offers four tips for trimming extra words in his chapter “Waste no Words” in his HBR Guide to Better Business Writing. They include, when possible: Deleting prepositions Replacing nouns ending with -ion with verbs Replacing forms of the verb “to be” with stronger verbs, as I discuss in The “Be” test for writers […]
No brevity without substance, please
“Brevity without substance is useless.” This statement in Bryan Garner’s HBR Guide to Better Business Writing spoke to me. If you regularly read this blog, you know I’m a big fan of writing concisely, and observing the rule of 42-14-2. However, sometimes a longer sentence is easier to understand than a shorter sentence. And, a […]