Writing workshops, communication consulting and writing services
I’m often amazed at the amount of energy writers put into perfecting the sentence structure in the fourth paragraph of their piece when those same folks toss off a headline in the 17 seconds before happy hour on a Friday afternoon.… Read the full article
Think of subheads as the icing on the cake.
Skimmers look at subheads to learn what content you’re offering on a webpage, blog post or news release.… Read the full article
Callouts (aka breakout quotes, pullout quotes or pull quotes) are “the print equivalent of a sound bite,” according to the authors of The Newsletter Editor’s Desk Book.… Read the full article
Too often, editors crank out captions (aka cutlines) in the 15 minutes before happy hour on a Friday night.
Their loss.… Read the full article
“Help us with captions,” wrote Sue Grabowski, president of Grabowski & Co., in our recent member survey.… Read the full article
Stuck for a benefits headline? Browse these eight approaches for inspiration:
The simplest approach, this headline just states the benefit clearly:
To write a good benefits headline, list:
Here’s one secret of successful marketing copywriters: They steal.
Especially headlines. If a headline’s been proven to work in the past, good direct mail copywriters will use it again and again.… Read the full article
Your headline and deck — that one-sentence summary under your headline — are San Francisco real estate.… Read the full article
When you’re covering news, your deck can report a different angle from the headline.
This approach will help you avoid repeating elements from the headline in the deck:
| When your headline covers: | Your deck can cover: |
| The most important angle | The second-most-important angle |
| The general news | The specific details |
| What happened |
