‘Short words are best, and old words when short are the best of all’
What do you notice about this passage, excerpted from an article in The Economist?… Read the full article
Tight writing
What is clarity in writing
Stop these institutional mistakes for readability
Want to make sure you’re not eradicating clarity in your organization?
Slaughter these problems instead, suggest Martin J. Eppler, Ph.D.,… Read the full article
Story angle ideas: Summarize it on a billboard
6 words is the new black
Before you start writing, find your focus. Summarize your story angle in:
An elevator pitch
Say your biggest prospect joins you on the elevator in the lobby.… Read the full article
Best practices for organizing magazine articles [Example!]
Romance meets finance in this feature
How do you organize a compelling feature?
Model this piece, which Loring Leifer wrote for Northern Funds’ marketing magazine, Northern Update.… Read the full article
‘Dear Mother’
Write a letter to make your copy conversational
“Good writers are visible just behind their words.”
— William Zinsser, author, On Writing Well
Eliot Fette Noyes was a Harvard-trained architect and industrial designer.… Read the full article
Quotes on conversational business writing
What writers and others say
“Good writing is good conversation, only more so.”
― Ernest Hemingway, American author and journalist famous for his economical, understated style
“Get human!
… Read the full articleHit Return more often
People skip long paragraphs
Readers take measure of — and make decisions about — your copy based on how it looks. One of the most important visual cues is paragraph length.… Read the full article
Create more short pages
Fewer long pages are less effective
Think index cards, not toilet paper: websites with many short pages — as opposed to those with fewer longer pages — work better.… Read the full article
How small is small?
Mini narratives can be as brief as a paragraph
In The Emperor of All Maladies, Siddhartha Mukherjee shares this tiny tale:
“In 2005, a man diagnosed with multiple myeloma asked me if he would be alive to watch his daughter graduate from high school in a few months.… Read the full article
Take a tip from Norm MacDonald
#RIPRobinWilliams tweets show how to serialize your story
What can you learn from Norm MacDonald’s Twitter tribute (would that be twibute?) to Robin Williams? What can’t you learn?!… Read the full article