Truly awful writing to inspire you
As my friend Sue once said, “Every time I start to lose a little faith in my fellow human beings, along come the Bulwer-Lytton awards.” This annual celebration of the best of the worst is the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. Writers apply their talents to...
In my Sept. newsletter: How often to publish
In this month’s newsletter, I’m revisiting a common question: How often should you publish an employee newsletter? A lot depends on whether you’re delivering news or providing background and perspective, how big it is and how many people are working on it, and...
Is it curtains for the ‘full stop’?
“[P]unctuation marks are the traffic signals of language: they tell us to slow down, notice this, take a detour, and stop.” – Lynne Truss, in Eats, Shoots & Leaves It’s almost National Punctuation Day (Sept. 24), that “celebration of the lowly comma, correctly...
How to harness the power of the inbox
Email marketing is a powerful tool. As proof, digital marketing expert Javed S. Khan shared these statistics at a recent meeting of IABC/Toronto’s Professional Independent Communicators: 91% of people check their email daily 88% regularly check email on their...
Lose the legalese to be understood
The plaintive opening drew me in immediately: “Why are many financial news releases and publicly filed documents written so poorly?” In A Plea for Plain English in Financial Documents, Steve Lipin and Adam Rosman make the case for good writing in financial...
‘We’re making changes to our fees’
Last month, my bank sent me a snail mail letter alerting me to “Important changes” coming to my business account. The brochure got closer to the point: “Effective September 1, 2016, we’re simplifying our Business Banking Plans and making...
4 steps to a meaningful mission statement (August Wordnerdery)
One of the best mission statements I’ve ever run across was framed as instructions in the managing editor’s office of the Rocky Mountain News (which folded in 2009): “Get the news. Tell the truth. Don’t be dull.” Companies spend serious...
Peek vs. peak; is it so hard?
There it was again, in a caption on the front page of a section of today’s newspaper: a sneak peak. (We won’t talk about the use of bugs in food. Ugh.) I feel silly offering guidance about when to use “peak” and when to use “peek,”...