My last three blog posts all were triggered by my irritation with poor communication—whether words or formatting. My goal—my purpose—is to help people get their ideas onto the page in a way the audience will understand and embrace. After many years of corporate business writing (and a boss who knocked it into my head), one […]
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Excessive Irritation: A Little Bit Goes a Long Way When You Use These Items in Writing
I attend a book club periodically. For a recent meeting, I’d heard of the assigned book, I knew people who liked the concepts in it, and the topic was relevant to my field of work, so I was looking forward to reading it. A fellow reader emailed me a week before the meeting: “The author […]
Tips for Creating Effective Headings
In my last post, I discussed emphasis—the use of bold, italic, underline, ALL CAPS, and so on—primarily looking at the main text of a book or article. I mentioned headings briefly, and in this post I want to expand on the effective formatting of headings. When I say “headings,” I’m referring to the types of […]
Tips for Using Emphasis Effectively
I recently read a blog post and found myself getting annoyed. And it wasn’t even a post about politics! Frankly I can’t tell you what the article was about because I was too annoyed with the article’s formatting. The author used every conceivable form of emphasis—bold, italic, underline, ALL CAPS, and COMBINATIONS THEREOF—with reckless abandon. […]
Book Sales Lagging? Maybe You Need a Cow Magnet
Cows are indiscriminate in their eating habits, often swallowing foreign objects along with their food. When those foreign objects happen to be sharp metallic items such as nails, serious damage can be done to the cow’s digestive system and other organs. It is a huge potential problem, so how do farmers get the metal out? […]