I could not stop myself. Food and editing! This photo of a pilcrow pretzel by Windell Oskay is too funny. Since a pilcrow is the symbol editors use to say “start new paragraph here,” it’s appropriate for today’s post. Here’s a pic that might make the symbol more recognizable. If not, you learned something new today! I…
No time to write much here until I finish some tasks related to my day job. So I’ll get right to it. Today’s brief video tutorial focuses on how to use transitions to guide workplace readers through a document. Small words make a BIG difference. Related articles Amateurs suffer from directile dysfunction (proswrite.com)
The prevalence of directile dysfunction in men is well established, at least by women in North America. (I’m talking about the inability to ask for directions when traveling in unfamiliar locations.) But, while working on a lecture-tutorial devoted to transitions (e.g., “however,” “because,” etc.), it occurred to me that amateur writers also suffer from a version of this malady. Except their…
Core. Essence. Kernel. Heart. Crux. When applied to a document, these terms refer to its bottom line message. One of the things pro writers do is make the bottom line clear. That means they state their bottom line explicitly. And more than once in a long or complex document. The other thing pros do is place their bottom line where…
Most of the world has heard that CNN and Fox News inaccurately reported the US Supreme Court’s ruling on the Affordable Health Care Act last Thursday. Later that day, here’s how Ellen Killoran, a reporter for the International Business Times, explained their error: The egregious error does not appear to be the result of the news…
Yesterday’s post argued that sentence variety is the enemy of efficiency. Efficient sentence organization is dependent on cohesion: the links between ideas that hold sentences together. My experience teaching professionals to write is that most are able to create cohesive prose without explicit instruction. But, for those without this ability, the problem is critical. Their readers struggle…
Which fork would you prefer to talk about at a party? Is it the same fork you would want to use when you’re in a hurry to eat your lunch? I hope you agree with me that the fork on the left is more interesting–hence a better candidate for conversation in a social setting–and the fork on the…
I don’t know people who read at work for fun. They read because they need help doing their jobs. That means they’re looking for documents they can USE. Few things make a document more usable than format. (I’m talking about white space, typography, etc.) Revising Professional Writing devotes a chapter to this topic. I’ve been using short…
I am working on a brief video tutorial on format for tomorrow’s post based on a chapter in Revising Professional Writing. Each of my tutorials refers to a one-page workplace document (or an excerpt from a longer document). Because video degrades the quality of the print in those document pages, my plan is to post them here…