Nov 21, 2019 | Editing, Effective Writing, Punctuation and Grammar
Conjunctions, such as and, but, or, and so, can make a difference in the meaning of your sentence. Be sure to choose the right one. Conjunctions are connecting words that express a relationship between two elements (words, clauses, or phrases). You tend to pay little...
Oct 24, 2019 | Communication, Editing, Effective Writing, Punctuation and Grammar, Uncategorized
Helping verbs (is, are, was, were, will be, etc.) often are necessary to express a point in time (verb tense), but you can strengthen your sentence by stripping them when they are unnecessary. Write with strong verbs, a valuable piece of wisdom for centuries,...
Oct 21, 2019 | Communication, Editing, Effective Writing
Corporate intranets contain many articles but fewer stories. Adding narrative elements can elevate a ho-hum article to an engaging story. The word story is loosely applied to almost any article, and for the sake of discussion we can use the term broadly, because...
Oct 20, 2019 | Editing, Effective Writing, Punctuation and Grammar
To make your writing a little tighter and more snappy, become friends with the semicolon. The semicolon is a misunderstood punctuation mark. Some people have a strange notion that a semicolon is for academic writing or that it is used by people trying to look...
Oct 16, 2019 | Editing, Effective Writing
People often sit at the keyboard, staring at the screen, hearing voices from the past. “You can’t start a sentence with and, because, or however,” old Miss Grumplebee cautioned them. Well, relax, folks. Such “rules” are mythical. We...
Sep 27, 2019 | Communication, Editing, Effective Writing
People take writing criticism personally, but being receptive to criticism is the way you grow as a writer. It keeps you focused on what you need to work on. Because writing is a personal creation, people are sensitive to criticism, so they won’t ask others to...