Writing Skills
« Previous Entries10 Ways to Lose Your Credibility
Wednesday, June 30th, 2010Discover 10 important ways you can lose your credibility when you write. View the original here.
How Writing Changed the World
Thursday, June 3rd, 2010Humans had been speaking for a couple hundred thousand years before they got the inspiration or nerve to mark their ideas down for posterity. Reading and writing in ancient times wasn’t for the masses, however. Daily life in Mesopotamia and Egypt was time-consuming, and so writing became a specialized profession, usually for members of the [...]
10 Simple Things You Can Do to Improve Your Writing
Friday, May 21st, 2010We’ve talked before about some of the big blunders—grammatical mistakes and misused words—that find their way into our written communications. Now, let’s consider some of the general best practices that contribute to clean, consistent writing. The good thing about following a few rules in your writing, even if some of them seem arbitrary or trivial, [...]
What Corporate America Can’t Build: A Sentence
Tuesday, May 18th, 2010R. Craig Hogan, a former university professor who heads an online school for business writing here, received an anguished e-mail message recently from a prospective student. “i need help,” said the message, which was devoid of punctuation. “i am writing a essay on writing i work for this company and my boss want me to [...]
The Power of Confident Writing
Monday, March 22nd, 2010A wonderful European-style market and bakery in the Oak Lawn area of Dallas. They serve everything from made-to-order salads and sandwiches to chef-prepared, ready-to-eat meals. But what I love most about the place is the sign on the door when you leave. It’s classic. The sign doesn’t read “Please Come Again” or “Thank You for [...]
Technology Blamed For Bad Grammar Despite Total Lack of Causal Evidence
Monday, March 15th, 2010We were just recently reporting on yet another in a very long line of studies that showed that instant messaging and texting was actually helping kids have better writing skills. So, it was interesting to see an article published up in Canada (thanks to Marcus Carab for sending this in) that claimed a study “proving” [...]
10 Simple Things to Do to Improve Writing
Tuesday, January 12th, 2010Maybe you’ve never penned a single blog entry, never been asked to write a progress report, never had to read over a colleague’s work for errors, and never had to send a critically important e-mail message to your boss. If that’s the case, you’re free to go now. But for most of us, a certain [...]
Seven Bad Writing Habits You Learned in School
Monday, November 23rd, 2009What is good writing? Ask an English teacher, and they’ll tell you good writing is grammatically correct. They’ll tell you it makes a point and supports it with evidence. Maybe, if they’re really honest, they’ll admit it has a scholarly tone — prose that sounds like Jane Austen earns an A, while a paper that [...]
Effective Writing Skills for Business
Tuesday, October 13th, 2009Download this PowerPoint file This 12-slide presentation covers these training topics: Effective WritingDeveloping good reading strategiesCreating powerful presentations:TonePunctuation, grammar and spellingOrganizing your thoughtsStructuring paragraphs and sentencesWriting to keep the reader engagedSoftening a negative message
There’s an Art to Writing on Facebook or Twitter — Really
Thursday, September 24th, 2009Not so long ago, people used to keep diaries to record their quotidian doings — privately, of course. Now people keep Facebook and Twitter accounts, updating their status daily, hourly, even minute-by-minute, and almost nothing is private. Worse, the modern status update is not always compelling reading. Feeding the cat Watching TV Eating a tuna [...]
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