Writing Skills
« Previous Entries10 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 could’ve [...]
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 sandwich
To be fair, even [...]
Fifty Tools to Help You Write
Monday, September 21st, 2009Roy Peter Clark from Poynter Institute has posted 50 tools that can help you when you write. This is a extensive list of writing tools.
View the original here.
Ten Principles for Clear Writing
Friday, September 4th, 2009Robert Gunning, the creator of the Gunning Fog Index, a method of testing the readability of text, offers ten principles of clear writing.
View the original here.
Writing: Clear and Simple
Monday, August 24th, 2009Download this PDF file
The Bad News: Business writing is mostly painfully bad. The Good News: We can do something about it.
10 Ways to Lose Your Credibility
Monday, June 29th, 2009Discover 10 important ways you can lose your credibility when you write.
View the original here.
The Value of Writing Well
Wednesday, June 24th, 2009It’s that time of year again. I’m reminded over and over of the importance of good writing skills–-and of their rarity.
View the original here.
How Writing Changed the World
Monday, June 1st, 2009Humans 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 elite [...]
