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Strunk & White – The Elements of Style

In my quieter moments I surf the internet just like anyone else involved primarily in writing web content. I regularly read CopyBlogger which is a mine of writing tips and resources, but I particularly picked up on a post by Brian Clark
bemoaning the adverse comments scattered about blog posts by English usage Nazi’s. I think he has a fair set of points but they are not the subject of this post here. Brian was posting about common errors and by all means read his post, I thoroughly enjoy his blogging but bear in mind this is American writing and grammatical tips.

I followed through the post and picked up on a couple of names – Strunk & White – and clicking on the hyperlink, there we go through to Wikipedia and the entry for their tome. Reading the Wikipedia entry has motivated me to purchase a copy through eBay not least because of the simple, straight-forward advice that Messrs. Strunk & White appear to be dishing out.
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Cooking for Writers: A Recipe for a Great Paper

Writing for a writer becomes a habitual process where the flow comes and just gets rolling. Pages and pages full of words course from our brains and through our hands in no time at all. It’s like giving a knife to a cook. The meal doesn’t take long at all to be ready.

Staying with the cooking analogy, someone who doesn’t know how to cook stands dumbfounded looking at ingredients and wondering what to do with them all. The same happens with someone who isn’t very familiar with the writing process. Thoughts are streaming through your brain, but you can’t get them out on the page. You can’t get them started.

Writing shouldn’t be as difficult as most people think. If you can talk to your friends, you can write. You’ve learned enough to start what you want to say, say what you want to say and sometimes you even get a chance to wrap up what you want to say. All you have to learn now is how to get it down on paper.

Just Begin

What stops most people from writing is getting started. How to begin is the question. Don’t look for some dramatic way to begin your document whether it’s an essay for college or an article for a magazine. Just begin.

What is the point of your paper? Start with a sentence that pinpoints the answer to that question and then go for it. Write the first paragraph with supporting sentences. Write your paper with supporting paragraphs and then, wrap it up in a nice little conclusion. Now, you can go back to the beginning and go for a more impressive, dramatic introduction if you want.
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5 Tips for Writing with Persuasion

My bread and butter is writing sales copy or at least promotional copy of some description and that accounts for the vast majority of the demand in the market for scribblers today.

It makes sense to pick up on some techniques for writing in a persusive fashion – it makes no sense to write something that will not help sell or promote the product or service of your commissioning client.

#1 – Repetition

Repeating yourself helps get the point home to your audience. My view is to make your point in several different ways in order to avoid the appearance of treating your audience as if they are brainless. To this end I use quotes extensively both from individuals or from trusted reporting sources e.g. I quoted the “BBC” and “Angelina Jolie” when I wrote about Hoodia, a diet pill.

#2 – Consistency

Keep yourself on-message and on-topic. This will help you maintain a consistent approach to generating copy and advancing your message.

I tend to use this by advancing a position that a reader will find hard to disagree with and then following up with supporting evidence that leads to a hopefully, inescapable conclusion e.g. smokers die younger than non-smokers is a hard to disagree with statement.

#3 – Social Proof – Peer Pressure

I was told once upon a time that “The trend is your friend” and though this was in the context of foreign exchange dealing as traders would look for market trends in order to judge when to make trades, it has direct relevance with our writing as well.

I look for testimonials that can be cited and especially valuable are the rich and famous who use a product or service. You only need look at those companies that bear the Royal “By Appointment” signs to understand the significance of this.

Why should you critique your own writing?

Writing gives a two dimensional structure a three dimensional look. It creates visuals in the mind of your readers. It gives some form to a non-existent structure. Once put down in print, you have actually captured and contained it. Your idea has been made presentable. The more you do it, the more you are able to do it and it thus becomes easier for you to churn out writings and express yourself through words. Use words that you have learned in your mind to express your ideas. You really don’t have to wait until you learn the perfect words. The words that you have right now are enough; one can always refine everything later.

You should allow your writing to be free flowing. You should not stop yourself from putting whatever you are thinking into writing. Just write down whatever thoughts come into your mind about the subject. Make notes. Jot down all your ideas and phrases as they occur to you, and as an open minded writer, you should always keep a pad where you can write down notes where ever you go. It’s much easier to build upon existing material than it is to create it from nothing. Editing can always be done and refined later. You will generally find that you have an abundance of things to write about when you plan things this way.
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Writers Block

I first encountered writers block when I had to deliver a set of twenty 300 word reviews on 2007 model cars sold in America. The word count was not large though I’m no car buff so a little research was in order.

It struck me just how similar car reviews wereand it made no difference if the reviews were of different makes and models. There is not a lot you can write about changes from the Aston Martin DB7 to the Cherokee Jeep to the Smart car! Don’t take my word for it, take a look yourself at car reviews and you will see that they are all extremely similar.

Unless you are actually going to take a car out for a spin, you are well and truly stuck with using reviews and writings that already exists for the model. Embellishment is superfluous as you’ll only be embellishing someone else’s embellishment in turn. [Read more…] about Writers Block

Non-Fiction Writing: The Sins You Cannot Commit

One of the first mistakes that you have to look out for is the organization of your entire material. What is important here is that you are taking your readers on a trip through “the structure” – the beginning, middle and the end, if the reader cannot follow your reasoning and content, they will eventually give up. No one is going to have the patience to read something that doesn’t make a lot of sense or interest them. We can’t go on rambling now, can we?

To keep the attention of readers your use of the vocabulary is very important. A book is a two-dimensional medium, so it is up to the writer to deliver the words and to paint a picture that becomes three-dimensional in the reader’s mind; this is true even for a non-fictional book. Uninteresting words make you lose focus whilst reading the book, so your writing has to be cohesive and structured. The two most important better writing skills are the ability to begin your writing well, and to conclude it even better – lucidity of thought and expression is also very important.

Poor sentence structure and grammar, misspellings, incorrect abbreviations and capitalization all need to be reviewed, and if you make mistakes here, the reader may assume that your idea has errors too. The best way of making your writing an interesting read is by editing them over and over again until you are entirely satisfied with your work. Spending as much time as possible revising your work is a good idea. Once the first draft is complete, you’ll come to the most dreaded part many writers dislike in their writing, proofreading and revising your work.

With the advent of word processors, proofreading and editing your manuscript has become an important matter. Using cut and paste techniques, you can fine tune your writing in little time. It also pays to brush up your written language when you are writing, as what may sound right might not mean the same when written.

As a writer you cannot become over emotional with your own work, though you should allow readers to become emotional and attached. The more emotional the reader gets, the more effective the story will be in making your point. What is very important is that you cannot tell the reader how to feel about the events they are reading; rather, tell them how you feel.

One thing that has to be kept in mind is in the overuse of words and punctuation, in trying to communicate to the reader and tell them what you feel. If a chapter has more than two exclamation points then I think you are trying to over emphasise something that you feel. Another amateurish mistake is using capitals for all your written words, as this is the written equivalent of shouting. It is much more effective to talk softly.

The most important thing about writing a book is to understand it needs to be modular and unfolded over time. It is surprising how quickly you can create a book if you spend an hour each day working on it. At the end of the day, if your structure is basically sound, then you are left with simply writing one good sentence at a time, one good paragraph at a time, one good section at a time, until you are complete.