The Write Blog
“PORING” VS. “POURING”: WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE?
This question came up during a round of in-house editing this week, so – of course –I wanted to share: Complete this sentence: I spent hours _______ over the pages of the magazine. A.) poring B.) pouring The correct answer is A, “poring.” “Pore” means to study or read something with great care. You’d pore […]
HOW TO WRITE COPY THAT SELLS & ENGAGES CUSTOMERS #1
Web writing is a particular kind of beast unlike other types of copywriting – you didn’t learn how to write for the Web in school, and you won’t learn how to do it without some solid groundwork first. It actually takes a lot of skill to write good Web copy: it needs to be clear, […]
PRONUNCIATION OR PRONOUNCIATION?
The mysteries of pronunciation are solved! Not sure how to pronounce boson, dais, belfry, duchy, or denigrated? Check out the talking dictionary at howjsay.com. Sooo cool.
LOGIN OR LOG IN?
Surprise! It’s both. Login is the noun. Log in is the verb. So, you log in to your website using your login. Got it? Have some more helpful writing tips? We always love to hear them.
WHAT MAKES A GOOD WIKIPEDIA TOPIC?
Before you rush to start a new Wikipedia article, there are a couple of things to consider. Wikipedia has a huge gamut of guidelines for writing, uploading, and editing Wiki articles. But before you begin any of those tasks, you first need to know what types of subjects are appropriate for Wikipedia. Wikipedia’s notability policy […]
SIX QUICK TIPS FOR BETTER CONVERSION RATES: DIRECT MAIL AND MARKETING EMAILS
Unsolicited marketing materials – direct mail and sales emails targeting new customers – generally have low conversion rates. Your artfully crafted letters may end up in the trash unopened, andyour emails might go ignored for weeks. Image via Wikipedia Before shelling out money on postage or spending time on an email to drum up new […]
HYPHENATED OR NON-HYPHENATED?
Some punctuation rules are pretty clear. You know that a period belongs at the end of a sentence. Quotation marks go around direct quotes. Exclamation points, in general, don’t belong anywhere in your copy. But hyphen rules are not so clear cut (or is it clear-cut?). It seems that everybody has their own in-house “rules” […]
USING FACEBOOK AS A TOOL FOR WRITERS
It’s no secret that Facebook is a social networking tool that most of us use to keep up with personal contacts. And we’ve seen over and over again how businesses are using Facebook as a social media tool to successfully network with clients and customers. Which got me thinking – how can writers harness the […]
FIND ACRONYMS IN MS WORD DOCUMENTS
A great tip from our friends at Shae Writing: This is a quick and easy way to find all the acronyms in an MS Word document. Remember that this command searches for consecutive capital letters, so it cannot distinguish between ‘SCBA’ and ‘DO NOT.’ For Word 2003: 1. Open the ‘Find’ window (Ctrl + F). […]
MORE COOL SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING STUFF
So Redbox may not be the first company to bribe their customer base into fanning their Facebook page. And they definitely won’t be last. But hey, it works. I’m going to get my free movie tonight.