Writing tip: Association apostrophes are optional with plurals

15 September 2011

Sometimes an apostrophe shows association rather than possession: a week’s pay, Christchurch Girls’ High School. Strange to say, in such cases, you always need an apostrophe when the associated word is singular (a summer’s day), but an apostrophe is optional when the associated word is plural (Christchurch Girls’ High School). This is a grammatical oddity [...]

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4 years on: awesome online writing courses for the digital workplace

14 September 2011

Yesterday Alice, Rachel and baby Eden celebrated 4 years of developing and marketing awesome online writing courses for the digital workplace. Right at the start, we had set some stern and serious goals for our new company, Contented. But we also made it a policy to celebrate achievements, and to be sure we were both [...]

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Remembering 9/11: The radio by my bed…

12 September 2011

Two poems written shortly after September 11, 2001. Sometimes poetry helps the writer. Sometimes it helps the reader. Reprinted on the 10th anniversary of that unforgettable day of horror. The radio by my bed The radio by my bed is saying that people are dead is saying the streets are red is filling my heart [...]

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Poems about blogging

10 September 2011

Sometimes my worlds overlap: poetry and writing for the digital workplace. I don’t often blog about poetry, but I do secretly write poems about blogging. A few bloggy poems follow, for the eccentric few who enjoy such things. My father’s blog In my father’s blog are many mansions. A blog is content in a room [...]

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How entrepreneurs read ‘Getting to Plan B’

28 August 2011

Getting to Plan B — Breaking through to a better business model. Sometimes the mere title of a book can be enlightening. Yes! That’s where we’re at, I thought. I feel stuck. So when I saw this on Ed’s desk I grabbed it and asked to borrow it. Somewhat alarmed, my entrepreneur friend agreed after [...]

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Plain English awards: celebrating the communications Cinderella

23 August 2011

Plain English is, by definition, clear to the intended reader. This clarity has a positive impact on efficiency, productivity and customer relations. Famously, plain English also saves money for the organizations with a plain English culture—often hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. Given the facts, you’d think every organization in the world would be [...]

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How many domains should you buy?

18 August 2011

A client is developing a major web resource. He bought what seemed the ideal domain for one year, then reconsidered and bought two more domains, again for one year each. Now our client has asked us: Do you think that it would be a good business decision to capture all three of these domain names [...]

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Writing tip: Use words your readers understand

16 August 2011

Use the vocabulary of your reader. That’s a key factor in plain language. If you are writing for children, use words they understand. If you are writing for doctors, use correct medical terms. If you are writing for the general public, use the same kind of words they would use. Remember what your high school [...]

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How to get exclusive news stories: retweetable tweets

10 August 2011

On Twitter, the very latest unique news is highly desirable content. This kind of content is frequently retweeted. But if you are not a news agency or journalist, how do you find these exclusive stories? Keep your eyes and ears open! Yesterday on Twitter Craig Thomier reported two snippets of news that together were new [...]

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Why did you change the web content I wrote?

8 August 2011

Recently Contented graduate Caitlin asked us for a short article about why web content had to be written a specific way. Her client truly couldn’t understand why Caitlin wanted to rewrite what he had written. He couldn’t see that his prose was long-winded, unfocused and difficult to read. His prose was a car going nowhere… [...]

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