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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Career development training for copywriters: ROI critical

28 July 2011

Yesterday an experienced creative copywriter emailed us, hesitating over whether to do the Diploma in Web Content: Core Skills. Should Geraldine take the plunge and do 10 hours of career development training online? Or would that be a wasted investment of USD239? Her email follows. Hi there — I’m interested in your diploma course — [...]

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Naming an intranet: a philosophical view

21 July 2011

Naming an intranet is rather like naming a book or a child. It can be fun, it can be frightening, but of course the book, child or intranet matters much more than the name. Homer. The Daily Insider. Connect. Infonet. Insite. Wisdom Network. Sherlock. Tiggle. Inflo. OpusWeb. Nexus. The Hub. The best intranet name is [...]

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Writing tip: Don’t use quote marks to highlight common words

20 July 2011

Sometimes writers use quote marks to distance themselves from a word or phrase. They’re treating the words as a virtual quote, as if they were saying, ‘It’s not really me using this phrase: I’m just quoting what other people say.’ Quote marks are difficult to handle correctly, goodness knows. But here’s a tip that should [...]

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Tips for managers training intranet content authors

15 July 2011

All intranet managers face the problem of quality content. We’ve been banging on about quality content since 1995, and it’s still a topical topic. Social intranets make the problem even worse: staff certainly write more content, but the quality drops. They have more confidence in their ability to write online content, but their confidence is [...]

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Writing tip: Use strong verbs—not just ‘is’ and ‘was’

2 July 2011

In English, verbs are the go-go-go words, the wake-up words. There’s no action without a strong verb, an action verb, a doing verb. Strong verbs make things happen. By contrast, the various forms of the verb to be produce no action: they merely suggest a state of existence, or a condition. Being verbs are static. [...]

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Choosing a business name and domain: a cautionary tale

28 June 2011

Our beautiful business name and domain name attract much admiration, and we’re often asked how we acquired them. This is a cautionary tale. It starts madly and badly, but it has a happy ending. The journey was all about words and communication and reading habits: just like all web content. From QWC to QWICKIT to [...]

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Writing tip: trap the wandering adverb

15 June 2011

Don’t let the word only wander lonely as a cloud: glue it in the right place. If only wanders into the wrong position, confusion may result. See how the meaning changes when only wanders around a sentence. Only the new manual confused the nurse. (The old one didn’t confuse her.) The new manual only confused [...]

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