From the category archives:

Writing

10 Writing Tips to Get (and Keep) Prospects’ Attention

by Deidre Rienzo September 25, 2009 Marketing

Making a powerful impression on your readers isn’t easy. They’re busy, impatient, and quick to click away from that site or close that brochure. The good news? Creating connections with words isn’t rocket science. It just takes a little know-how. Check out these 10 writing tips for ways to draw readers in—and keep them wanting [...]

Tagged as: audience, copywriting, language, sales, writing tips

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It’s Not the Same! How Online Copy Should Differ from Print

by Deidre Rienzo September 15, 2009 Web Writing

Want to recycle your print copy for the web? Please. Don’t. To make your best impression in each medium, target your approach. Why? Because your readers’ patience, processing, and ability to absorb are different for print and online content. Reading a book is different from flipping through a stack of magazines looking at headlines. In [...]

Tagged as: online marketing, writing for web

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5 Things You Should Never Do When Writing a Sales Letter

by Travis Heermann September 11, 2009 Business Development

Even in the Age of the Internet, the workhorse of direct marketing is still the sales letter. It’s a tried and true formula, and it still works quite well. Entrepreneurs and small businesses often try their hands at writing sales letters because they don’t have the budget to hire a direct marketing firm or even [...]

Tagged as: sales, Writing

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Good Grammar Survives the Texting Age

by Mistina Picciano August 31, 2009 Communication

Seemingly overnight, texting has altered how people use grammar. “Techspeak” is creeping into the personal and the business environment. It’s become a grammar free-for-all where punctuation has disappeared and capitalization is MIA. In speeding down the information superhighway, it is important to not get pulled over by the grammar police. Following grammar sends the message [...]

Tagged as: business communication, grammar, writing for web

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Breathe in, breathe out. With a comma.

by Mistina Picciano July 17, 2009 Editing

If you want to communicate your written message clearly, then you owe it to yourself, and your audience, to be purposeful about punctuation. Take the comma. Used correctly, it can help your readers navigate their way through some of your most sophisticated prose. Used effectively, it can add a subtle pause to accentuate your point. [...]

Tagged as: grammar, language

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It’s not about you. (At least, it shouldn’t be.)

by Mistina Picciano June 9, 2009 Marketing

Have you ever noticed how boring most company websites are? In almost every case, most of the copy highlights selects facts about their organization—when they were founded, who’s running the company, their commitment to customer service, etc.—and then list their services or products. Who cares? If I’m visiting an insurance company’s website, I probably have [...]

Tagged as: Websites

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Do Your Documents Show Your Age?

by Mistina Picciano May 21, 2009 Editing

Back in the day, Ms. Nancy Duty taught me—and the rest of Bruceville-Eddy High school—to use two spaces at the end of every sentence and after colons. Most of us were learning to type on IBM Selectrics, although a few were using the newfangled electronic typewriters. (The previous year, my eighth-grade class had started to [...]

Tagged as: Editing, proofreading

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Playing the Numbers Game: Percentages & Time in Writing

by Mistina Picciano May 5, 2009 Editing

Howard Levy, principal of Red Rooster Group, asks the following questions about proper style for percentages and time: When you have a range of numbers referred to in a sentence, do you use an en dash or the word “to”? As in “20 to 40%” or “20 – 40%”? Also, would you use the % [...]

Tagged as: proofreading

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Don’t Leave ‘Em Dangling

by Travis Heermann April 30, 2009 Editing

Here’s something to avoid in your written communications. Inexperienced writers (and even some experienced ones!) occasionally make dangling participle errors. Sound like something your high-school English teacher would say? Maybe, but professionals do not dare to make errors like these. Professional-level writing requires a professional-level understanding of grammar and clarity. A participle is a verb [...]

Tagged as: dangling participles, grammar

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Understanding your Audience

by Travis Heermann April 3, 2009 Audience

In a previous post, we discussed how critical it is to understand your audience, so that you can speak to them most effectively. Casualness and formality are different styles. It’s important to be able to write in styles across the formality spectrum, but they have the same purpose: to help you connect most effectively with [...]

Tagged as: audience, casual, formal, voice

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