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I hope you find my writing and business tips and observations useful. My business and blog are dedicated to helping businesses communicate clearly and reach their potential. Read, subscribe to my newsletter, enjoy!Tash

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Tash is a professional writer who loves helping people communicate clearly and effectively.

Boxy Design

I have just done some writing work for a new client who have developed a cool product range for kinder & primary school kids – as a Mum I think it’s cool anyway!

Boxy Design has a backpack with an insulated section of carrying lunch boxes and a separate section for reader covers and papers, etc; a lunch box that fits fruit and a roll or sandwiches, and is air tight so no wrappings are needed (my green soul loves that!); a cold pack and a drink bottle.

It is so much easier and more fun to write about products/businesses that are innovative or hit a real need for consumers! What do you prefer writing about?

Word Constructions
Word Constructions ~ for all your business writing needs

Style Sheets

Business writing, well good business writing, is made up of a lot of elements. One important element that isn’t mentioned very often is consistency.

While consistency in style, design and so forth are important, I am talking about consistency within the content itself.

It can be consistency in spelling (advisor or adviser?), capitalisation (Internet or internet?), hyphenation (multi-media or multimedia?), abbreviations (A.T.O. or ATO?) or apostrophes (CDs or CD’s?) Sometimes there is a right or wrong way, but in other cases either way is acceptable. However, switching between them in the same document or on your website can be distracting and even annoying. It also doesn’t send a good message about your attention to detail.

Let’s take the example of adviser and advisor. Both are acceptable spellings of the word, although some dictionaries list advisor as the American spelling; adviser tends to be more common in Australia.

If you are writing a webpage about your services as a business adviser, it is likely you would write adviser quite a few times. And by the time you have written the entire website, you will probably have used adviser at least a dozen or so times.

Now, if you have a strong preference for writing adviser, it will be easy and you probably wrote adviser every time. Likewise if you prefer advisor.

But what if you can never remember which is the ‘right’ way? Or you prefer adviser but whoever wrote the older webpages used advisor and it’s hard to remember which to use.

How can you remember which way to spell adviser? And at the same time remember to keep everything else consistent?

One way is to prepare yourself a style sheet.

How does a style sheet work?

Your style sheet can simply be a list of things to watch out for, or it can be a grid with each square being a letter of the alphabet so you can sort the things to watch out for.

An example style sheet is:

Style Sheet for Word Constructions Blog

Adviser
CDs
database
e.g.
internet
multimedia
program

Next time I need to write about a multimedia program within my blog, I just check that style sheet for the appropriate spelling.

Style sheets can be particularly useful if you have more than one entity to write about. You might have a style sheet for your job and another one for your own business, or maybe you need a style sheet for each client.

Company and product names can also be included in a style sheet as getting these names correct is an important part of branding.

The time it takes to create a style sheet will be paid for by having greater consistency in your writing. And a style sheet makes a great starting point for a style guide later on.

telling customers how they feel…

I just read an article called ’10 hypnotic-like sentences that sell like crazy’. Catchy heading and, as a writer, potentially useful information so I read it.

Well, actually I started reading it and then just skimmed the remaining nine sentences. All 10 sentences are based on the theory that if I write how you are feeling you will start to feel that way as you read my words.

Just one example of the sentences provided: You don’t know it yet but, at the conclusion of this ad, you will feel driven to order and experience all the benefits of our product.

Personally, if I read something like that, I’d stop reading in irritation with someone being so blatant and patronising. Obviously, you can lead readers in a certain direction with good writing, but I don’t like the technique in that article and wouldn’t recommend using it!

Some would say this technique works in the USA, but I’m not convinced they are so different that obvious manipulations like this aren’t annoying Amercians, too.

Word Constructions

Positive or negative?

As much as I’d prefer to ignore the election campaign, it is here and I have noticed numerous ads around. And I am surprised (as I am at every election, lol!) as how negative much of the campaigning is.

In business and as a writer, I would never criticise a competitor (mine or for a client) to try to win sales. I believe it is much better to show my strengths and abilities instead of showing how good I am at complaining about others – this builds trust in my skills obviously, and lets clients know if I offer a service they need.

Spouting negatives about competitors surely makes me look insecure or bitter or incompetent (because I don’t have enough positives to talk about), or all of them!

Politicians never seem to learn this simple business principle – and it makes me think of politicians as children!

So, don’t copy the politicians, and use positives in your writing!

Word Constructions
Word Constructions ~ for all your business writing needs

Starting a blog

Writing in a blog can be intimidating – and knowing how to set up a blog can be even worse for those not technically minded.

So I’m pleased to say there will be a Business Mums Network blogging for beginners intensive workshop in Melbourne in a few week’s time (17 November to be precise!) Lucie Battaini of MulitmediART will talk about choosing a blog and getting one up and running then I will talk about blog content – different styles, how to select content, etc.

Then we’ll brainstorm some blog topics for every participant, one by one. So those people will get to go home with the knowledge of how to start a blog that suits them AND have ideas to actually blog about. They’ll be experts in no time after this workshop and it’s under $100, too.

Hmm, speaking, providing notes – guess I’d better get writing!

Word Constructions
Word Constructions ~ for all your business writing needs

Writing from home

Writing and children are my passions so running a writing business at home while also being a mum is an obvious solution for me.

Watching a friend look for a new job recently, especially as she may have to move interstate to get a great job, has reminded me how much I value working from home.

  • I don’t waste time commuting to the city
  • I don’t create any polution travelling to work!
  • I control my hours and days
  • I can say no to clients or projects if it suits me
  • I can go on excursions and help at school – which I enjoy and consider important, but it also gives me a mental break from writing which actually helps me write better!
  • It’s a good excuse to not do the dusting every week!
  • I don’t have work colleagues distracting me as I write – I can sit for hours uninterupted (as long as the kids are at school!) and concentrate on writing

Word Constructions
Word Constructions ~ for all your business writing needs

Photos – no apostophe

This is becoming one of my pet hates 🙂

There seems to be an increase in the number of people using an apostrophe when writing about photos – that it, people writing photo’s instead of photos.

“I will bring my photo’s to show you”

What do the photos own? NOTHING! So there is no need for an apostrophe to be there and it annoys pedants like me when it is there!

I’m struggling to think of situations where anyone would talk about photos owning anything so it’s probably fairly safe to say that photos should never have an apostrophe added!

And given that adding an apostrophe is actually more work, I don’t see the appeal myself!

Word Constructions
Word Constructions ~ for all your business writing needs

What’s in a name?

My daughter recently discovered that people didn’t live at the same time as dinosaurs. She was shocked and didn’t really believe it.

“But if people weren’t alive when dinosaurs were, then how can people know what they were called?” she asked.

It lead to a discussion of why we use names for things – even things that we don’t see in our everyday life. Names save us time, words and energy, as well as individualising us as people.

When writing, the choice of a name can be really important as names also set the scene. Names can give information about the person, such as gender, nationality, personality and age, and about the theme of the writing.

And it’s not just naming characters in fiction stories either. When I am writing something that includes examples, I take care to use names that imply a mix of people – for instance, using male and female names.

Word Constructions ~ for all your business writing needs

Competition in business

Do you run a business? How do you deal with your competition?

I am about to write an article for the Business Mums Magazine on this topic, and the more opinions I have the better the article will be! So please share your thoughts here or answer the survey here – or both of course!

Word Constructions
Word Constructions ~ for all your business writing needs

Fresh web content tips

Carrying on from my last post about Lucie of MultimediART’s talk, it was interesting to get her interpretation on fresh website content. It has often been said that fresh content is important for search engine rankings, but what does fresh content mean?

Three main points to consider are:

  • change the content on your site at least once between each visit from a search engine spider (check your stats to find out how often that is for your site)
  • keep the content change within 2 clicks of your homepage
  • swapping around a few words or even a paragraph is probably not enough to count as fresh for a search engine

Search engines apparently search your site more or less often depending on how fresh they judge your content to be.

Content includes any articles and text on your site, as well as products, tools, news items, RSS feeds, and so on.

So how fresh is your website?

Word Constructions
Word Constructions ~ for all your business writing needs