writing

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Crime Writers

Published 25 September, 2008 | By TashWord

Enjoy writing about crime? Whether it’s finding iedas or refining your skills for stories or novels or even just to meet like-minded people, go along to the Maroondah Writers’ and Readers’ Festival of 2008 (based in Melbourne’s outer East.)

The festival is held each year with a new theme; this year’s theme is crime. The event includes writers’ workshops and keynote speakers from authors.

This annual event happens from the 3rd to the 5th of October so check online on the Eastern Regional Libraries site and find some events that you like and are near you.

Posted in writing | Tagged authors, crime, festival, libraries, readers, writers, writing | Leave a comment

A whole year already?

Published 21 September, 2008 | By TashWord

It’s amazing how fast 365 days can fly by.

It has been an entire year sice I started blogging and I can hardly remember running my business without it!

It feels strange to go back and read my first ever blog on here.

As my first blog post says “It is important to spend time doing what we love and are good at, rather than filling our hours with ‘stuff’ that may be urgent and even important, but not fulfilling or the most important.” And after how fast a year has gone by it still stands that it’s very important to do what you love, time goes past too quickly to ignore the things you enjoy.

Looking forward to another year of blogging!

Posted in blogging, writing | Tagged anniversary, blog, first blogging, year | 2 Comments

Managing feedback

Published 10 September, 2008 | By TashWord

When I’m writing for some of my corporate clients, a number of people need to be involved in the document – usually a mix of technical experts and legal advisers, along with a manager or two. If you have ever had to deal with a committee consensus, you’ll know that this process can be frustrating and time-consuming.

The best results arise when everyone has the appropriate input with one or two people having responsibility for the final result – usually the writer and a senior manager.

Here are some of my tips to keep this process under control:

have all feedback come into a central place so it can be collated – and if a technical expert can collate it for you, even better!
as much as possible, get everyone involved to review the same draft by a specific deadline. This way, you can blend all of the feedback into the document in one go rather than having many drafts and missing details in the confusion. Most stakeholders then do not get another review – legal, management and you get to do final checks.
get the document as accurate as possible with one or two client representatives before it goes to the group
explain any potential issues before they start the review. For example, I often write ‘refer to page xx’ in a draft document rather than ‘refer to page 10’ to allow for layout changes. I warn clients of this when I give them the draft to save them and me dealing with page numbers unnecessarily
understand as much as possible who is who amongst the stakeholders. If Jane and Mary give opposing feedback – which should you rely on as technically correct and which is an opinion?
be willing to give way on some points if they aren’t important so that you can stand your ground on points where it is important – remember that the same information can be written in multiple correct ways, and it can be personal choice as to which is ‘better’

As a writer, it is my job to take their technical knowledge, legal requirements and document intentions and provide them with a clear, easy to read document. So sometimes I do exactly as their feedback requests (e.g. changing a measurement from 5mm to 5cm) and at other times I adjust their feedback for clarity.

Use your words wisely!

Posted in writing | Tagged clarity, client, document, feedback, legal, manage, review, stakeholders, technical | 5 Comments

Promotional Articles

Published 9 August, 2008 | By TashWord

Think about why you use the internet for business. Sure you look at the graphics and pictures, but the main activity is collecting information, right?

So, does it make sense that one of the best ways to pull people into your site is to give them information? Selling your product or service is your main business aim, of course, but if you give people information they will trust you – and they’ll stay on your site long enough to learn your name.

How can you use information to get people to visit your website?

By far the easiest way is to submit informative articles to various web sites and ezines. That doesn’t mean you submit an article about you or your business as that will bore and annoy your readers. What you have to give them is good information about something relevant to your business, something they can use and appreciate you for.

If you are a mechanic, you could submit articles explaining what fuel injected means or how to jump start an engine; a wedding planner can write about how to decide on a guest list; an accountant can explain negative gearing or claiming GST inputs; and a butcher could write about the different cuts of meat.

You also need to make sure the article is interesting and basic enough for your potential clients to understand and finish. It must be accurate and presented professionally as well, if it is to promote your business positively.

At the end of the article, you include a short bio about yourself and your business. You can see the bios I use at the end of business and health articles.

If you have a web site or email address, make sure the bio includes this information so it can be hyperlinked back to you. Thus anyone reading your article and wanting to know more or use your service can contact you instantly.

I mentioned the value of promotional articles a few weeks ago, and I will cover ways to make use of them in coming posts.

Posted in newsletter content, writing | Tagged articles, bio, business, informative, interesting, online, promote, promotional, resource box, website | 8 Comments

Font sizes…

Published 6 August, 2008 | By TashWord

Surfing some of my favourite blogs today, I came across a post by Donna-Marie about choosing suitable fonts. As well as being a good summary of which fonts work well in different media, it reminded me of someone recently asking about using different sized fonts – and recent experiences of unsuitable font choices.

I remember doing school assignments where I’d use different fancy fonts for each heading and changed the text to suit the amount of information in each section, and so on – and I was proud of being so versatile! But looking back (or at children’s work now) I can see that it looks childish and puts the focus on the fonts rather than the content. It isn’t very professional to give the impression you are trying to minimise the content!

As a general rule, it is better to stick to one font style and size in a single document. It is consistent which makes it easier to read (the eye doesn’t have to keep adjusting to different fonts) and it also looks clean and professional. And to be honest, it is also easier to prepare than swapping fonts all the time!

The common exceptions in font sizes would be:

heading and sub-headings are often a little larger than the text font
labels on diagrams and tables are often smaller to work with the labelled items
the ‘fine print’ such as a disclaimer, a copyright notice or unsubscribe information – this text can be smaller but it must still be big enough to easily read so less than 8 point is getting too small in most cases. I recently edited a document which had footnotes to a table in a 7 font and it was too small to read and also looked out of place amongst the 11 font table and general text.
fonts within an ad design may show more variation, but be careful to not overdo it

If you are tempted to change font sizes to break up a chunk of text, consider bullet points, italics, bold, more paragraph breaks and page layout as alternatives.

Posted in writing | Tagged consistency, font, fonts, professional, readibilty, size, suitable | 5 Comments

Driving torture?

Published 21 July, 2008 | By TashWord

Another pair of words many people could easily confuse is tortuous and torturous.

Tortuous – twisting and winding, such as driving along a tortuous road.
The wagon was too long to drive along the tortuous track.

Torturous – painful, agonising, upsetting, such as a torturous stay in prison
Listening to the new student play the violin was torturous to the music lover.

To tell them apart, think of the word torture and torturous together as painful and unpleasant.

Posted in Monday Meanings, writing | Tagged meanings, painful, pair, tortuous, torture, torturoous, winding, words | 1 Comment

Links in emails

Published 20 July, 2008 | By TashWord

Email marketing is a valuable tool for any modern business, but it can backfire if you don’t use it carefully.

I recently saw an email that was very short, started with my name and included unsubscribe details – all of which are good points in an email. But it also included three links to a web page they were promoting – not three pages, but three links to one page!

In a short email, I am quite capable of finding the link even if I have read further on – it will stand out!

Over do something like providing links, and I begin to wonder why you are pushing it so hard and I get suspicious. Finish with “This isn’t hype” to convince me this is hype and not substance.

Add in a comment like “Seriously, this puppy is sick” and the email has no credibility – I deleted it without clicking on any of the three links!

So the lessons from this email are:

treat your readers with respect – they can find links in short emails
avoid unnecessary repetition – it is boring and raises questions as to why you need to repeat it
avoid statements that are cool or trendy – not everyone will agree with you and they age your message quickly. What is cool today is sick tomorrow and wicked the day after, and so on
if your content isn’t something (e.g. hype, spam,viral) then you don’t need to write that fact – it is more likely to raise suspicions than allay them

Use your words (and links!) wisely!

Posted in writing | Tagged credibility, delete, emails, links, marketing, respect, short | Leave a comment

Exclamation marks!!!!!!!!!!!!

Published 18 July, 2008 | By TashWord

Last year, my daughter was taught about reading exclamation marks – that is, if she was reading something out loud and saw an exclamation mark, she knew to raise her voice at the end of that sentence.

Today, I was asked how to stop using too many exclamation marks in writing – and I found it an interesting question!

I can’t say how many exclamation marks is too many – it depends on the length of the document and the context, of course. But over use of exclamation marks can cheapen the impact of your message, making it look like hype and unprofessional. An exclamation mark shows a statement as something a bit out of the ordinary – a lot of them and all those statements become ordinary.

If you use exclamation marks because they are fun and help you express yourself, I suggest you still use them as you write – and then go back and remove many of them as you edit. This way, you still have the fun of adding them but can moderate it before anyone else reads your writing.

However, if you use exclamation marks to emphasise your points, perhaps you need more faith in the message and how you present it. A strong statement is strong whether or not you add an exclamation mark.

Here are some ideas for changing your writing to reduce the need for exclamation marks:

use very short sentences to express important points
make the sentence very clear – exclamation marks should enhance the emotion of the sentence rather than provide it
put a single sentence as a paragraph for emphasis
use bullet points to make a series of points
headings and sub-headings are already visually different so they rarely need an exclamation mark
use positive words and expression, including adjectives, to show your enthusiasm

Use your words wisely, and you will find less need for exclamation marks!

Posted in grammar & details, writing | Tagged emotion, exclamation, exclamation makrs, expression, marks, punctuation, reduce, writing | 2 Comments

Cannot or can’t?

Published 16 July, 2008 | By TashWord

I was recently asked if it is grammatically better to use can’t instead of cannot.

Actually, both words are grammatically correct and context is the best basis for choosing which word to use.

When writing something formal, the word cannot is more appropriate; when writing soemthing informal and casual, you tend to use words as you would speak them, so can’t is quite appropriate and used more often.

There is nothing wrong with using either word in any context, but matching the word to the context helps the flow and style of your writing.

Posted in writing | Tagged can't, cannot, casual, context, formal, style | Leave a comment

Promotional articles

Published 11 July, 2008 | By TashWord

I admit that with my blog and a lot of client work, I haven’t written as many promotional articles recently as I used to, but I still think they are a valuable way to promote your business very cheaply.

I have done little to market my website online, yet it ranks quite well because I have so much content on there and many sites link to or use my promotional articles on their site.

Melissa has also had positive experiences with article marketing – she got radio coverage from an article she wrote 5 years ago! I also was approached by a major TV show about one of my articles, so it is amazing what can happen from a simple article!

What specific results have you gained through article marketing?

P.S. As part of my promotional articles presentation this weekend, I prepared some notes for the conference handbook. I believe that copies of the handbook will be available afterwards from the workshop notes section of the Business Mums Guides site if you would like my tips on writing and using articles, plus notes from many other speakers.

Posted in writing | Tagged articles, business, cheap, media, positive, promotional, results | 1 Comment

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