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
the artifice of an artisan
artefact: any object made by humankind
The archeologist was excited to find some artefacts in the cave.
artisan: a skilled craftsperson or manual worker
A number of artisans can be seen at work behind their market stalls.
artifice: contrivance, cunning, skilled trick; skill
The conman’s artifice had fooled many people in the last five years.
artificer: inventor, skilled crafts person; skilled mechanic (in miltary and naval usage)
Da Vinci is one of the most famous artificers in European history.
Remember the artefact is the object made by the artisan, who might show some artifice in the process.
Which punctuation mark do I use?
Sometime when using quotation marks at the end of a sentence or phrase, it would seem that two punctuation marks are required (one for the quote and one for the sentence).
However, you only ever use one punctuation mark, whether it is a full stop, exclamation mark, question mark, or anything else, at the end of a sentence.
In order to know which one to use, consider which is more powerful and use that one.
Some examples:
The teacher yelled out ‘Quiet!’
Did you say ‘John will fix my car’?
Someone might wonder ‘why did he choose that colour?’
Together we all …
Although they sound exactly the same, the word altogether and phrase all together are quite different.
all together: at the same time, acting in unison
All together, 50 students visited the display.
altogether: completely, entirely
The recipe was altogether different to my version.
The simple way to remember which is which is to think of all the parts being together – all together.
Check questions are answered
Clear writing needs to flow so that each statement or each point you make follows on the previous one. As soon as your reader has to stop and think about how the ideas connect or gets confused from a jump in topics, your message is weakened.
It is especially important to directly answer any questions you may raise at the start of any communication*. For example, if the title to your article is ‘retire now or later?” then the article must give information about when to retire; if your article is really about building your super by retiring later, use a title such as ‘super and delayed retirement’ or ‘retire later with more super’.
Likewise, if you include the question ‘should I have a blog?’ you need to include positives and negatives to help a reader make an informed decision; if you just want to list advantages to blogging, use ‘ 10 good reasons to have a blog’ as the topic.
As well as being effective writing, answering questions you raise
- gives you the opportunity to show (and share) your knowledge
- allows people to quickly find what they are after (which they appreciate)
- gives you a structure that makes the writing easier
- avoids annoying readers with irrelevant information and misleading titles wasting their time
* Of course, this applies to informative writing – if you are asking questions to gather interest, don’t give an answer but you still need to ensure the question and following information are obviously related. For instance. “Too busy to cook from scratch?’ needs to be followed by ‘our recipes give you quick, nutritious meals’ or ‘our flavour sachets save you time and effort’, but not by ‘Whatsit Saucepans are dishwasher friendly’
reforestation
Sometimes words don’t have to sound alike to be commonly swapped with another word of different meaning. For example, reforestation and afforestation are often misused – note reafforestation (also used by many people) is not a word at all!
afforestation: planting trees/seeds to make a cleared area into a forested area
Afforestation is slowly reducing the size of the desert.
reforestation: replanting trees/seeds to replace a forest after fire or felling
The timber company is involved in reforestation after every logging project.
Maintaining the flow of ideas
Writing with disjointed ideas that don’t flow from one to another is not easy to read and not a good advertisement for you. So how can you make your writing flow?
- My first tip is to proof read everything you write – preferably after a decent break from it and by someone else for anything important. It is easy to write down things as they occur to you but reading it later will show the lack of flow
- Qualify any alternative perceptions, usually words such as although, however, despite and but will help things flow better. For example “I think chocolate is best. Caramel has more flavour” doesn’t flow as well as “I think chocolate is best although caramel has more flavour.”
- plan your messgae before you write it – if you know what each paragraph is about before you start, you are less likely to include irrelevant material
- Remember that you don’t have to include everything you know about a topic in one piece of writing (even a thesis will have appendices and refer to external material!) Trying to include every fact and all points of view often leads to disjointed results so just include the details relevant to your purpose
- Check each paragraph covers only one idea and then review the order of the paragraphs so that information builds on itself and related ideas are in subsequent paragraphs. The beauty of word processing software is that you can move paragraphs and sentences around easily until they are in the right order for ideas to flow – not as easy to manage with pen and paper or a typewriter!
Is maintaining the flow of ideas in your writing something you consciously work on?
Keep ideas flowing
Have you ever read something and found a jump in ideas that distracts you?
I find it really annoying when the ideas don’t flow in a piece of writing – the change of topics or tense or perception may not seem major but if it makes me have to reread something to understand what happened, I tend to lose interest in the whole thing.
I came across the following example of this on a website where it is promoting cheap ‘reports’ to help small business people; the errors give me the impression of low quality pdfs rather than informative reports – what do you think from their description?
Too often I visit the site of a business mum to find there is only a contact form! The main reason I visit the site is to see where they are located as, where possible, I prefer supporting local business mums. There are a lot of different reasons for the lack of contact details.
This weeks *** report will look at five different contact methods you may want to put on you site as well as options for phone numbers, fax numbers, postal address and email address.
A range of contact options are available
Yes, there are various reasons for not including contact details but how is that relevant when you are telling me how annoyed you were at not seeing any contact details! It also has no relevance to the next paragraph so makes the whole thing very disjointed.
I suspect they are attempting to not offend people without contact details rather than standing strong with their own argument. However, it has backfired with poor writing and an indication of weakness that detracts from their ‘expert’ stand in the report.
Here’s an alternative version that won’t offend, sound weak or be hard to read*:
Too often I visit the site of a business mum to find there is only a contact form! I understand they may have their own reason for not including contact details, but the main reason I visit the site is to see where they are located as, where possible, I prefer supporting local business mums.
This weeks *** report will look at five different contact methods you may want to put on your site, as well as some low-risk options for showing phone numbers, fax numbers, postal address and email address.
Having said poor flow of ideas is distracting, my next blog post will include some tips on how to maintain the flow…
*My changes are in blue to improve the flow plus some necessary improvements to the second paragraph so it makes sense. I didn’t totally rewrite it as I would for myself or a client!
2010-11 is almost here!
Do you think it is time to prepare for a new financial year – or are you going to wait until July to work on your tax and accounting obligations?
I always plan to be organised so I can submit a tax return in early July, but it is never quite that smooth in reality. My bookkeeper needs time to enter all the data from June, I need my super fund to send me a deduction letter and so on.
However, I really do look at my accounts now so I can maximise this financial year – thinking of deductions in July won’t help much!
Here are some of my tips on keeping accounting issues under control in June/July:
- have regular data entry for expenses throughout the year- or get a bookkeeper!
- keep a document going all year to note down anything that may go into your annual report (i.e. note down any significant changes or events so you don’t have to remember them when you starting writing the report) This will also help a lot if you outsource the report writing
- if website pages/attachments need to be updated for 1 July (e.g. for legislation or price changes), prepare them in advance – even if data is unavailable until late June, you can have everything else ready to go
- book your accountant/tax agent early so you can choose a date that suits you
- get someone to help you if you are stuck entering a lot of data (e.g. for new depreciable items or household accounts if you are home-based) – it’s much quicker if one person reads out the data while the other types it
- check your online bank access – many will show the year’s interest instead of adding up each month’s or waiting for a printed statement
- review your payroll records now so you have all the information when sending out PAYG statements
- automate any regular payments – this can be useful all year, but taking the time in April/May to schedule payment of memberships and subscriptions due in June can save time and the stress of forgetting
- prepare communications in advance (blog posts, newsletter information) so those tasks are out of the way for a month or so
- have a good account filing system as well as your actual accounts – I use a display folder with a plastic envelope per month plus some extras (‘to be entered’, ‘pending’, etc) – and avoid changing it at this time of year
How else do you make your accounting and tax tasks quicker or easier?
Using apostrophes
Many people claim that they don’t understand apostrophes. At least, they don’t understand where to put them!
Basically, an apostrophe indicates that someone or something owns something else. For example, the boy’s dog – the boy owns the dog.
For a singular owner, it’s easy. The apostrophe and an s come after the word – boy’s, Mary’s and woman’s.
Its also easy if a plural term exists, such as men’s, crowd’s, children’s and management’s.
If the owner ends in s, the apostrophe comes after the s without an additional s. So the horses’ stable and the Smiths’ house are correct.
Apostrophes are also required in abbreviations to show letters are missing. For instance, are not becomes aren’t and do not becomes don’t.
The trickiest word is its…
It’s is the abbreviation of it is; the possessive term is its. So it’s raining today, but the horse lost its shoe.
So there are no apostrophes for decades, numbers, plural abbreviations or plural items – some correct examples are
– during the 60s
– she bought some CDs
– find all the As
– look at my photos
– he is in his 90s
– a list of URLs
– the babies are sleeping
– we will have three pizzas please.
Work like ours…
How would you react to a website like this?
“we treat the floor and work like ours. We are trying to keep it in cheapest price. If you online quotation we give you 5% discount.”
As key phrases about their benefits on the homepage of a website, the above statements really need some work.
What’s worse is the page title for their homepage includes ‘ploors’ instead of floors.
We came across this site as potential customers, and to be honest we’re reluctant to even get a quote after seeing such errors (trust me, there are many , many more with the site!) They are local and we’d prefer to use a local small business so it just proved to me again how big an impact bad writing can have on your business.
In this case, I suspect English is not their first language and I understand it isn’t an easy second language. At the end of the day, though, do they want people to accept their limitations in English or do they want more customers via an attractive website?
If you struggle with written English (because it is not your first language or any other reason), it really is worthwhile getting someone else to check your writing and edit it for you. An English speaking friend may not get it perfect, but will probably do better than the website I mentioned above. Then get some professional help as soon as you can afford it – even if you have to do it in stages.
Oh, the above sentences would be much more effective as “We treat your floors like our own. We keep our prices as cheap as possible. Get an online quotation for a 5% discount!”
So would you try this business based on their website, or would you go elsewhere?
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