Tricky Past Tenses: Dived, Sneaked and Pleaded
Some past tenses sound awkward, and because of that fact in the natural course of communication people try to make them conform to similar words with more conventional past tenses. While you may be corrected by some people for using these tenses, you can trust they are correct.
I cross-checked all of these words against American [...]
5 Ways to Write a Better Resume
Resume writing is a whole different animal, and I am not professional resume writer. But I do have a resume that has gotten me jobs I wanted and liked, and that means my resume has been successful to some degree, and I have had part in hiring both in-house staff and freelancers. So I [...]
5 Ways to Improve Your Feature Writing
Feature writing for print is changing. Once upon a time the only competition magazines and other feature-friendly media had was the newspaper, and then only on Sundays. But the Web’s instant-satisfaction information high has shortened attention spans. To hold the reader’s attention through page after page takes careful planning and some extra thought. Here are [...]
5 Ways to Improve Your Graphic Design Skills through Writing
As an editor, I have worked with many graphic designers, and over and over again, I heard the same phrase, “I don’t read!” Even though it always sent a chill through my veins, I understand. For the typical graphic designer, words are just part of the page design that you can gloss over. Why [...]
5 Ways Writing Can Improve Your Online Real Estate Presence
Being a real estate agent is a weird mix of entrepreneur/marketer/psychic. As a freelance writer, I have provided services to both giants like ZipRealty.com and local agents, and have gained some insights on how writing can help your business.
Get a Web Site
Even when current or former clients recommend you to their friends, the [...]
5 Ways to Improve Your Business Writing
I firmly believe the best way to improve your writing is not by memorizing rules, although I love my grammar rules. The best way to improve any kind of writing is by reading good writing. That’s because good writing is not about writing perfectly; you can write grammatically perfect sentences and still be boring as [...]
Passive Voice: What is it and how do I avoid it?
Passive voice is often brought up when talking about “be” verbs. You know I hate “be” verbs, so I won’t go there again. Passive voice occurs when you use a form of “be” verb in conjunction with a past participle:
Active: John threw Jane the ball.
Passive: Jane was thrown the ball.
Even though both sentences [...]
Better, Faster, Stronger – Writing!
This is one of my favorite videos because it had to take forever to coordinate, but I love that someone thought it was worth it. A well-thought out plan gets you respect from the people around you, no matter how trivial the mission. But many people don’t apply this to their writing.
How do you feel [...]
5 Ways to Write More
I am one of those people who have always wanted to write a book and still struggle to do so. I wrote a 90-something page story in fifth grade, but I hope I don’t go to my grave with “Chickens from the Mafia” as my greatest attempt at a novel, so I continue to write.
One [...]
The Interwebs
The Internet has its own vocabulary that is growing every day, especially in the past few years with Facebook and Twitter spawning so many actions and new words. Twitter has even begun to influence the literary sphere, with at least one author that I know of having written and posted a novel in 140-character or [...]
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