Writing well is more important than ever. Now almost everyone writes for work – from emails to research papers, presentations, memos, letters, social media posts and more. And yet, few of us are trained in how to write well.
So if you’d like a crash course in the fundamentals of good writing, here are seven books guaranteed to help you improve. Continue reading “7 books that will make you a better writer” »
The problem is that most legal case summaries are neither good, nor effective. They lack relevance, and rarely get clicked on, opened or read.
So, if your law firm is failing to get its case summaries noticed, here are 8 tips to help: Continue reading “How to write a legal case summary that gets read” »
Alarm bells should ring when you ask someone how they’re going with a document and they tell you they’re half way through it because they’ve written, say, 500 of a thousand words. Chances are unless they’re some kind of writing genius – if such a thing exists – their work will be flawed.
Continue reading “How to write anything” »
Ernest Hemingway died almost 55 years ago. But his writing philosophy and techniques have never been more relevant.
Here are seven things he can teach us about writing in the digital age. Continue reading “What Hemingway can teach us about digital writing” »
Social media can be a great tool for growing your professional presence and showing off your expertise to new audiences. It’s a key distribution channel for any content you create or curate – like blogs and articles.
But there are many traps you’ll need to avoid if you want to spread your influence effectively. Here are seven of the deadliest. Continue reading “The 7 deadly sins of social media” »
On Wednesday 24 June 2015 we’ve been invited to present a breakfast seminar for APSMA NSW called ‘Rediscovering the art of writing: Have impact and capture attention’.
You can find out more and make a booking at APSMA’s website.
“You learn to write by writing. It’s a truism, but what makes it a truism is that it’s true.” – William Zinsser, On Writing Well
The sad news is that there are no shortcuts to writing well. But we can let you in on a little secret: the best way to learn to write is to practice. You simply need to write.
While practice might be the cornerstone of learning to write well, there are some other simple ways you can improve your skills: Continue reading “How do you learn to write? 6 tips to improve your writing” »
“Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.” – Stephen King, author.
Writing and editing are not separate processes. To some degree, good writing IS good editing. But you can’t write and edit at the same time, and you need to do both to produce good writing.
As William Zinsser, American writer, editor and critic, argues: “the essence of writing is rewriting. Very few writers say on their first try exactly what they want to say… A piece of writing must be viewed as a constantly evolving organism… If the process is sound, the product will take care of itself.”
Increasingly, writing is part of what most people do for a living. But unless you’re a novelist or journalist you’re unlikely to have the benefit of a professional editor, so here are three tips for editing your own writing. Continue reading “3 tips for editing your own writing” »
“It is necessary to know grammar, and it is better to write grammatically than not, but it is well to remember that grammar is common speech formulated. Usage is the only test. I prefer a phrase that is easy and unaffected to a phrase that is grammatical.” – William Somerset Maugham, The Summing Up, (1938)
For some years I worked as an editor, commissioning articles for websites. One thing people would often say to me when they felt unsure of the work they were submitting was: “Oh my grammar is terrible, you’ll need to check it”.
They were right in one sense. There was usually something wrong with what they’d written. But it was rare, if ever, that their grammar alone was letting them down.
In most cases it was the structure. What they were saying didn’t read well because they hadn’t given enough thought to what they were writing about. This meant that they hadn’t planned their writing properly, and that lack of planning showed. Continue reading “It ain’t your grammar: Why structure matters more” »
