Over on LinkedIn, Lou Adler posted an article about getting the right people in the right kind of job. Based on his history of creating job descriptions for employers, he developed a model that states “there are only four different jobs in the whole world.” What he means by this …
Tag: Writing
The difference between writing and oratory
A common piece of rhetorical advice is usually phrased this way: “Tell them what you’re going to tell them, then tell them, then tell them what you told them.” This advice, which some attribute to Aristotle, is great if you’re giving a three-hour speech in the agora. If you’re writing …
Q&A: How does writing a book feed your social media marketing?
Q: I’m told having a book will help me build my social media platform. Can you explain how that works? A: It’s not so much that the book helps build the platform. Actually, you need the platform to sell the book. But the book can be one plank in your …
Writing Q&A: Do I need to study English to be a writer?
Q: I’m interested in writing a book. I’ve always enjoyed writing, and I’ve been blogging for a while, but I’ve never tried writing a book. Should I go back to college and take some English classes? I’ve also considered getting an MFA. Would that help? A: You certainly need to study, …
How publishing works
I once sat across a coffee shop table with a client and outlined the publishing process for him. He was astounded. It never occurred to him that someone else would bear the cost of producing his book. He was more familiar with the manufacturing business model, where if you want …
Q&A: Do we really need Microsoft Word?
I’ve been asking myself this question lately, because Microsoft’s business strategy has turned positively creepy. To encourage people to move to its new subscription model, Office 365, Microsoft changed the licensing on Office 2013 to tie each copy of Office to a specific piece of hardware. In other words, if …
What your typing teacher didn’t tell you about manuscript formatting
A writer once complained to me that she had spent a lot of time going through her manuscript replacing all the five-space paragraph indents with tabs. She didn’t realize the five-space indent was wrong. She said, “I didn’t get that memo!” I almost didn’t have the heart to tell her …
When it’s okay to spell okay ‘OK’
Writers and editors may be the only people who get into arguments about spelling. In fact, I think it could easily be said that if you’re inclined to argue about how things ought to be spelled, you’re an editor, at heart if not by title. I’ve been inclined to spell …
Behold the power of the outline
At a chamber fellowship meeting, I was once asked to share my top editing tip. Didn’t have to think long about it: outline. I resisted outlining for many years, because it reeked of term papers and therefore seemed uncreative. Randy Ingermanson’s Snowflake Pro software convinced me otherwise. Designed for novel-writing, …
When passive voice is permissible
Writers and editors often pass on things they’ve learned—usually at the knee of some mentor they highly respect—in the form of seemingly inviolable rules: As it was said to me, I say to you, Thou shalt not use the passive voice. I am not saying “you have to know the …