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20 Things that Doubt Will Do, and 3 Things It Can’t
Doubt: is torture* is terrible for others to watch will make you beg to be allowed to stop prompts fantasies of stacking shelves in a supermarket, at night, without thought, free of doubt is normal comes with the territory cannot be escaped reduces demands a front row seat at every launch questions your authority knows all your weak spots ...
Capitalizing Titles of People and Groups
Katie Williams writes: I would like to see a post about capitalization, such as when is it proper to capitalize people’s titles, and when would you capitalize the name of a group i.e. Board of Directors - is “Board” always capitalized when you are referring to the group? A person’s title is capitalized when it precedes the name and is ...
A Four-Step Guide to Generating Sales Leads from Your Blog
Dean: Did you know you can use your blog to make money offline? Blogger: Offline? What is this “offline” you speak of? Dean: It’s the opposite of “online.” Blogger: confused silence Dean: You know. Offline. Not on the internet. The real world. Blogger: shaking phone Not only does this stupid phone drop my calls, now it’s translating them into ...
34 Reasons to Start a Blog
We discussed how social media is like sharecropping -- you help build a network with your content and it may decide to delete your account if it changes rules or there is a glitch. Both Flickr and Facebook have given us examples of that action. The effects of those actions have been devastating for the people who had ...
Draft quick and dirty
The great editor Maxwell Perkins once said, "Just get it down on paper, and then we'll see what to do with it."This week, take that advice. Draft quick and dirty. If you don't know how to spell a word, just approximate; you or your spell-checker can fix it later. And please, please, don't let your word-processing program highlight misspellings while ...
One Die, Two Dice
Mickey Bayard has questions about the words die and dice. A friend and I are in dispute over the expression, “The di die , dye is cast, we have crossed the Rubicon “. …our conflict is over the use of “di”. I feel it is the singular of Dice , and therefore means the casting of a single dice or ...
Is Your Headline Good or Bad? Give it the Breath Test
Bloggers have been asking the question “ Do long or short headlines work better?” for a long time. But the answer to the riddle of how to create a headline that pulls in readers doesn’t necessarily lie in subtracting or adding one more word. There’s not a mysterious formula or arcane copywriter’s trick. The answer is much simpler than ...
Treating Women Differently
Women customers behave differently. Is that true? I was reading an article about what women want and how not to give it to them, and it got me thinking. In it, Alice Adams describes the behaviors that derail gender inclusion. To me, they derail effective work overall, man or woman. Further, they prevent an organization from serving its customers ...
Why You Should Shoot Adverbs on Sight
By Mary Jaksch Yes, I’m declaring open season on adverbs. What is an adverb exactly? Erm… it’s the word I just used: exactly. So I’ll cull it and write instead ‘What is an adverb?’ An adverb modifies a verb, an adjective or a phrase. It answers questions such as ‘how’, ‘when’, ‘where’, or ‘how much’. Such details may be important, ...
A Monday Morning Poem
She was rushing busy busy When she tripped on the reflection Stopped by beauty Stunned by wonder When she fell into the time warp Timeless beauty Endless wonder When she heard the monk-voice whisper ‘Write them beauty Sing them wonder’ And she stopped to write a poem Twelve line thank you, ode to wonder. ~~~ I wrote this last ...
