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If you magically traveled back to Shakespeare's time, you'd find that people were no less potty-mouthed than they are today; they swore just as often, except they used some different (but no less crude) words. These days, some of the legendary old-time crudities have started to feel neglected. Won't you help them out?
For as long as I’ve been writing books, I’ve been in a constant battle with the design of word processing software.Just the phrase “word processor” itself is soul-sucking. But the real problem lies in the common interface conventions almost all word processors share, locked in a framework that took shape in the early days of computing, when software was almost exclusively oriented around the business market. These tools are undoubtably well-engineered for producing an inter-office memo, or a short business plan that follows a conventional structure. But they are almost comically unsuited for long, complex, and structurally open-ended documents like non-fiction books or novels. To understand why, you need to consider the entire the life cycle of a book, from the early ideas to the completed project....
A short, professional bio is one of those things most people don't think about until, all of a sudden, we've been asked to "shoot one over via email" and have approximately one afternoon to come up with it. That's when we scramble. And when we scramble, our bio ends up reading like this: Rodney Erickson is a content marketing professional at HubSpot, an inbound marketing and sales platform that helps companies attract visitors, convert leads, and close customers. Previously, Rodney worked as a marketing manager for a tech software startup. He graduated with honors from Columbia University with a dual degree in Business Administration and Creative Writing."... Woof, that was dull. Are you still with me? I swear, not even adding a tidbit about his cats would liven that bio up....
You have greatness in you. Cultivating it often takes role models, mentors, and loads of hard work. This fun quiz will help you find out which famous world leader you most resemble in your writing and may help you find an inspiring role model.
We invited eight female literary powerhouses, from Michiko Kakutani to Anna Holmes to Roxane Gay, to help us create an updated list of books everyone should read. Each participant made 10 picks. It's a new year, a new Esquire.com. We're looking forward to reading and we hope you are, too.
Epic copywriting is an integral part of driving traffic and making conversions. Smashing Magazine even states that “it’s not how can you become a world-class copywriter in a short period of time if you have only minimal experience? It took me 10 years to improve, figuring out these techniques. By practicing them, you’ll be able to improve a lot faster....
On the night she was murdered, Stella Walsh was in a great mood. The Cleveland resident spent much of December 4, 1980, thinking about her two passions: sports and Poland, the country she ran for when she won two Olympic medals. There was a women’s basketball match the next week between Kent State and the Polish national team, which Walsh helped arrange. Mayor George Voinovich asked her to be his proxy, and his office gave her a key to the city, which she planned to present at the game. Walsh had planned to leave for Atlanta that day, on a trip with her co-workers at the recreation department, but two days earlier, she’d canceled her ticket, which she said was too expensive for her. She skipped work, slept late, went to the nearby Lansing Tavern in the early afternoon, then returned to the tiny home she shared with her bedridden 84-year-old mother Veronica. After dinner, without saying goodbye, she drove off to buy ribbons for the visiting Poles. She had a lot of money in her pocket, which rarely happened.In Walsh’s brilliant career as a track and field star, she’d won 41 Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) titles and set 20 world records in a range of events, from sprints to the discus throw. She was the first superstar of women’s track and field, a dominant performer who intimidated her competitors, and the only woman of her era whose box-office appeal matched a man’s. Walsh “is to women’s track what Babe Ruth is to baseball,” one journalist wrote....
Online, your product is unbundled. You get 10 words. Or 8. Or maybe 13, like I used above, to market your work. Digital success is like selling a newspaper story by story rather than day by day or week by week. And in selling that day’s paper, by subscription or newsstand, there’s just less urgency to make the headline awesome on that 150-word story buried at the bottom of page 11. Sections and geographic centers all are comfortable assumptions you can’t make in digital headlines. You must have a certain sense of desperation in writing web headlines, like those eight words are the difference between that column’s or blog’s life or death. Mostly, because it is. You aren’t owed readership. Your headline helps earn it — along with a handful of other factors like author and brand. So any strategy involving growing and sustaining digital audience must incorporate excellence in headline writing. Must. A few points to clarify here as we begin. I’ll be discussing writing for readers here, not for search engine optimization. That will be a consideration at times, but mostly we’re talking about people creating headlines for people....
Google has agreed to fund a project to develop automated fact checking tools amid anger over the prevalent of fake news websites during the US presidential election.
UK fact checking organisation, FullFact, has announced it has been awarded €50,000 (£43,000) by the tech giant’s Digital News Initiative to build the first “fully automated end-to-end fact checking system”.
In a statement, FullFact explained that the system will have two main features.
One will inform readers if something reported as fact has already been proven inaccurate.
The other mode will fact check claims automatically using Natural Language Processing and statistical analysis in real-time – something FullFact said has never been done before – by highlighting the text and having a factbox appear when the user hovers over it....
Writing isn’t a talent—it’s a skill. A skill you can develop, refine, and improve.
Becoming a great copywriter isn’t easy, but if you consistently work on your writing, your writing will get better and better.
Here are 33 (count them!) writing tweaks that will propel you to copywriting mastery....
It’s on the tip of your brain. An idea. You think you’re onto something. You’ve figured something out that nobody else realizes. What should you do next? Write an idea treatment. I’ll explain how.
In my experience, a big challenge for writers is the inappropriate edit. You know, the guy who corrects spelling errors in your outline, or wants to rearrange the whole thing during the proofreading stage. In fact, only 32% of business writers say that their process for collecting and combining feedback works well. I’ve written before about the five levels of editing, with posts on each type. But if your reviewers still don’t get it, lay this infographic on them. Then tell them what you’re looking for, and when you need the feedback. It will increase your chances of getting the comments that you need, rather than the ones that drive you crazy....
In August, Washington Post Managing Editor Cameron Barr and his fellow senior editors decided to do something about a problem that had been niggling at them for some time:
Articles were becoming too long, often for no good reason.
"We were seeing too many pieces that were in the mid-range of their ambition and their success — coming in at 60, 70 inches of copy," Barr said. "We were seeing the same thing in a number of blogs, where pieces were just too long, and we felt as though editors were not applying the necessary discipline and rigor in how these pieces were being handled on the desk."
The solution? A newsroom-wide initiative to cut down on editorial flab, Barr said. Since the middle of August, he's asked Post's department heads to take responsibility for articles longer than 1,500 words online or 50 inches in print. Bylines, captions, headlines and subheadings don't count....
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Each year, I keep a running list of exceptional nonfiction that I encounter as I publish The Best of Journalism, an email newsletter that I curate weekly for its subscribers. This is my annual attempt to bring roughly 100 of those stories that stood the test of time to a wider audience. I could not read or note every worthy article published in the past few years, and I haven't included any paywalled articles or anything published at The Atlantic. But everything that follows is worthy of wider attention and engagement. I hope it provides fodder for reflection and inspiration for future writing. My thanks to all of the publishers, editors and, writers who made these gems possible.
A few months ago, I published a post titled “Why You Can’t Afford $25 Blog Posts,” and it was one of our most popular of all time. As I was writing it, I remember wishing that someone would do a study on what you really get when you buy bargain-basement content. As a certain book says, ask and you shall receive. Last week my friend Lisa Alexander was kind enough to tag me in a post sharing some, yes, actual research on whether you get what you pay for when it comes to content writers. Let’s take a look….
These days many designers can code—an increasingly important skillfor landing a job. But few are just as fluent in their own language as they are in Javascript. That presents a serious problem in terms of design. Users still depend on copy to interact with apps and other products. If designers don't know how to write well, the final product—be it a physical or digital one—can suffer as a result. In his "2017 Design in Tech Report," John Maeda writes that "code is not the only unicorn skill." According to Maeda, who is the head of computational design and inclusion at Automattic and former VP of design at VC firm Kleiner Perkins, words can be just as powerful as the graphics in which designers normally traffic. "A lot of times designers don't know that words are important," he said while presenting the report at SXSW this weekend. "I know a few designers like that—do you know these designers out there? You do know them, right?" By pointing to writing as the next most important skill for designers, the report suggests a corrective to an overreliance on the interface—to the extent that writing itself has been left behind as a design skill. "A core skill of the interaction designer is imagining users (characters), motivations, actions, reactions, obstacles, successes, and a complete set of 'what if' scenarios," writes designer Susan Stuart, in a blog post highlighted in the report. "These are the skills of a writer — all kinds of writers, but particularly fiction, screenwriting, and technical writing."...
Whether you’re trying to become the next top blogger, or just working in an office, writing is a vital key to success (even if it doesn’t seem like it). New research by Harvard has found that writing is one of the most overlooked, yet vital skills in business. Harnessing the power of good writing can accomplish everything from boosting your productivity to improving your leadership (not to mention it will help you create awesome stories). Luckily, there are some ways to easily improve. Stephen King, one of the world’s most successful authors, isn’t shy about sharing the tricks and tools that helped him sell over 350 million books....
Free resource of educational web tools, 21st century skills, tips and tutorials on how teachers and students integrate technology into education
Via Tom D'Amico (@TDOttawa)
Lake Superior State University on New Year's Eve released its its 42nd annual "List of Words Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness." The university collects nominations all year round on this Facebook pageand releases the word to honor the new year. The word cloud is from the university, showing some of the previously banned words. Previous lists and more information about the project may be found here. The 2017 list and the reasons given by the university: You, Sir: Hails from a more civilized era when duels were the likely outcome of disagreements. Today, we suffer on-line trolls and Internet shaming. Focus: Good word, but overused when concentrate or look at would work fine. See 1983's banishment of, We Must Focus Our Attention. Bête Noire: After consulting a listing of synonyms, we gather this to be a bugbear, pet peeve, bug-boo, pain, or pest to our nominators....
We can’t all be J.K. Rowling or Stephenie Meyer, but if you’re working on a book, it’s nice to know what helps with success.
First, don’t get too long-winded: Surprisingly, the average length of a best-selling book is 375 pages. (Lord of the Rings is definitely an outlier here.)
As far as setting goes, most bestselling books are set in the U.S., with lawyers or detectives as main characters. Romance is, by far, the most lucrative genre. Romance books bring in $1.4 billion a year, with crime books in second place. Interestingly enough, people finish romance novels but often ditch religious books.
While the U.S. leads for its publishing industry, Germany, France, China, Japan and the UK also have large markets for authors. If you’re publishing an e-book, Amazon might be the best bet –– the company controls more than half of the e-book market. Authors also get to keep 70 percent of what they make on Amazon....
Words are hard. Whether you're a published author or just getting started with blogging, it's not always easy to string words together in a way that makes sense, sounds good, and makes the reader feel something. But every marketer should be able to write -- and, more importantly, every marketer can write. It's just a matter of finding the writing environment that works best for you, expanding your vocabulary, asking for feedback (and listening to it), and practicing. Luckily, there are a slew of great tools you can use to help improve your writing. Check out the list below, and feel free to add the most helpful ones you use in the comment section....
In 1977, according to the AP style guide I still occasionally refer to, using the acronym “TV” as a noun when writing about television was not advised.
“Acceptable as an adjective or in such constructions as cable TV [italics theirs]. But do not normally use as a noun unless part of a quotation,” counsels the item on “TV” in the 1977 edition of the AP Stylebook -- formerly titled “The Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual.”
Today we use “TV” and “television” more or less interchangeably as nouns, although the former is probably used more now than the latter. One thing the 1977 Stylebook reveals, however, is that “media” -- whether electronic or otherwise -- was not nearly the obsession for news organizations that it is today.
Part of the reason was that the world at large was not nearly as obsessed with media and technology -- and the companies responsible for them -- as we are now. There was so much less of it then too, obviously....
April 18, 1521, Martin Luther faces Emperor Charles the V in the Heylshof Garden to defend the infamous 95 Theses. Few people noticed the quiet banker in the room, simply known as “Jakob the Rich.” Jakob is a common merchant who will become the richest person who’s ever lived. Jakob will go on to accumulate a personal net worth equivalent to 2% of Europe’s GDP at the time. Jakob’s net worth is basically Bill Gates + Warren Buffet + Jeff Bezos combined — then doubled. Who the was Jakob the Rich? Why was he at Martin Luther’s trial? How did he get so damn rich? Well, he was a data-hungry banker looking after his investment. Over the previous 16 years, Jakob had been lending the Catholic Church money — and the Pope had racked up an enormous debt. In order to pay off those debts, the Church launched a campaign for people to pay to have themselves and their deceased family members absolved of all sins....
If you live in America, chances are you've heard (or used) the phrase "Don't put all your eggs in one basket."
Most of us know it means, essentially, that you shouldn't make all your plans based on one possible thing happening. But it's kind of a weird phrase, right? Have you ever stopped to wonder where it originated?
Its use in print has been traced to the novel "Don Quixote" by Miguel de Cervantes in the early 1600s, although it possibly was mistranslated to an inexact English idiom from the original and may have other roots in Italian phrases.
Different cultures around the world all have their own similar sayings — proverbs, if you will — that make sense to those who've grown up speaking the language but sound downright odd to anyone who hasn't.
James Chapman is fascinated by these sayings and how they translate across languages and cultures....
Copywriting is hard. (That’s why everyone says they want to write yet very few actually do.) Creative fear and distraction most often get in the way, which is why it takes inspiration, energy, and discipline to get something good on the page. Luckily, you’re not Thoreau, sequestered in the woods. There are blogs, books, plugins, apps, and a ton of other resources available to help you up your writing game—and we have them all here for you. From style guides to grammar hacks, here are 101 tools to help you be a better writer....
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Sblood you jobbernowls! It’s time to quit scumbering around and expand you swearcabulary.