Picture one person your work will help
Do you sometimes get stuck in the middle of writing something? Writer’s block and challenges with time management are common problems. I found a tip that may help in When: the scientific secrets of perfect timing by Daniel Pink. The book discusses how to act at the right times, and how to overcome challenges at […]
4 tips for trimming extra words
Bryan Garner offers four tips for trimming extra words in his chapter “Waste no Words” in his HBR Guide to Better Business Writing. They include, when possible: Deleting prepositions Replacing nouns ending with -ion with verbs Replacing forms of the verb “to be” with stronger verbs, as I discuss in The “Be” test for writers […]
No brevity without substance, please
“Brevity without substance is useless.” This statement in Bryan Garner’s HBR Guide to Better Business Writing spoke to me. If you regularly read this blog, you know I’m a big fan of writing concisely, and observing the rule of 42-14-2. However, sometimes a longer sentence is easier to understand than a shorter sentence. And, a […]
Writing to understand
I agree with Japanese novelist Haruki Marukami who says, I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them. Writing things down forces me to clarify what I think. It forces me to learn as I fill in the missing links between different parts of what I’m saying. This learning process is one […]
