Quit underlining headings in your documents!

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Underlining headings in your written documents used to be common. That’s no longer true, especially because underlined text now leads people to expect hyperlinks.

Underlining headings dates back to the days of typewriters. As Practical Typography says,

Underlining is another dreary typewriter habit. Typewriters had no bold or italic styling. So the only way to emphasize text was to back up the carriage and type underscores be­neath the text. It was a workaround for shortcomings in typewriter technology.

Please stop underlining headings, unless you want to prove that you’re old-fashioned.

Old vs. new style of headings

Sample 1

This is what headings and text sometimes looked like in the old days:

Heading

This is the text under the heading.

Sample 2

Here’s an easy, more modern style of heading:

Heading

This is the text under the heading.

When you compare Sample 1 with Sample 2, which makes it easier for you to focus on the heading? It’s Sample 2.

That ease is important in encouraging readers to skim—rather than abandon—your content. That’s important now that everyone’s attention spans have shortened. If they continue skimming, perhaps they’ll find a heading that tempts them to dig into the details of what you’ve written.

Use heading styles built into your software

If you only have one level of headings in your document, it’s easy to make them all bold. But what if you have different levels of headings? You’re most likely to need multiple levels in a long document like a white paper.

Different heading styles are built into many types of software.

For example, here is one style you can find in Microsoft Word’s ribbon:
Style ribbon in Microsoft Word

 

 

Here’s what these styles might look like in a document:

Word heading style sample

 

You can learn more about using styles in Microsoft Word on Microsoft’s help page, starting with “Show or hide the ribbon in Office.” (Depending on your version of Word, your steps to find and apply headings may differ.)

Styles can get pretty fancy, but I tend to stick with the basics. I prefer to devote more time to writing than design.

Microsoft Office isn’t the only software with different styles for headings. You’ll also find them in WordPress. Here’s an explanation of headings in WordPress.

Invest Comm Webinar

 

MAY NEWSLETTER: AI prompts for content marketing

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AI prompts for content marketers

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in content marketing is increasing. I’m not a big fan of AI, but I realize that it can be useful.

If you’d like to experiment with AI in your content marketing, check out Andy Crestodina’s “The Prompt Library Starter Kit,” recommended by my fabulous copywriter friend Robyn Bradley.

Crestodina covers topics such as “personal generation using AI,” “audience research,” “content marketing mission statement and CTA,” and much more.

Check it out!

When the going gets tough

A friend shared the following “Four things to tell yourself when the going gets tough”:

  • This has happened before
  • Failure is the path to success
  • This won’t matter nearly as much in five years
  • I live according to my values

She said it came from Inc. magazine, but I can’t find the original article. I did, however, find a related article: “5 Ways to Stay Positive When the Going Gets Tough.”

Do you know when your article is finished?

The following line by novelist Hilary Mantel caught my eye because it speaks to the difficulty of knowing when you should stop rewriting or editing your work: “…unfortunately, for writers, there’s no intellectual equivalent of the sexual climax; they don’t always know when they’ve finished.”

The line appears in Mantel’s A Memoir of My Former Self: A Life in Writing, a collection of essays. Some of her essays were quite interesting, but I skipped over many others.

Microsoft Word shortcuts

I found this list of Microsoft Word shortcuts on LinkedIn. It covers shortcuts for text and formatting, navigation and editing, and document management, plus some shortcuts it deems “lawyer-specific” that might still benefit the rest of us.

So at the start of a sentence

When you start a sentence with “so,” must you follow it with a comma? There are two schools of thought, as I explain in this post.

What the heck’s a “manicule”?

If you know or care about the answer to my questions about the manicule, read “The Secret History of the Manicule, the Little Hand that’s Everywhere.” I must thank Wendy Cook, another fabulous friend, for this link.

What my clients say about me

“Fast, effective, insightful. I can think of no better resource for superior financial writing.”

“Susan has an exceptional ability to tailor investment communications to the sophistication level of any audience. She has an uncanny ability to make very complex investment and/or economic topics accessible and understandable to anyone.”

“Susan’s particularly good at working through highly technical material very quickly. That’s very important in this business. A lot of people are good writers, but they have an extensive learning curve for something they’re unfamiliar with. Susan was able to jump very quickly into technical material.”

Read more testimonials!

Improve your investment commentary

Attract more clients, prospects, and referral sources by improving your investment commentary with 44 pages of the best tips from the InvestmentWriting.com blog.

Tips include how to organize your thoughts, edit for the “big picture,” edit line by line, and get more mileage out of your commentary.

Available in PDF format for only $9.99. Email me to buy it now!

Boost your blogging now!

Financial Blogging: How to Write Powerful Posts That Attract Clients is available for purchase as a PDF ($39) or a paperback ($49, affiliate link).

 

APRIL NEWSLETTER: Help for identifying best practices

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Everyone wants to use best practices. But how do you identify the best practices for your situation?

Tom Brakke of The Investment Ecosystem blog shares a simple exercise that you can do. In “Common Practices, Best Practices, and Next Practices,” he suggests that you ask, “How would you describe what you do in comparison to the standards that are prevalent across the industry in like positions and situations?”

You can organize your responses into three columns:

  • Common practices
  • Best practices
  • Next practices

I like the simplicity of the three columns.

I also like the idea of striving for “next practices.” Brakke says,

Innovative organizations are constantly working to improve their methods. Identifying next practices and working toward them (while knowing that some won’t come to fruition) is part of their DNA.

Brakke publishes free e-newsletters so you can receive his ideas in your inbox.

Mice or mouses?

What do you call more than one computer mouse? Read “Computer mice or mouses? It’s a case of irregular plurals” for some expert opinions.

For my part, I’ll continue to try to avoid referring to the plural of this device.

Protect your personal data from Meta

Want to limit the ability of Meta, Facebook’s parent company, to monetize your data? The Electronic Frontier Foundation offers practical advice in “Mad at Meta? Don’t Let Them Collect and Monetize Your Personal Data.”

Egg substitutes for baking

If you’re interested in working around high egg prices, check out “No eggs? Here’s your guide for substituting” on the King Arthur Baking website. I’ve had good luck using “flax eggs” in pancakes and banana bread.

My best tip for improving your investment commentary

If you’re frustrated by your lack of results from publishing your investment commentary, read “My best tip for improving your investment commentary.”

What my clients say about me

“Fast, effective, insightful. I can think of no better resource for superior financial writing.”

“Susan has an exceptional ability to tailor investment communications to the sophistication level of any audience. She has an uncanny ability to make very complex investment and/or economic topics accessible and understandable to anyone.”

“Susan’s particularly good at working through highly technical material very quickly. That’s very important in this business. A lot of people are good writers, but they have an extensive learning curve for something they’re unfamiliar with. Susan was able to jump very quickly into technical material.”

Read more testimonials!

Improve your investment commentary

Attract more clients, prospects, and referral sources by improving your investment commentary with 44 pages of the best tips from the InvestmentWriting.com blog.

Tips include how to organize your thoughts, edit for the “big picture,” edit line by line, and get more mileage out of your commentary.

Available in PDF format for only $9.99. Email me to buy it now!

Boost your blogging now!

Financial Blogging: How to Write Powerful Posts That Attract Clients is available for purchase as a PDF ($39) or a paperback ($49, affiliate link).

 

Style guidelines for financial services firms

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Style guidelines for financial services firms can help you to make your written communications more consistent and thus easier to read.

 

Why create style guidelines for your financial services firm?

writing guidelinesIt can be distracting if writing styles are inconsistent within and across documents published by your firm. For example, is it “counterparty” in the first paragraph and “counter party” in paragraphs two and three? Do headings randomly mix sentence case and title case? Is your company name abbreviated in different ways?

It’s a good idea to pick a major style guide, such as the AP Stylebook, to use as your reference for common questions. However, style guides often don’t cover challenges specific to financial services firms. They certainly don’t tackle company-specific branding issues.

Creating style guidelines tailored to your company can help your writers and editors fill in the blanks left by the major style guides.

How I create style guidelines for my clients

For my editing clients, I create style guidelines for my own reference. They help me to be consistent. Also, I share the guidelines with my proofreader, when I use one.

As issues arise, I record the preferred style in an Excel spreadsheet. In the first column, I record the word, phrase, or other issue. In another column, I record the preferred practice.

Here’s an excerpt from the Capitalization section of one style sheet.

Capitalization style guidelines sample

 

 

 

 

 

potential topics to cover in your financial firm's style guidelines infographic

Section headings that I’ve used include the following:

  • Abbreviations/acronyms—for example, BRL→Brazilian real, 50 bps→50 basis points (0.50%)
  • Capitalization
  • Company names—identify your source for the preferred spelling of company names
  • Credentials—for example, use the ® mark with the CFP designation
  • Headings—for example, use sentence case and bold
  • Numbers—for example, SPELL OUT numbers 1 to 9, even in five-year Treasury
  • Punctuation/grammar/style—for example, use serial comma; DO hyphenate first-quarter and worst-performing WHEN used as ADJECTIVE; use a consistent number of decimal places
  • Spelling—for example, health care, NOT healthcare
  • Word replacements—for example, cap rate→capitalization rate

How long should your style guidelines be?

My client style sheets would typically fit on one page, if printed out.

I like the philosophy of Intelligent Editing, which recommends that your style sheet run no longer than four pages. The firm says in “Writing a Style Guide: What You Need to Know“:

…bear in mind that the goal is just to focus on points of style where there is no right answer but where one usage is preferred by the organization. A style guide is not the place to teach your colleagues things that they should already know.

The longer your style sheet, the harder it will be for you and your colleagues to apply it consistently. It’s harder for users to keep all of the issues in their heads, even if they scan the style sheet repeatedly.

If you already have style guidelines

If you already have style guidelines, please share them with writers and editors whom you hire, in addition to your company’s employees.

You may struggle with getting your financial firm’s writers to follow them. I’ve addressed your challenge in “Reader question: How to get writers to follow style guidelines?”

Writer image courtesy of adamr/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

 

Note: This post was updated on March 10, 2025. It was originally published in 2016.

MARCH NEWSLETTER: Curly versus straight

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What kind of quotation marks do you use in your writing?

Did you know that there are two kinds of quotation marks—straight and curly? Straight quotation marks don’t curve, whereas curly quotes seem to wriggle on the page (see image below). The actual appearance of the marks will vary depending on the font you use.

image with the words straight in straight quotes and curly in curly quotesStraight quotes are a hangover from the days of typewriters when you would have needed separate keys to show the curly quotation marks that appear on the left versus those that appear on the right. Today, software can automatically supply the appropriate quotation marks. In fact, curly quotes are also known as “smart quotes” because they’re smart enough to lean in the appropriate direction.

Here’s what one blog says about straight versus curly in “Curly quotes and straight quotes: a quick guide.”

Straight quotes come from typewriter habits. Typewriter character sets were limited by mechanics, so they were replaced with straight quotes. That’s not an issue anymore with word processors and modern typing. Straight quotes are no longer a necessity.

Curly quotes are typically preferred by writers today because they’re more legible and flow better with the content. Straight quotes rarely have a place in any type of modern writing or typography, the technique, and art of arranging type. Designers and people who work with typography tend to stay away from straight quotes as a rule of thumb.

I favor curly quotes because they’re more modern and are generally preferred by my clients. If your company prefers straight quotes, that’s OK, but please use that style consistently. It’s jarring for some readers if you switch between styles.

There are some rare cases in which straight quotes might be preferred. “The ‘Smart Quote’ Struggle” discusses how the use of curly quotes is not supported for searches in some scholarly literature databases. (Thanks, Robyn Bradley, for this link!) This is also true, according to my techie husband, when technical query text is pasted from word processors directly into most database management software that uses some form of structured querying language (SQL).

To turn curly quotes on or off in Microsoft Word or PowerPoint, read “Smart quotes in Word and PowerPoint.”

Historic versus historical

Do you know when to use “historic” instead of “historical” in your financial writing?

For example, if you’re talking about the market setting new highs, you might refer to “historic highs.” That’s because “Historic is most commonly used for something famous or important in history,” as explained in “What’s the difference between ‘historic’ and ‘historical’?” on the Merriam-Webster website.

Treasuries or Treasurys?

How do you write the plural of “Treasury”? Read my take on the topic in “Treasurys vs. Treasuries — Which is the right spelling?”

Learn more about hospice care and the end of life

I wish I had known more about hospice care and the process of dying before a family member started it some years ago. Nothing to Fear: Demystifying Death to Live More Fully is a practical, down-to-earth book written by hospice nurse Julie McFadden. McFadden has a YouTube channel where you can get a taste of her approach to this topic.

On this topic, a friend also recommends The Good Death: A Guide for Supporting Your Loved One through the End of Life by nurse Suzanne B. O’Brien. The book is scheduled for release on March 18, 2025.

Flemish art at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem

I’m a big fan of the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts.

The museum is currently hosting a traveling exhibition of Flemish art, “Saints, Sinners, Lovers, and Fools: 300 Years of Flemish Masterworks.” The show runs through May 4, 2025.

 

carving or statue of a woman reading a book    pink and white flowers on a black background surrounded by a intricately carved frame    image of a male painter painting in a black frame

What my clients say about me

“Fast, effective, insightful. I can think of no better resource for superior financial writing.”

“Susan has an exceptional ability to tailor investment communications to the sophistication level of any audience. She has an uncanny ability to make very complex investment and/or economic topics accessible and understandable to anyone.”

“Susan’s particularly good at working through highly technical material very quickly. That’s very important in this business. A lot of people are good writers, but they have an extensive learning curve for something they’re unfamiliar with. Susan was able to jump very quickly into technical material.”

Read more testimonials!

Improve your investment commentary

Attract more clients, prospects, and referral sources by improving your investment commentary with 44 pages of the best tips from the InvestmentWriting.com blog.

Tips include how to organize your thoughts, edit for the “big picture,” edit line by line, and get more mileage out of your commentary.

Available in PDF format for only $9.99. Email me to buy it now!

Boost your blogging now!

Financial Blogging: How to Write Powerful Posts That Attract Clients is available for purchase as a PDF ($39) or a paperback ($49, affiliate link).

 

Hyphens matter

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Hyphen, shmyphen, who cares whether you use hyphens? A Facebook ad drove home the lesson that hyphens’ role as connectors is important.

“Imagine life pain free,” said the ad. This hyphenless sentence could be interpreted as “Imagine getting ‘life pain’ at no cost.” No, thanks, I’ll pass on that offer.

The advertiser should have written, “Imagine life pain-free.” This makes it clear that “pain” relates to “free,” not life. It’s important to use hyphens if their absence changes your meaning or makes it unclear. This is true even though compound modifiers usually aren’t hyphenated when they follow a noun.

In the financial world, the following phrases typically use hyphens:

  • closed-end fund
  • risk-adjusted returns
  • sub-advised funds (although there’s a trend to delete the hyphen to use “subadvised”)
  • target-date funds
  • time-weighted rate of return
  • year-to-date period

For more on hyphens, check out these resources:

 

Note: This post was updated on Feb. 18, 2025. It was originally published in December 2013.

FEB. NEWSLETTER: Format your numbers correctly

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Formatting ordinal numbers

It drives me crazy to see formatting like “10th” in people’s writing. I believe it happens because Microsoft wrongly makes superscript its default for ordinal numbers. But that’s wrong, at least according to Associated Press style, which shows the “th” suffix in regular font. I couldn’t find any well-known style guide that suggests using superscript with ordinal numbers. The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) generally spells out ordinal numbers, although it makes exceptions for informal communications. However, CMOS never superscripts ordinal suffixes.

You can “Turn off superscripting of ordinal numbers in Word.” Doing this removed a big source of irritation from my life.

On a related topic, see my post on “How to write calendar dates in your financial communications.”

Is it OK to send cold emails?

A cold email is “an unsolicited e-mail that is sent to a receiver without prior contact,” as defined by Wikipedia.

Yes, it’s OK to send a cold email, but you should act within the bounds of laws governing email communications in the region you’re targeting. For more information, see “Is Cold Email Legal? Best Practices for Compliance” from Hunter.io, a website that helps people find and verify email addresses.

Could your older clients benefit from mentoring younger people?

Individuals who are age 60 or older might enjoy providing online intergenerational mentoring as facilitated by Eldera. According to the website, opportunities are open to individuals who:

  • Have six (or more!) decades of life experience
  • Have an internet connected device that can access Zoom
  • Can pass a background check
  • Possess kindness, generosity, and curiosity

I learned about this service in The Boston Globe’s “How do you define old? A push to mine wisdom, ease isolation among young and old.”

Bilingual language podcasts

I’ve been studying Spanish and reviewing Japanese using Duolingo since before the pandemic hit. But I only recently started listening to Duolingo’s Spanish-English podcasts, which tell interesting stories in a combination of intermediate Spanish with enough English to get me through the bits I don’t understand. The stories would interest me even if they were only in English. For example, there’s a story about how the family of one of Duolingo’s founders dealt with a relative getting kidnapped for ransom.

Duolingo offers bilingual podcasts for English-speaking students of Spanish and French and for Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking students of English. I wish Duolingo would add a bilingual Japanese podcast.

Recycle office equipment and supplies

Staples recycles a lot of office supplies and equipment, as well as school supplies. Probably more than you think. For example, it recently added single-use batteries to the list of items it recycles. It will recycle monitors for a fee. I was surprised to learn Staples recycles earbuds, pencils, and computer mice.

Check it out!

Lemon crinkle cookies

I discovered this recipe for lemon crinkle cookies when I needed to prepare for a cookie swap. The recipe is from King Arthur Flour, which is a reliable source of recipes for baked goods.

When I needed to adapt the recipe to yield 24 cookies instead of 22 to meet the cookie swap requirements, I found a solution by calling the website’s Baker’s Hotline.

This recipe made me the winner of the cookie swap competition.

What my clients say about me

“Fast, effective, insightful. I can think of no better resource for superior financial writing.”

“Susan has an exceptional ability to tailor investment communications to the sophistication level of any audience. She has an uncanny ability to make very complex investment and/or economic topics accessible and understandable to anyone.”

“Susan’s particularly good at working through highly technical material very quickly. That’s very important in this business. A lot of people are good writers, but they have an extensive learning curve for something they’re unfamiliar with. Susan was able to jump very quickly into technical material.”

Read more testimonials!

Improve your investment commentary

Attract more clients, prospects, and referral sources by improving your investment commentary with 44 pages of the best tips from the InvestmentWriting.com blog.

Tips include how to organize your thoughts, edit for the “big picture,” edit line by line, and get more mileage out of your commentary.

Available in PDF format for only $9.99. Email me to buy it now!

Boost your blogging now!

Financial Blogging: How to Write Powerful Posts That Attract Clients is available for purchase as a PDF ($39) or a paperback ($49, affiliate link).

 

JAN. NEWSLETTER: Verbs make your writing vivid

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I was struck by this advice in Alexander Chee’s How to Write an Autobiographical Novel:

You want vivid writing. How do we get vivid writing? Verbs, first. Precise verbs. All of the action on the page, everything that happens, happens in the verbs.

According to Chee, writer Annie Dillard told her students to “increase the average number of verbs per page.” Strong verbs allow you to avoid using adverbs to fill in what your verbs fail to convey, as Chee says later in the same chapter of his book.

I discovered an interesting exercise from Dillard in Chee’s book. Dillard told her students to print the draft of an essay. Next, follow these steps, as described by Chee:

… cut out the best sentences … and tape them on a blank page. And when you have that, write in around them. … Fill in what’s missing and make it reach for the best of what you’ve written so far.

I might try that exercise with a personal essay with which I’m struggling.

Speaking of essays, here’s an essay I wrote long ago: “A Pink Kimono From a Japanese Mother.”

Punctuation with quotation marks

I frequently find that writers misplace quotation marks around their other punctuation, as I discussed in “Bloggers’ top two punctuation mistakes.”

If you’re puzzled by the rules of when to punctuate inside or outside quotation marks, review this nice summary about “Punctuation with Quotation Marks” on the website of the library of Loyola Marymount University.

Fact versus interpretation in your blog posts

Fact or interpretation, which should you place first in your article, commentary, or blog post? For my take on this, read “Financial writer’s clinic: fact vs. interpretation.”

Click to email me if you’d like to buy one of my digital products

If you’d like to buy one of my digital products—such as the PDF versions of Financial Blogging or Investment Commentary—click on the “Buy” button to email me so I can send you a PayPal invoice. Thank you for your interest in my products!

Research denials of health care claims

Difficulties with health care claims have been in the news lately.

If you’d like to find out why a claim was denied, try using this Claim File Request from ProPublica. I haven’t used it myself, but ProPublica is a respected investigative journalism organization.

Happy 2025!

I hope that 2025 is a healthy, happy, and prosperous year for you.

What my clients say about me

“Fast, effective, insightful. I can think of no better resource for superior financial writing.”

“Susan has an exceptional ability to tailor investment communications to the sophistication level of any audience. She has an uncanny ability to make very complex investment and/or economic topics accessible and understandable to anyone.”

“Susan’s particularly good at working through highly technical material very quickly. That’s very important in this business. A lot of people are good writers, but they have an extensive learning curve for something they’re unfamiliar with. Susan was able to jump very quickly into technical material.”

Read more testimonials!

Improve your investment commentary

Attract more clients, prospects, and referral sources by improving your investment commentary with 44 pages of the best tips from the InvestmentWriting.com blog.

Tips include how to organize your thoughts, edit for the “big picture,” edit line by line, and get more mileage out of your commentary.

Available in PDF format for only $9.99. Email me to buy it now!

Boost your blogging now!

Financial Blogging: How to Write Powerful Posts That Attract Clients is available for purchase as a PDF ($39) or a paperback ($49, affiliate link).

 

Treasurys vs. Treasuries — Which is the right spelling?

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What’s the right way to spell the plural of Treasury, as in U.S. Treasury bond?

Should it be “Treasurys,” following the rule that the members of the Murphy family become Murphys? Or should it follow the normal rules of creating plurals for words that end in the letter y?

I panicked when I saw “Treasurys” in The Wall Street Journal. Eek! Have I been spelling the word wrong for 20-odd years?

However, I quickly discovered that opinions are split. When I Googled the terms, there were 2.2 million results for Treasuries vs. only 1.5 million for Treasurys. 

The evidence for Treasuries
Here’s the rule that would typically apply. “…if a word ends in a -y that isn’t preceded by a vowel, the plural is formed by omitting the -y and substituting -ies…,” according to Garner’s Modern American Usage. Garner makes an exception for proper names ending in y. He agrees that Murphy becomes Murphys.

Does Treasury qualify as a proper name? Proper names are usually personal names–such as Murphy–or geographic names–such as Washington, D.C. Following this reasoning, Treasuries makes sense.

My friend, financial editor Harriett Magee, found that sources including the Barron’s Dictionary of Finance and Investment Terms agreed with Treasuries. Plus, her spell-checker flagged Treasurys as a mistake. 

If you prefer Treasurys…
You’ve got some high-powered company if you stick with Treasurys. When The Wall Street Journal spells it that way, that legitimizes it in my eyes.

If you can’t bear not knowing what’s 100% correct, then use the workaround that Harriett Magee suggests. Refer to Treasury bonds, Treasury notes, and so on. It’s bit wordy, but correct. 

Follow this advice, no matter what you decide
It’s important to use your words consistently in your corporate communications. Pick one spelling and stick with it. 

Consider creating a corporate style guide that lists preferred spellings. It’s a lot easier to have an authoritative source for your company than to try to keep the rules in your head.

My thanks go to David Glen for raising this question when he was a senior vice president at Boston Private Bank.

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

 

Note: updated on Nov. 15, 2024. This post was originally published in 2010.

DEC. NEWSLETTER: Banish “learnings” and take advantage of sale on my PDF e-books

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Down with “learnings”!

I’m not a fan of pedantic expressions like “learnings,” so I was thrilled to read “An insightful alternative to the dreadful jargon ‘learnings’ ” by Josh Bernoff.

Bernoff says, “…a large proportion of your audience, when reading about ‘learnings,’ will tune out or resist. And that doesn’t accomplish your goal of communicating without generating an emotional backlash.” That’s so true!

He suggests “insights” as a good substitute for “learnings.” For example, instead of saying, “Please write up your learnings from the completion of the project in a memo,” he suggests saying, “Please write up your insights from the completion of the project in a memo.” I like it.

Another word that I hate is “mitigate,” as I’ve discussed in “BNY Mellon: I liked your ‘truth ad’ until you used that word” and “Can you make a case for ‘mitigate’?”

If you’re struggling to convince someone about the value of plain language, read “Seven Ways to Talk Your Financial Execs Out of Jargon and Bad Writing,” my guest post that originally appeared on the MarketingProfs blog.

December sale on PDF e-books that will make you a better writer

Keep my practical writing tips handy with my two PDF e-books.

My 45-page Investment Commentary e-book gives you commentary-focused tips for organizing your thoughts, editing for the “big picture,” editing line by line, and getting more mileage out of your commentary.

One financial advisor writes, “Susan’s Investment Commentary book is a must-read. Anyone who writes investment commentary and financial reports should read—and reread this book—in order to avoid the dry, boring reports we see all too often.”

Regularly $9.99, the PDF is $4.99 during December 2024.

 

My 107-page book, Financial Blogging: How to Write Powerful Posts That Attract Clients, takes you step-by-step through a powerful system for writing blog posts—or just about any communication you’d share with clients or prospects.

Financial planning expert Michael Kitces says, “A great read for advisors who want to blog better—or learn how to start!”

Blogger Mike Lipper says, “I wish I had read Susan’s Financial Blogging before I produced 300 weekly posts.”

Regularly $39, the PDF is only $27 during December 2024.

 

Winter soup recipe

My favorite new recipe is “Healing Curry Butternut Squash Lentil Soup (with a slow cooker option!)” I didn’t have the coconut milk called for in the recipe, but the soup still turned out great.

You can use any squash, pumpkin, or sweet potatoes in this recipe. I used tetsukabuto squash instead of butternut squash.

Happy holidays!

I hope you and all of the people in your circle enjoy a lovely holiday season. I’ll see you in 2025.

What my clients say about me

“Fast, effective, insightful. I can think of no better resource for superior financial writing.”

“Susan has an exceptional ability to tailor investment communications to the sophistication level of any audience. She has an uncanny ability to make very complex investment and/or economic topics accessible and understandable to anyone.”

“Susan’s particularly good at working through highly technical material very quickly. That’s very important in this business. A lot of people are good writers, but they have an extensive learning curve for something they’re unfamiliar with. Susan was able to jump very quickly into technical material.”

Read more testimonials!

Improve your investment commentary

Attract more clients, prospects, and referral sources by improving your investment commentary with 44 pages of the best tips from the InvestmentWriting.com blog.

Tips include how to organize your thoughts, edit for the “big picture,” edit line by line, and get more mileage out of your commentary.

Available in PDF format for only $9.99. Email me to buy it now!

Boost your blogging now!

Financial Blogging: How to Write Powerful Posts That Attract Clients is available for purchase as a PDF ($39) or a paperback ($49, affiliate link).

Hire Susan to speak

Could members of your organization benefit from learning to write better? Hire Susan to present on “How to Write Investment Commentary People Will Read,” “Writing Effective Emails,” or a topic customized for your company.