Just like food, your writing needs spice. Keep these tips in your cupboard to take your writing from bland to scrumptious.
About a year ago, I got interested in cooking. For most of my adult life, I’d been making things like spaghetti with sauce from a jar, macaroni and cheese complete with powdered “cheese,” and the occasional boxed meal (just add ground beef!). Sometimes, I went a little wild and threw some canned tuna into the mac and cheese, or added real frozen broccoli to the boxed meal.
Writers around the world publish millions of articles to the Internet every day. Does yours stand out? If you’re a content creator, making a few simple changes will help you become the kind of writer whose posts are readable, relatable, and shareable. Here are five things that will make you better at content writing and help your posts shine like a beacon in a sea of words.
We’ve come a long way, writers. Once, improving our writing skills meant writing (and later typing) our drafts, doing our best to revise and proofread, and then subjecting them to an editor’s red pen. Today, we have tools to not only help us create content, but also to organize, proofread, and polish it.
These apps and online tools will help any writer perfect her craft.
Microsoft Word, Google Docs, and other word processors are fantastic tools.
You have to write a paper, or copyedit one, and you have a heap of style manuals in front of you. Which one do you use? Are they consistent? Is there a difference between them? Is it all arbitrary?
As you work on your text, it stares up at you, glaring with its colons, commas, and parenthetical citations. Where do they go? Are the lines single or double-spaced? How wide are the margins supposed to be?
It’s no secret that some of the finest pieces of literature ever written were authored by members of the LGBT community. From the poetry of Walt Whitman to the landmark plays of Tony Kushner, it’s impossible to overstate the impact LGBT authors have had in American literature. In honor of Pride Month, here are five of the most important and influential LGBT writers of all time.
Oscar Wilde
Writing is a creative and magical process. There’s no telling when inspiration will strike—or what unique conditions will help us access our creativity.
Over the centuries, writers have discovered what worked best for them—no matter how unusual. Agatha Christie penned her murder mysteries in the bathtub while eating apples and drinking tea. Gertrude Stein was known for writing on the go, sitting in her Model T with a pencil and notepad while her wife drove her around running errands.
Breaking news! Read all about it—The Associated Press, one of the most widely followed authorities on written style, has lowercased the word “internet” in their 2016 style guide.
Starting today, AP uses lowercase internet and web in all instances. #APStyleChat
The decision has sparked much debate in the editorial and technology industries and beyond, but this isn’t the first time that an AP Stylebook change has caused some ripples . . .
There are four elements of the zodiac—air, fire, water, and earth. The zodiac signs within each element share characteristics. Take this fun quiz to find out which zodiac element your writing style is like and see if it matches your real zodiac sign!
Did we get it right? Share your thoughts in the comments.
Words influence our thoughts, our decisions, and our actions. They have a palpable effect on our lives. You can accomplish anything by saying the right word to the right person at the right time. That’s the power of words. (And of good timing, but mostly of words.) No one is more acutely aware of this than copywriters—people who use words to persuade other people to do something, like buying a service or a product.
