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I spend a lot of time on the computer both in my main job as a Project Manager and in my new freelance writing career. This can cause all sorts of posture problems especially in the neck and back. Today I decided to spend a bit of time writing the old fashioned way – using pen and paper – and … Continue reading
As part of my plan to grow as a writer, I recently signed up to Technorati which is a blogging platform and search engine that publishes content to millions of people every month. Topics include entertainment, sport, latest news, parenting and many more. I received the news this week that they have accepted me as a writer and today I … Continue reading
Whilst listening to William Zinsser’s non-fiction audio book today called On Writing Well, I heard the following: “Trust the information that you’ve gathered to make its own point. Don’t explain why it’s interesting or unusual or emotional”. Make your writing exciting, but don’t say it’s exciting; let the reader work this out for themselves. Zinsser … Continue reading
It’s a common mistake to write ‘between you and I’; however the correct way of writing this is ‘between you and me’. If we break the phrase down, the word ‘between’ is a preposition and the words ‘you’ and ‘I’ are personal pronouns. When personal pronouns follow prepositions, they should be in the object form and not the subject … Continue reading
I realised today, when I was typing another blog post, that I wasn’t entirely sure if you should put quotation marks around thoughts. In the forums there was a mixture of ‘yes’ and ‘no’ responses and some suggested putting the thought in italics, but nothing I read seemed good enough evidence for today’s blog. I eventually stumbled upon an excellent article called ‘Grammar … Continue reading
To recap on yesterday’s blog in Note 162 – Language = Vocabulary + Grammar rules, grammar is the glue that holds the words together to form a language. Today I am going to analyse a sentence word by word and if this brings up any new information that I haven’t covered before, it will form part of a future post. According … Continue reading
Collins Improve your Writing Skills by Graham King explains that you require two keys for language to work as a communication tool – ‘vocabulary’ and ‘grammar’. Vocabulary (words) will never work on their own without the grammar rules that sticks them together. I won’t quote Graham King’s analogy on this until later down the page. Here are a couple … Continue reading
If you want to make money writing online you need to set up a web presence as a writer. The Daily Writing Tips course that I’m doing at the moment suggests that it’s useful to have either a website or a blog to showcase your work, so that potential clients have somewhere to see who you are and … Continue reading
This point came up in an email conversation today with a friend and I would like to thank him for the inspiration for today’s blog. I had previously told him that you shouldn’t put commas either side of bracketing commas (for more on this, see Note 3: The use of brackets and bracketing commas), or … Continue reading
Yesterday, someone asked me why publishers only put quotation marks at the beginning of each paragraph when the speech goes on for more than one. I’ve been researching this today. According to Bernard C Lamb in his book The Queen’s English, he explains that “in quoted speech lasting more than one paragraph, there is an … Continue reading
My Writing Notebook 