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How do you decide what your writing or blogging niches are? I’ve recently been thinking a lot about this question. Obviously writing is one of my niches (hence this blog), and I also have a list of niches on my main website http://www.sandramadeira.com/ which includes topics such as parenting, meditation and herbal teas (quite a mixed bag). These are … Continue reading
I’m going to be honest here – I wrote down the words brocolli and broccoli yesterday and decided that the former was correct. Later in the same day, my six year old daughter asked why I had written both spellings down and quite confidently told me that it has to ‘c’s and one ‘l’. I double checked the dictionary and … Continue reading
Whenever I type this word, I struggle to remember if it is spelt instalment or installment. Today, I got caught out by someone reviewing one of my other blogs (which inspired me to write today’s blog), so as usual I went looking for explanations. Wiki Answers explains that installment and instalment both mean the same, but installment (with a … Continue reading
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
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
My Writing Notebook 