In my business, my writing must be accurate, brief, clear, minimalist.
Creativity must wait another dawn.
So, once in a while, I enjoy finding a blog like The Darth Side: Memoirs of a Monster
The Darth Side: Memoirs of a Monster
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Category Archives: Writing
Quick Guide to Writing for the Web
Ivan Walsh of klariti.com spells out the basic three components of good online writing:
- short sentences
- tightly-edited paragraphs
- meaningful headings
in his introductory article reprinted in webdevtips.com.
I Blog, Therefore I Am
Blog is the Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year for 2004, based on online lookups.
In the one year since my first blog entry in January 2003, I’ve gained several observations about blogging:
- The fear of writing must not grip you.
- Procrastination must not delay you.
- The potential that your conclusion may stimulate controversy must not hinder you.
- The anticipation of opposition must not quiet you.
If you follow a process, writing all comes together quickly. Here’s just one process I follow.
10 lessons in style
If you care at all that your readers get to it, get it, and get on with it, then post this list on your cubicle wall.
It's one of the best "list of ten" I've seen.
Now, write like you mean it.
Communication or cosmetology?
Take a simple design project.
Ask these questions:
What is most important: the message or the look&feel?
What does your work boil down to: communications or cosmetology?
Binell and Bielenberg’s lengthy but insightful article “How to Build a Gre nade ” in Communication Arts paints a compelling argument that some designers get lost in the cosmetology and forget the communications.
The order is inward to outward: bones, guts, flesh, clothes.
Content first.
Always.
A 2-second Grab
2 seconds is all you ge*
.
.
.
In the online message world, your attention is gained or lost in the first two seconds.
Either you stay to read more or you’re gone.
According to a Nielsen Norman report,
“people are throwing away most of your information, and you can’t fight the trend. Craft your email newsletters to sum up your message in [what they call ‘microcontent’:] subject lines, opening lines and headings…”
Apply this to your e-mail messages, your e-zines, your online newsletters, your blog, your ads.
Thanks for staying with me beyond the first two se
.
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What’s a Blog?
You ask: “why should I spend time reading a blog named ‘GeeWhiz?'”
I answer:
I am a student of the written word.
My profession: technical communicator. I find out what information my audience needs, then help them find it and turn it into knowledge, so they may use that knowledge to unleash their wisdom.
If this is the information age, we have surely polluted it so with spam, fallacies, drivel, and trivia.
In frustration, we seek out people like me that help cut through the smog.
I aim for accuracy, brevity, and clarity, the abc’s of good communication.
"geeWHIZ" 