Legal Writing

This week: Cut when you revise, not while you draft

Posted on November 16, 2009
In the early nineteenth century, British author C. C. Colton wrote, "That writer does the most who gives his reader the most knowledge, and takes from him the least time." Most of us know that in theory. We know that...

This week: Speak your reader's language

Posted on November 09, 2009
According to a story I once heard, when the United States and the USSR were planning their first joint space mession, planners thought hard about how the language barrier would be crossed, especially in the perilous situations that could occur...

The "Ultimate Guide"

Posted on November 08, 2009
I'm pleased that Manage Your Writing has been included in "The Ultimate Guide to Better Business Writing," by OnlineDegreePrograms.org. Check it out; it's a great resource.

This week: Beware the dreaded "it is"

Posted on November 03, 2009
In his book Claw Your Way to the Top, humorist Dave Barry writes: State that something is your understanding. This statement should be firm, vaguely disapproving, and virtually impossible to understand. A good standard one is: "It is my understanding...

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This week: Read it out loud

Posted on October 26, 2009
Dan Santow, at Word Wise, a blog for public relations professionals, reminds us of a powerful tool for revising your writing: read it aloud. He concludes: . . . by reading out loud you?ll hear when sentences are meaningless and...

This week: Start with purpose

Posted on October 19, 2009
If a coworker interrupts us while we're writing a letter and asks, "What are you doing?" most of us will answer "Writing a letter." That answer reveals a focus on the written product, not on its purpose. Such product-focused thinking...

This week: Avoid thundershower activity

Posted on October 12, 2009
In his book Claw Your Way to the Top, humorist Dave Barry provides a helpful question and answer: Q. What do they mean on the TV weather forecast when they say we are going to have "thundershower activity"? A. They...

This week: Check out www.B-Kom.Net

Posted on October 05, 2009
I've just launched B-Kom.Net, a business communication network. At B-Kom.Net you can post a question about writing you're doing and (I hope) get an answer. I won't promise to answer all questions myself. I hope you will answer some as...

Feedback needed

Posted on October 02, 2009
McGraw-Hill has asked me to revise The McGraw-Hill 36-Hour Course in Business Writing and Communication for a second edition. I'd like your help. If you've read the book, please send me your feedback: What should I add? What should I...

This week: Don't waste your readers' time

Posted on September 28, 2009
Recently, one of the strongest champions of good writing has been best-selling marketing guru Harry Beckwith. In his book Selling the Invisible he wrote that vague empty pieces of writing "tell your prospects one thing: They say you are willing...

This week: Track your writing

Posted on September 21, 2009
As you may know by now, I argue that writing is the chief value-producing activity in this economy. But that may or may not be true for you. This week, keep an informal log of the writing you do, and...

This week: Read like Your Reader

Posted on September 14, 2009
The key to revising is looking at your work as your reader will. That requires objectivity. Have you ever had the experience of reading a piece of writing that you did as a child or adolescent? In my own experience,...

This week: Make a non-Mind Map

Posted on September 08, 2009
Reader Dwayne Phillips commented on last week's post: Before writing, I do a non-Mind Map. It sort of looks like a Mind Map, but it isn't as neat and organized as the Mind Maps I see people "publish." It helps...

This week: Make a non-outline

Posted on August 31, 2009
The great twentieth-century philosopher Winnie the Pooh defined organizing as "what you do before you do something, so that when you do it, it's not all mixed up." That's good advice for us writers. But too many of us carry...

This week: Eliminate COIK

Posted on August 24, 2009
Some technical writers and editors use an acronym, COIK, that stands for "Clear Only If Known." You'll sometimes find that an editor has scribbled "COIK" beside a passage that will be perfectly clear to any reader who already shares the...

This week: Find facts first

Posted on August 17, 2009
Executive Donald Walton, in his book Are You Communicating, says, The biggest mistake you can make in a report, letter, proposal, or other important message (and it's made all the time) is to write without first getting and correctly analyzing...

This week: Tell a story

Posted on August 10, 2009
Stories have always been important in forming communities and organizations. As The Cluetrain Manifesto reminds us, "Stories play a large part in the success of organizations. With stories, we teach, pass along knowledge of our craft to colleagues, and create...

This week: Pay attention to results

Posted on August 03, 2009
"There is one thing worse than not communicating," said educational theorist Edgar Dale. "It is thinking you have communicated when you have not." This week, pay special attention to the results of your speaking and writing. Notice when you're understood...

This week: Translate into English

Posted on July 20, 2009
Winston Churchill once wrote, in a sentence made up entirely of one-syllable, English-origin words, "Short words are best and the old words when short are best of all." Churchill's great friend and ally, Franklin D. Roosevelt, also was a master...

This week: Read and listen more broadly

Posted on July 13, 2009
This week, make it a point to read or listen to at least one piece of communication from a culture other than your own. Pick up an issue of an unfamiliar magazine. Spend a few minutes with a cable channel...

This week: Don't throw good money after bad

Posted on July 07, 2009
In poker, I'm told, it's important not to think of any of the money in the pot as your money. If you put $10 in the pot before the draw, you just have to forget that fact. If, after the...

This week: Ask WIIFM?

Posted on June 29, 2009
Management consultant Bill Jensen wrote in his book Simplicity, "About 80 percent of your internal communication?meetings, teleconferences, presentations, emails, etc.?consists of Sharing information that does not require action, and/or Communicating something for which there is no discernible consequence if the...

This week: Do the alphabet shift

Posted on June 22, 2009
This week, each time you've drafted something, go back and choose a word you've written beginning with a letter from the first half of the alphabet. Replace it with a more effective word beginning with a letter from the second...

This week: Find the "we"

Posted on June 15, 2009
Peter Drucker, the father of modern management theory, wrote, "There can be no communication if it is conceived as going from the 'I' to the 'Thou.' Communication works only from one member of 'us' to another." This week, as you...

This week: Create Value by Organizing

Posted on June 08, 2009
In my "Welcome" message, in the left column of this blog, I use the term knowledge economy. I prefer that term to the terms information age and information economy because information by itself has no value. To be valuable, information...

This week: Build a prototype

Posted on June 01, 2009
Once, while training at a manufacturing site of a Fortune 100 company, I had trouble persuading my trainees to stop revising and editing while they were drafting. They insisted, "Here, we work hard to get it right the first time."...

(I hope you won't) Mind the Gap

Posted on May 27, 2009
I hope you'll accept my apologies for the gaps in postings the last three weeks.. Those weeks have been occupied by a cross-country move. My wife, Bette, and I are now getting settled in the Albuquerque, New Mexico, region. I...

This week: Respect your customer

Posted on May 11, 2009
Every reader is a customer: an actual external customer, an actual internal customer, or at least a customer of your writing. This week, as you plan and revise each message, think about treating your reader/customer with the same respect you...

This week: Start a "steal" file

Posted on May 04, 2009
This week, watch for a piece of writing that appeals to you, something that does its job especially well. Then, make a copy of it highlight, or note in the margin, what makes it especially effective put it in a...

This week: Go "which-hunting"

Posted on April 20, 2009
This week, as you revise, follow the advice in Strunk and White's Elements of Style, and go "which-hunting." That is, look for places you have used the words which, who, or that to introduce a subordinate clause, and see if...

Top 30 writing blogs

Posted on April 18, 2009
A hearty, if belated, thanks to the Delaware Employment Law Blog for naming Manage Your Writing as one of The Top 30 Blogs on Writing.

This week: Try five W's and an H

Posted on April 13, 2009
This week, before you start drafting each writing job, list six questions on a piece of paper: Who? What? Where? When? Why? How? Briefly answer each question, even if only in a word or two. You may find that after...

This week: Write for just one reader

Posted on April 06, 2009
I always recommend picturing your readers as completely as possible, using the "PACK" acronym: What's their personality? What's their attitude? What circumstances are they in? What's their knowledge of the subject? But what if you're writing to someone you don't...

This week: Put first things first

Posted on March 30, 2009
This week, after you draft each piece of writing, look at the first few words of each sentence. Ask yourself, "Do most of my sentences begin with the main point?" If not, try revising at least some of them to...

This week: Try numbers and bullets

Posted on March 23, 2009
This week, after you draft each piece of writing, try to find places where a numbered or bulleted list could be substituted for an ordinary sentence or paragraph. You may find that your writing becomes much easier to read.

This week: Turn off your monitor

Posted on March 09, 2009
This month marks the third anniversary of the Manage Your Writing blog. Because only a few current subscribers were with us in our first few months, I'm occasionally going to recycle what I think are the best early posts. This...

This week: Persuade

Posted on March 02, 2009

This week: Try "TK"

Posted on February 23, 2009
Cory Doctorow has published a great article, "Writing in the Age of Distraction." Though he's a science-fiction writer, his advice is good for us business writers as well. For example--Researching isn't writing and vice-versa. When you come to a factual...

This week: Say it in one sentence

Posted on February 16, 2009
A VP at 3M, legendary for its innovation, told Tom Peters, "We consider a coherent sentence to be an acceptable first draft for a new-product plan."This week, choose one message that you need to send, and write a one-sentence first...

This week: Add up the cost

Posted on February 09, 2009
At his blog Writing, Clear and Simple, Roy Jacobsen has a great post on figuring the cost of a piece of writing and balancing that cost against the value to your reader. He writes:Assume you?re writing an email message that...

This week: Try managing your writing

Posted on February 02, 2009
This week, take a big-picture look at managing your writing.Start with the very next writing job you have to do. Instead of diving right in and working on the first sentence, stop for a couple of minutes and do some...

This week: Write your way out of "voice mail hell"--and talk your way out of e-mail hell

Posted on January 26, 2009
At the blog Writing Matters, Leslie O'Flahavan shows us a great 61-word e-mail message she received from a client, a message that prevented a week of "voice mail hell."This week, read Leslie's posting. Then during the week, look for ways...

This week: Form a subversive cell

Posted on January 20, 2009
I often advise writers to read, and revise, their drafts as though they were written by someone else. Such objectivity makes for better revision.But what if someone else really did write the draft?This week, think about setting up an underground,...

This week: Follow Iacocca's Rule

Posted on January 12, 2009
One of former Chrysler chairman Lee Iacocca's "Eight Commandments of Good Management" is "Say it in English and keep it short."This week, as you revise, ask yourself two questions: (1) Is this in English? (the English that people speak, not...

This week: Use the same word twice

Posted on January 05, 2009
In school, most of us were taught to avoid repetition in our writing. In some circumstances, that's not bad advice. But we business writers need to learn that repetition can make writing more readable and more effective.One of the best...

This week: Make a resolution

Posted on December 29, 2008
If you're reading this blog, you probably would like to become a more effective business writer in 2009.So be specific. What would you like to improve most about your business writing this year?Jot down your answer, and make it a...

This week: Give yourself a gift

Posted on December 22, 2008
Those of us celebrating important holidays the next couple of weeks are probably thinking about gifts. Gifts are wonderful--to give and to receive--but one kind of thinking about gifts may be getting in the way of becoming a more effective...

This week: Keep your lists parallel

Posted on December 15, 2008
The most frequent grammatical problem I encounter in clients' writing is nonparallel lists. Here's an example: This item is a complete sentence A noun Ends with a verb phrase The best short discussion of parallelism I've seen lately was written...

This week: Censor your e-mail

Posted on December 08, 2008
Roger Matus's blog Death by Email lists "10 things never to put in email," phrases that can have serious legal implications. They include2. Delete this email immediately.6. We're going to do this differently than normal.10. Is this actually legal?This week,...

This week: Ask "so what?"

Posted on December 01, 2008
A post on the Stepcase Lifehack blog recommends the book Economical Writing, by economist Deirdre McCloskey, and lists five of McCloskey's points. My favorite:1. Always ask "so what?"Don???t assume that your topic is important just because you think it is,...

Web resources list updated

Posted on November 26, 2008
I've just finished a long-overdue update of "Web Sites for Managing Your Writing" (about three screens down in the left column of this blog). If you haven't looked at it for a while, you may find something new and useful...

This week: Send fewer envelopes

Posted on November 24, 2008
Suppose that next Monday you arrive at your office and find an envelope from me. Inside is a $10 bill. On Tuesday and Wednesday, the same. By Thursday, you're thinking about me during your commute, looking forward with pleasure to...

This week: Disturb the peace

Posted on November 17, 2008
In her book Leadership and the New Science, Margaret J. Wheatley wrote:For a system to remain alive, for the universe to move onward, information must be continually generated. If there is nothing new, or if the information that exists merely...

This week: Take a 24-hour break

Posted on November 10, 2008
According to famed sports agent Mark H. McCormack, "whenever President Harry Truman wrote an angry letter, he would put it away in his desk for 24 hours to see if he felt the same way the next day."Even with nonangry...

A thank-you to legal blogs

Posted on November 04, 2008
In the United States, it's Election Day, a day to celebrate the rule of law and the law-governed transfer of power. So it's a fitting day for me to thank the legal bloggers (not as opposed to illegal bloggers) who...

This week: Be kind

Posted on November 03, 2008
To be effective, a piece of writing must be organized. It must present its information in the order that best serves the writer's purpose and the reader's needs.A friend of mine, Lee Wood, a writer at Resort Condominiums International, once...

This week: Have a conversation

Posted on October 27, 2008
In his book The Postmodern Organization, William Bergquist argues eloquently for the importance of conversation in an organization. "Goods and machines," he writes, "are parts of the organization, whereas conversations are the essence of the organization...

This week: PACK your bags

Posted on October 20, 2008
A writer and reader have to be alike in some way (even if it's just in knowing the same language), or communication isn't possible. They also have to be different in some way, or communication isn't necessary.This week, as you...

This week: Write a one-minute outline

Posted on October 13, 2008
When many of us were in school, outlining had a lot to do with Roman numerals, Arabic numerals, capital letters, and lower-clase letters. As a result, when someone mentions outlines, we run away fast.Outlining can be much easier than that....

This week: Start tough (sometimes)

Posted on October 06, 2008
Mark McCormack, in What They Still Don't Teach You in Harvard Business School, lists what he calls the eight "toughest" messages to deliver: This is how you do it. I want to sell you. I goofed. I have some bad...

This week: Make it "perfect"

Posted on September 29, 2008
This blog has almost completely ignored what I call "finishing": spelling, punctuation, and other mechanical concerns. In my experience, such concerns aren't much of a problem for most business writers.But from time to time we need to listen to the...

This week: What she said

Posted on September 22, 2008
Joanna Young, of the Confident Writing blog, has written a terrific guest post for Brad Shorr's Word Sell blog. Little did she know she'll be, in effect, doing the same for me.But her list of 10 Ways to Free Your...

This week: Ignore the prattle

Posted on September 15, 2008
Natalie Goldberg advises:It is important to separate the creator and the editor or internal censor. . . . If the editor is absolutely annoying . . . sit down whenever you need to and write what the editor is saying:...

This week: Ask for guesses

Posted on September 08, 2008
In March, I wrote about the use of readability formulas. But there's another tool you can use to measure the readability of a draft--a tool that takes an actual reader into account.This tool is based on the fact that at...

This week: Repair--no, fix--your writing

Posted on September 01, 2008
In his book Selling the Invisible, Harry Beckwith writes:The famous direct-mail writer John Caples once changed one word in an ad--substituting "fix" for "repair"--and increased the response to the ad 20 percent.This week, as you revise, look for opportunities to...

This week: Turn it around

Posted on August 25, 2008
Novelist Philip Roth once wrote, "I turn sentences around. That's my life. I write a sentence and then I turn it around. Then I look at it and I turn it around again."He was probably talking about sentences like this:There...

This week: Start with a bang

Posted on August 18, 2008
Mark McCormack, in his book What They Still Don't Teach You in Harvard Business School, listed what he called the eight "toughest" messages to deliver: (1) This is how you do it. (2) I want to sell you. (3) I...

This week: Go for a Pulitzer

Posted on August 11, 2008
Legendary newsman Joseph Pulitzer wrote, Put it before them briefly so they will read it, clearly so they will appreciate it, picturesquely so they will remember it and, above all, accurately so they will be guided its light.Not a bad...

This week: Look smarter

Posted on August 04, 2008
Cartoonist Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, wrote: If you want to advance in management, you have to convince other people that you're smart. This is accomplished by substituting incomprehensible jargon for common words. For example a manager would never say,...

This week: Use "real" verbs

Posted on July 28, 2008
Look at this sentence: The committee reached an agreement on the project.The verb is reached, but this is not the "real" verb, the action that the committee performed. The committee didn't reach; it agreed. Reached is a filler verb; the...

This week: Sign on for Power Writing

Posted on July 21, 2008
I've just finished reading Daphne Gray-Grant's 8 1/2 Steps to Writing Faster, Better. It's a well-crafted and engaging book, genuinely fun to read. Daphne's method for effective, efficient writing is much like mine. That's not surprising; we've both learned from...

Book signing in Baltimore

Posted on July 20, 2008
I'm in Baltimore, Maryland, this week, conducting writing training for the U.S. Social Security Administration. On Saturday, July 26, from 2 to 4 p.m., I'll be signing my latest book at the Barnes and Noble store in Towson, Maryland. If...

This week: Give yourself assignments

Posted on July 14, 2008
In my writing and training, I often talk about the Internal Writer and the Internal Editor, and the importance of keeping them separate. For most of us, that means shutting off the Internal Editor while we draft, so that our...

This week: Put it in context

Posted on July 07, 2008
Daphne Gray-Grant writes, in the June 10, 2008, issue of her wonderful e-mail newsletter, Power Writing: I recently finished Steven Johnson's fascinating work The Ghost Map, which is the story of London's cholera outbreak of 1854. This non-fiction book is...

This week: Find the lightning

Posted on June 30, 2008
Our job as business writers is not to use words that mean the right thing to us. Our job is the find the best words to convey our meaning to our readers. That's one reason why the revision stage of...

The enemy of good thinking

Posted on June 29, 2008
"Bad terminology is the enemy of good thinking." --Warren Buffet, quoted by Stephen Zades in HR Innovator, Nov/Dec 2003, p. 4

This week: Know your purpose

Posted on June 23, 2008
Thomas W. Cooper has written that Native American chief, actor, and activist Dan George "never spoke without a reason. . . . What was more important than George's words was that such words were born only of purpose. He had...

This week: It's Not Brain Surgery

Posted on June 16, 2008
Novelist Robert Cormer has said, "The beautiful part of writing is that you don't have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon." This week, as you write, remember that a draft is a prototype, not...

This week: Revise

Posted on June 09, 2008
Good writing depends on good revising.To many of us, this truth comes as a surprise. Because we don't think of writing as a process that can be managed like any other business process, we imaging that good writers produce good...

This week: Be a great asker

Posted on June 02, 2008
One key to effective business writing is getting your "stuff" together at the planning stage, deciding what you want to say before you say it. Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus, in their classic book Leaders: The Strategies for Taking Charge,...

This week: Consider your reader's feelings

Posted on May 26, 2008
All of us come to everything we write and read as people, with feelings and attitudes. Too often, as business writers, we forget that, thinking of ourselves and our readers not as people but as profit centers or as boxes...

This week: Pay no attention to your thumb

Posted on May 19, 2008
I heard once about a psych-out technique to use if you're playing tennis against a tough opponent. After watching your opponent warm up, you say to him or her, "As I've been watching you, I've finally realized how to improve...

Fifty resources

Posted on May 15, 2008
At Job Profiles, Christina Laun has published "50 Awesome Open Source Resources for Online Writers." They're worth a long look.

This week: Do it three times

Posted on May 12, 2008
Historian Paul Fussell once confessed: Crappy work I do twice, good work I do three times. This week, just as an experiment, don't just "do" each piece of work twice (drafting and revising), but take a minute or two to...

This week: Leave out what your readers will skip

Posted on May 05, 2008
In his book The Invisible Touch, marketing expert Harry Beckwith writes: Skip the balderdash, the puffing, the filler. Tell me. Tell me the same way novelist Elmore Leonard (Get Shorty) writes books. Asked to explain why his books were so...

This week: Follow SEC guidelines

Posted on April 28, 2008
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has led the U.S. government in pushing for plain language. SEC guidelines advise: Surround complex ideas with short, common words. For example, use end instead of terminate, explain rather than elucidate, and use instead...

This week: Take the flab out of your end

Posted on April 21, 2008
The ending of your letters and e-mail messages may be the last thing your reader reads, so you'll want it to leave a good impression. Avoid flowery, "rubber stamp" endings like "Thank you in advance" and "Begging to remain yours...

This week: Lose the powdered wig

Posted on April 14, 2008
An amazing fact about modern business is that some of the same people who like to think of themselves as on the cutting edge of technology still write the way people talked 200 years ago. They choose words that people...

This week: Take time to plan

Posted on April 07, 2008
I spent this past weekend in the Chicago area, at a meeting of the board of directors of the Association of Professional Communication Consultants. Among those present was my long-time friend Lee Clark Johns, Tulsa-based communication consultant and author of...

This week: Use "readability" formulas wisely

Posted on April 01, 2008
A number of "readability" formulas, both manual and computer-based, have been developed to measure the difficulty of written text. Perhaps the most widely used is part of the grammar checker built into Microsoft Word. It and some others claim to...

This week: Use "readability" formulas wisely

Posted on March 31, 2008
A number of "readability" formulas, both manual and computer-based, have been developed to measure the difficulty of written text. Perhaps the most widely used is part of the grammar checker built into Microsoft Word. It and some others claim to...

This week: Separate rules from tools

Posted on March 24, 2008
When we first learned to write, we had to learn a lot of rules. So we sometimes believe that writing consists entirely of following rules. If we learn the rules, we'll be better writers. Actually, writing has few rules, and...

This week: Take as much time as you want others to take

Posted on March 17, 2008
Bill Jensen, in his book Simplicity, writes: When people are in need of communication, they want others to take the time to listen, and then to take the time to create meaning, clarity, and connections between ideas. But when they...

This week: Draft quick and dirty

Posted on March 10, 2008
The great editor Maxwell Perkins once said, "Just get it down on paper, and then we'll see what to do with it." This week, take that advice. Draft quick and dirty. If you don't know how to spell a word,...

This week: Watch the borders

Posted on March 03, 2008
Speaker Joe Griffith tells a story of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) under J. Edgar Hoover: A young FBI man was put in charge of the FBI's supply department. In an effort to cut cost, he reduced the...

This week: Check your organizational culture

Posted on February 25, 2008
My late friend Kitty Locker, in her book, Business and Administrative Communication, wrote:If you think your boss doesn't want you to write simply, ask him or her. A few bosses do prize flowery language. Most don't.You may think you work in an organization that favors fancy, pretentious language...

This week: Don't be ridiculous

Posted on February 18, 2008
Daniel Defoe, author of Robinson Crusoe, also wrote of the first business how-to books in English: The Complete English Tradesman, published in 1745 (!). In that book, he wrote:A tradesman's letters should be plain, consise, and to the purpose. . . ...

This week: Be economical

Posted on February 11, 2008
Norman R. Augustine, president and CEO of Martin Marietta, once calculated the relationship between thickness and dollar amount of government contract proposals. After reporting the result, he wrote, "If all the proposals conforming to this standard were piled on top of each other at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, it would probably be a good idea...

This week: Answer your reader's "WIIFM?"

Posted on February 04, 2008
All readers ask, consciously or unconsciously, the question "WIIFM?": "What's in it for me?" This week, as you plan and revise each piece of writing, check to make sure you're answering that question.

This week: Write without thinking

Posted on January 28, 2008
Don Marquis, American journalist and creator of the characters Archy and Mehitabel, said, "I never think when I write; nobody can do two things at the same time and do them well." That's a good practice to follow. Do your thinking at the planning stage of your writing process, then again at the revising stage...

Build a verb collection

Posted on January 22, 2008
Norm Leigh, at Biz Writer Blog, encourages each of us to "become a vigorous verb collector." He writes:In last week's post, I emphasized the value of jamming as many lively, punchy verbs into your bean as possible because verbs are the heart of effective writing...

This week: Organize before you do something (says Winnie the Pooh)

Posted on January 21, 2008
It's sometimes possible to reorganize a piece of writing at the revising stage of the process. But that's a little like changing the floor plan of a house after you've built it. Yes, you could conceivably cut the garage off a completed house and move it to the other end of the building, but that's certainly not the best time to do it...

The headline is the e-mail

Posted on January 18, 2008
At Bad Language, Matthew Stibbe has posted Ten Laws for Better Email. I could devote a whole posting to each one, but here's a taste:3. The headline is the email. The subject line should be clear, factual and specific. It should also encourage the reader to open and read the email...

And thanks again!

Posted on January 17, 2008
Diane Murley, writing for Arizona State University's Ross-Blakley Law Library Blog, has listed three ways to "Become a Better Writer": Read ?How to Write: A Memorandum from a Curmudgeon,? chapter 1 of The Curmudgeon?s Guide to Practicing Law, by Mark Herrmann...

Thanks!

Posted on January 16, 2008
Daphne Gray-Grant, in her top-notch e-mail newsletter, Power Writing, has named my book The McGraw-Hill 36-Hour Course in Business Writing and Communication as one of "Five Books You Must Read." I'm honored to be listed in the company of Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think Julia Cameron's The Right to Write Arthur Plotnik's Spunk and Bite Sam Horn's POP Thanks, Daphne!

This week: Don't sedate your verbs

Posted on January 14, 2008
Ruth Walker, writing in The Christian Science Monitor, said:Look what's happening to verbs--the "muscles" of language. They're being crowded out by more sedate linking-verb constructions. . . . "He lost his job" often loses out to "He became unemployed...

This week: E-mail yourself

Posted on January 07, 2008
At LifeClever, Chanpory Rith has posted a great trick for getting around writer's block. "If writing stirs a panic attack in you," Chanpory writes, "try this: start with an email." Why? For five reasons: It's convenient. You feel less pressure. You're more conversational...

This week: Kick the props away

Posted on January 07, 2008
In their book You Send Me, Patricia T. O'Connor and Stewart Kellerman note thatSome puffed-up writers use long words, techie talk, trendy terms, and convoluted sentences to cover up or deceive or sound important or go along with the crowd. Most people who inflate their writing, though, are simply insecure, often for no good reason...

It's resolution day!

Posted on January 01, 2008
If you're reading this blog, you probably would like to become a more effective business writer in 2008. So be specific. What would you like to improve most about your business writing this year? Jot down your answer, and make it a resolution...

This week: Don't be afraid

Posted on December 31, 2007
Journalist Gene Fowler once said, "Writing is easy; all you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead." What Fowler is describing is, of course, writer's block. We've all had it. And at its root is fear, the fear of not "getting it right...

This week: Take a break

Posted on December 24, 2007
This week, take a break from trying to "manage your writing." Relax, and have a happy holiday season!

This week: Keep the simple simple

Posted on December 17, 2007
Brad Shorr publishes a great writing blog, Word Sell. Something he said today got me thinking:It takes an extraordinary person to take something simple and keep it simple, let alone take something complicated and make it simple.Many of us know that when we revise something we've written, we should look for ways to simplify it...

Don't dodge the bullets

Posted on December 14, 2007
Daphne Gray-Grant, in her always-useful e-newsletter, Power Writing, says that bullets work because they Add structure and organization to your writing Provide many compelling entry points for skimmers and scanners Help simplify information (for the reader and writer) Emphasize main points Improve comprehension Daphne provides some other good tips on bullets, although I follow a slightly different convention from the one she recommends...

Software for the mind

Posted on December 12, 2007
Roy Jacobsen, at Writing, Clear and Simple, has posted a lovely meditation on David McNally's comment that "Language is software for the mind." The whole posting is well worth reading; I'll quote only its last two paragraphs:The words you use, either written or spoken, can have powerful effects on your audience?if you use them carefully and skillfully...

This week: Leave out the parts that readers skip

Posted on December 10, 2007
Elmore Leonard, author of Get Shorty and other hugely successful books, was once asked why his books were so popular and easy to read. Leonard answered, "Simple. I just leave out the parts that readers skip." This week, when you start revising, imagine yourself as your reader...