Where to Get Your Information
There are people who can find just about anything on the internet just short of hacking into top government websites. Then, there are those people who can’t find anything at all. Google can only get you so far. Then, you have to learn a few tricks to get you the rest of the way.
Speaking of Google, it really is a good way to search for just about anything. When you type in a few keywords, rather relevant sites come up in the search. Some search engines will only show you the sites that pay the most money. But, Google does a good job at creating analytics and sending out digital spiders to crawl all over websites. With all of their science put together, you can’t help but get some really relevant websites in a search.
I have a few favorite sites that I know off the top of my head, and for writing they come in handy all the time. Merriam-Webster has an online dictionary where you can verify your definitions. But, it also has a pretty good thesaurus. EBSCOhost is a research database that has literally millions of articles from newspapers, magazines and encyclopedias all over the globe. But, you need to be a subscriber. The backdoor for many of us comes from having a library card and accessing a public information network like Sailor, Maryland’s Public Information Network.
What are style guides?
Michael has covered the APA and MLA writing styles in an earlier post that you can find here. There are numerous writing styles and you should always check to ensure which style you will be using for a particular piece of work. Simply putting "Style guide" into Google or other search engine will throw up a whole list of these guides.
Every publication will have it's own writing style guide which you will be expected to follow for your own work if you expect to see it published. Fortunately, getting hold of a style guide is free if the publication has it stored online and is available for th elikes of you and me to download gratis. You can find the Guardian's here and for the academics, the Modern Humanities Research Association (MHRA) has their's here.
What are you going to uncover in these Style Guides?
The Dynamics of Writing an Article: And How it Applies to Today
The art of writing articles has changed a bit due to the internet explosion. Yes, it still works the same way in many of the traditional venues. But, articles have changed mainly because of article submission sites and blogs.
Many people in the internet world consider blogs to be articles and in some ways they are. Blogs started as bits of information a writer intended to get across in an informal setting. Now, they are actually relied upon by many readers. If you Google a topic, you will find a hundred blogs compared to one authoritative site. And blogs have become very authoritative of themselves.
But, article submission sites such as EzineArticles and AssociatedContent have made it easy for anyone to write an article and get it published. I honestly love the internet and many of its venues for giving everyone the same leverage. There are things that need to be said and it’s critical that they get said at the right time. The internet offers everyone an instant voice for anyone who is willing to listen and I love that.
But, some art gets lost in the process. The years of college a journalist goes through and all the discipline that a writer suffers is thrown out of the window when just anyone can step up to the plate. People forget or were never taught the basics of article writing.
Being Professional: Comes Through in First Impressions
I once sat in agony as I read through a pile of project proposals. I was looking for my competition because I wanted the project that bad. I was willing to look for the one or two people I was going to have to beat to get it. When I found them, I was going to write my proposal so that it out-shined the others in all ways.
The humor of it all is that those proposals I was reading through didn’t reflect on me at all. They reflected on the other people who were trying to get my project. I should have been grateful that they were awful. But, I was still in agony because of what I was reading.
These are no lie, no punches pulled examples of the proposals I fished through:
“lets talk in detail.company profile attached.”
No, I’m not kidding. This proposal took all of five seconds to write…errors included. The first letter isn’t capitalized. A space doesn’t exist between the first and second sentence. And that just gets me started.
The Language of Pop Culture – Should You Use Proper English Only?
Should we use street lingo in our writing or not? Is our use of fashionable vernacular simply lazy English or a case of reflecting reality and freeing expression from the constraints of grammar Nazi's?
There are as ever, two sides to the argument for and against the use of improper English; slang, street words, internet chat and text speak abbreviations; r u mad 4 it? G8!
Here is a comment reproduced from JTony on Lorelle Van Fossen's WordPress blogging blog:
"The tyrrany of language academicians is a constant thorn in the side of those who wish to communicate. Language is fluid, changing and evolving faster than any virus. Trying to keep language still is like trying to hold on to a single spot on a river… it cannot be done.The rule should be that if your intended audience can understand what you are writing, then you have accomplished what you need to. The only time you should avoid any form of “everyday speech” or “jargon” or anything else is if it is something your intended audience will not understand. It is all about the context of your readers, and nothing else applies.
Beginning a Conversation with Your Intended Audience…PT 2
See how I did that? Drew you right into my conversation didn’t I? That’s one way you begin a conversation with your intended audience.
No, I’m not giving away confidential secrets of the government. I’m not about ready to divulge the ancient secrets of a sacred society that lives among us as quiet and beneficial members. I don’t want to let you know the meaning of life just yet. It is merely a suggestion for the way you communicate a message to your intended audience. But nonetheless, I drew you into my conversation when I wrapped up Part I of Beginning a Conversation with Your Intended Audience published December 5, 2007.
When you read that blog entry published earlier, you instantly thought, “Shucks, I have to wait to get the beat.” You may not have said it quite that way, but I’m paraphrasing your thoughts for you. Yes, you resumed with the rest of your day. You haven’t been sitting still waiting patiently for Part II. It didn’t ruin your day or anything like that at all. But, it did make you curious.
Beginning a Conversation with Your Intended Audience
Try to begin a conversation with your intended audience. This isn’t a trick. It’s a way of thinking. When you write, you are intending to communicate a message to someone. But, some writers either forget that basic premise or they just never knew it in the first place.
A beginning writer or one who will never be any good forgets about the audience. Sometimes, they don’t even have an intended message. When writing’s sole purpose is to communicate a message to a certain audience, it astounds me that those two things can slip from a writer’s mind while… “writing.” But, it happens.
A great writer or one who intends to get better at it will actually consider audience and message first. Yes, the message is obviously most important. But, considering the audience offers the guidelines you will need in order to write effectively. The intended audience can be teenagers, women, minorities, the middle class, the rich or any other category you can imagine.
If you read any magazine, you will easily figure out who the intended audience is supposed to be. Without trying to offend anyone, here are a few examples. People is basically for homebodies who like gossip, Time is for the socially aware in about the mid-age range, YM is obviously for young girls (it is right in the name) and Cosmopolitan is for women. Notice how I mentioned who the intended audience is “supposed” to be? Anyone can read Cosmo, but it’s going to be written for the female population.
When you write, think of yourself as someone who is pulling an audience to you and attempting to tell them something very important. Yes, there are writers who write only for the purpose of hearing themselves talk basically. But, think of yourself as an authority on something. You are an authority on the message you intend to communicate.
No, that doesn’t make you the smartest person in the world. Being the “authority” doesn’t have to be some burdensome, all-empowering position. You have a message and that in itself is enough to give you some authority. You have some insight on a topic. You know how to do something. Your message could be as simple as how to bake a pie, but you are the expert at the moment and your purpose is to inform your readers your best practices in baking a pie.
What brings your writing to life is if you can engage your audience and this is where you begin a conversation with your readers. This isn’t a trick, I said it before. But, it is important. It’s a set of techniques. It’s not a secret or it’s not intended to be a secret, but the fact is that many writers don’t know how to engage an audience and draw them into your conversation.
Now that I have your attention…now that I have you expecting to learn a secret…this is to be continued…
What are Features and Benefits?
A feature is something identifiable with a product or service e.g. the new Mondeo has alloy wheels as standard; KPMG provides international tax consultancy services; ERH is a man. Alloy wheels, international tax consultancy and man are all features.
By themselves they mean absolutely sod all!
Benefits are the result of product/service features applied to a potential buyer to solve a problem or satisfy a need they have.
So:
"The new Mondeo has alloy wheels as standard which means that you get a great, racy looking car without the additional cost for optional extras. "
The benefit here is two-fold: a "great, racy looking car" and no "additional cost".
Hang on a minute!
"I hate alloy wheels and I don't want a car that says "I'm a boy racer!" - these aren't benefits!"
You must remember that to be classified as a benefit, the feature must be applied to solve a problem or satisfy a need of the actual customer.
What has this got to do with writing?
The Writer’s Journey
I remember the first thing I wrote. It was when I was about six years old. I wrote a poem about people slipping on banana peels and oil slicks. It was called “Slick Move” and it launched my writing career.
I’ve written all my life. With everything I was doing throughout my life, I was always a writer first. Throughout middle high and high school, I wrote short stories and poems. I tried writing a book, but it was a short story at best. My attention span couldn’t last long enough to write a complete three hundred page novel.
When I joined the Marine Corps right after high school, I wrote the entire time. I made general observations of different sights I saw. I kept snap shots of my life in the Marine Corps and they’re still lying around somewhere waiting to be put together in some kind of fashion.
First Writer & The Written Road
I came across two websites that I think you'll find interesting and useful - FirstWriter.com is packed full of publishing resources while The Written Road provides a wealth of information on how to go about becoming a travel writer.
This site does require a subscription but it is very modest at only $2.99 but you get full access to a whole range of literary services. I particularly liked the very neat search engine for picking out magazines, newspapers and agents that may be interested in your work. With the search engine facility, you can narrow down a publication that accepts unsolicited approaches, work out how much you'll be able to charge for your work - personally I think this alone is worth the subs.
Fiddling around the site, I checked out the writing competitions on the search facility and I was simply stunned at the number of poetry competitions that are being run both in the UK and the US. In the UK alone, for the month of December I counted over 20 before giving up and there were even greater numbers of fiction writing contests. Unfortunately for me, I don't produce fiction and wouldn't know a haiku if it stood up and bit me.
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