Can you write “an atrocious opening sentence to a hypothetical bad novel”? That is the challenge of the tongue-in-cheek Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. Unlike most writing contests (which encourage participants to write well), the Bulwer-Lytton content celebrates terrible writing. The English Department at San Jose State University has been running this contest since 1982. It’s named […]
Grammar School Wisdom
Supposedly, a grammar-school teacher gave each child in her class the first half of a well-known proverb and asked them to come up with the rest of the proverb. Some of these answers are truly inspired (if not quite traditional). Enjoy. Better to be safe than…punch a 5th grader. Strike while the…bug is close. It’s […]
The Rule of Three
What can we learn from Thomas Jefferson, the French Revolution and Julius Caesar? The Rule of Three. This Rule says that ideas presented in threes “stick” in our minds better than ideas in larger groups. Consider: “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” “Liberty, equality and fraternity” “I came. I saw. I conquered.” I was […]
Positioning a Product or Service
One of the most important steps of any communications program is developing your positioning statements, which describe how you want the market to perceive your product or service. To a great extent, you don’t position your product or service. The market does. The goal of positioning statements is to guide your marketing activities and coax […]
Ignore These Writing & Editing Tips
I love this list, which was originally compiled by George L. Trigg et. al. It came to me via The Writing Center, which evidently got this copy from ILS 3, who took it from Optics News Vol. 8: No. 1, which had reprinted it from Phys. Rev. Lett. 42:748 (1979). However it reached us, enjoy. Make sure […]
Is it One Word or Two?
I often see a single word used when it’s more correct to use two words. Here are some examples. Alot and a lot “Alot” is not a word, which is why Word’s spell checker flags this common error. “A lot” means many. “He made a lot of money.” Anyone and any one Use one word […]
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