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Category Archives: Brevity
Framing Your Message, Part 2
Last week, we looked at the prime location for workplace writers to frame their messages: the subject line of an email. For most of us, email is the most frequent medium of written communication, and the subject line box is sitting … Continue reading
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Framing Your Email Message
Skillful writers do their readers, and themselves, a favor by effectively framing their messages. They let their readers know at the outset precisely where they are going. Whether the message is an email, letter, proposal, news release, or PowerPoint, effective … Continue reading
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An Embarrassment of Glitches II
Once again, I have come across an online article containing a treasure trove of common writing problems. See what you spot in this paragraph. A lot of the time, an employee who has recently been promoted to a supervisor role … Continue reading
Posted in Brevity, Common Grammar Errors, Flair & Finesse
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Alarm #3: Re-verberations
Reverberations are loud echoes, and a key to catching unwanted echoes in our writing is setting alarms on common traps so the lack of economy comes through loud and clear. Redundancies like “ATM machine” and “Please RSVP” are well known, … Continue reading
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Alarm #2: It’s About Time
Last week’s post introduced the notion of setting an alarm on words and phrases that can lull us into making an error or failing to write concisely. To continue the theme, here are a few sentences that each need an … Continue reading
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An Embarrassment of Glitches
What a gold mine. A few days ago, a major online news outfit handed me a cornucopia of discussion topics in just two sentences: “In the past two weeks, overall arrests have fallen 66 percent compared to the same period … Continue reading
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Eliminating Those Pesky “Ofs”
Like an annoying mosquito or gnat spoiling an ideal summer evening, the word “of” often mars an otherwise perfect sentence. In fact, those erroneous “ofs” are so easy to miss, they crop up frequently in books, newspapers, and magazines––and certainly … Continue reading
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