Articles on writing, editing, improving content and more

My last blog post explained how to write in the active voice – but what’s far less well known is the middle voice, not to mention the effective voice.

“That’s not writing, that’s typing.” Truman Capote famously dismissed Jack Kerouac’s writing by saying this, and I’m inclined to agree.

Short sentences are easy to read. They grab our attention, increase the reading pace, and make it more likely that we’ll move from one sentence to the next.

If you need to say something in just a few words – which is what happens when you coin a company name, slogan or domain name – it’s a mistake to try and cram as much literal meaning as possible into the message.

You’ll never read poetry, watch Shakespeare or listen to a Katy Perry song in quite the same way again after reading Mark Forsyth’s The Elements of Eloquence.

There are so many wondrous words in the English language.

When Vincent Musetto (who wrote the infamous headline Headless body in topless bar for the New York Post) died, Media Watch ran a segment on why headlines are changing online and asked for my opinion.