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If you manage the editorial process for your organization, sooner or later you’ll discover one of the facts of writing life: everyone has their own ideas about what makes up good grammar or style. If you submit copy to three different people for approval, it may come back with three different alterations. If your staffRead more

“Can you get me on Today or in The Wall Street Journal?” Some variation of that question has probably been asked of every public relations and communications practitioner. In the traditional mass marketing mode, people focus on popular consumer outlets as the place to trawl for prospects, even for business-to-business initiatives. As a result, someRead more

“Avoid unnecessary capitals” is one of the main style and grammar commandments of all the style manuals, but there are three main pitfalls that can lead to inappropriate capitalization and cause a piece to look amateurish. Pitfall #1: Publication and Composition Titles Rules for capitalizing titles can differ depending on the style guide that you’reRead more

About two months ago,  I presented the case for keeping the inverted pyramid  style as an option for press releases’ lead paragraphs. Of course, the delayed or feature-style lead has its merits. In fact, a 2000 Impact study by the Readership Institute, an organization formed by newspaper publishers and Northwest University’s Media Management Center, foundRead more

Publication articles are great for establishing credibility. If you were mentioned in the article, you’re noteworthy. If you wrote it, you’re an expert. And you can get a lot more exposure if you recycle that article. When someone else writes about you, you’ll have to ask for authorization to use the article, which may includeRead more

One major English grammar challenge is figuring out when to use either who or whom. A good number of professional communicators (myself included) have done fairly decent impressions of owls as they glare at their computer screens trying to decide which of these two pronouns sounds right in a particular sentence. Trouble is, what sounds rightRead more

Case studies provide all the appeal of a good story while sharing solutions for overcoming challenges or achieving objectives. The promise of practical tips draws readers’ interest, and if they can identify with the people described within the case study, they become emotionally involved and you’ll hold their attention. In order for your case studyRead more

You probably remember the terms comma splice (also called a comma fault) and fused sentence (aka a run-on sentence) from some point in English class. For those of you who need a refresher, these terms refer to sentences in which two independent clauses have been improperly linked. An independent clause is  a group of words thatRead more

Storytelling techniques have a lot of advocates (including me). However, some storytelling advocates suggest that  the traditional  writing structure of the inverted pyramid  is a thing of the past. In the inverted pyramid format, the most important facts are presented up front and the least essential information is placed at the end of the piece.Read more

While editing a client’s proposal, I noticed that the program’s agenda was described as “complimenting” the public school curriculum. Recently, a friend received a flier from a public relations department offering “complementary” beverages at a special event. I’ve seen these two words misused so often that I occasionally check the dictionary just to keep thingsRead more