Category Archives: Tips and Tricks

Learn To Wield The Mighty Semicolon

Posted on February 15, 2008 by loren

Semicolons are one of the most feared punctuation marks around. They’re an inexplicable mix of a colon and a comma, and they justifiably intimidate many writers. How does one use this strange tool? Using semicolons can add an air of … Continue reading →

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Seek And Destroy Your Writing Style Enemies

Posted on February 14, 2008 by loren

 This is part four in the five-part series “Getting Your Writing To Flow.” The previous entries in this series focused on ways that structure affects flow.  I provided tips for structuring sentences and paragraphs (both a paragraph’s topic/wrap-up sentence and … Continue reading →

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How To Make Your Paragraphs Flow

Posted on February 11, 2008 by loren

This is part three of a five-part series. Thus far in our exploration of the phenomenon of “writing that flows,” we have been working at the sentence-to-sentence level of flow.  We have considered the importance of establishing continuity between sentences … Continue reading →

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Getting Your Writing To Flow, Part 2: Details

Posted on February 9, 2008 by loren

This is part two of a five-part series. In the previous article, I began a detailed examination of what makes writing flow. The most important thing to understand about flow is that it results from looking at your writing from … Continue reading →

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Getting Your Writing To Flow, Part 1

Posted on February 8, 2008 by loren

This is part one of a five-part series. “Flow” is an interesting concept. Among productivity gurus, “flow” most often refers to that elusive sweet spot within work where you’re getting things done with maximum efficiency and effectiveness. People used to … Continue reading →

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The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly (Grammar)

Posted on February 1, 2008 by loren

America is an incredibly diverse culture. As diverse as we are, though, we seem to have one thing in common: none of us is immune to getting tripped up when it comes to whether we should say “good” or “well.” … Continue reading →

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High Stakes Pronouns

Posted on January 26, 2008 by loren

As I’m sure you know, pronouns serve a key function in written communication. Because they have the power to stand in for nouns, they add remarkable ease and convenience to our everyday discourse. Just to review – in case it … Continue reading →

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On Removing “Weakifiers”

Posted on January 25, 2008 by loren

In The 4-Hour Workweek, Tim Ferriss notes that in excess, almost anything takes on the characteristics of its opposite. When do possessions become clutter? When there are too many of them. I propose that we start applying this principle to … Continue reading →

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