Online Writing Guidelines

On the last Resourceful Friday I posted books to help those aiming to write better. This week covers sites on grammar, language usage, style guides, clichés, writing guides, punctuation, writing tips and suggestions. They are split into three loose groups - writing guides and tips, style guides, grammar and punctuation, and a catch all, msc.

Writing Guides and Tips

11 rules of writing

A Handbook of Rhetorical Devices

Bartleby.com

Common Errors in English

Diagramming Sentences

OWL Handouts: Complete Index by Topic

Plain Language

Plain Language: Howto/Tools Guidelines

Plain Language: Howto/Tools Word suggestions

Plain Language: Howto/Tools Quick reference tips

Silva Rhetoricae: The Forest of Rhetoric

Strunk, William, Jr. 1918. The Elements of Style

SUNY Geneseo Online Writing Guide

Tameri Guide for Writers

The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing

re: Writing

Sentence Sense: A Writer’s Guide, an online textbook in basic writing

U of Calgary: Basic Elements Of English

uw-madison writing center writer’s handbook

Write Away - Learn how to become a better writer

Writers Web

Writers’ Workshop Writing Tips

Writing Guides

Writing resources from Study Guides and Strategies

Writing Tips

Style Guides

APA Style Tips

Chicago Manual of Style Online

Colorado Uni Style Guide

NICS Web style guide

Times Online Style and Usage Guide

U of WA: Citation & Writing Guides

Grammar and Punctuation

Ain’t Grammar Fun: Words to the Wise

Clear English Grammar Resources

Doc Durden’s Guide to Good Grammar

Good Grammar, Good Style

Grammar Book: Grammar Rules, Punctuation and Capitalization, Rules for Writing Numbers

Guide to Grammar and Writing

Jack Hart: Prevent punctuation and grammar errors that hurt credibility

Lynch, Guide to Grammar and Style

Online English Grammar

ProofReadNOW: Grammar rules

Punctuation Made Simple

Spark Notes: Online guide to grammar

The Armchair Grammarian

The Blue Book of Grammar & Punctuation

Writers’ Workshop: Grammar Handbook

Msc

Cliché site

Collective Nouns

Famous Quotes

Quote Reference

The Passivator

The Word Detective

Words: Woe and Wonder

If you have writing resources to suggest, go ahead and send them on over as I’d love to add them to my stash.

Until the next
Resourceful Friday,
cat

I’m lazy. There is just no disputing the fact. You see, I originally planned to write a dedicated post about working with writers, but I caved when Mathew Stibbs from Bad Language swung his post over. Yeah, I’m lazy. And proud of it. Especially in this case, as there’s not much I could do to improve on Mathew’s advice.

Just check out my outline below and see for yourself. Or, better yet, read How to work with writers in its entirety.

How to work with writers (a review)

Selection

Look for writers with:

• A track record of work in a similar format or subject
• The ability to write in different styles
• Decent references
• Professional indemnity insurance

Briefing

A briefing document should explain:

• Outline of contents
• The target audience
• Reason for the project
• Style guidelines
• Word length
• Supplementary contact information
• Additional resources
• Project deadline

Management

Expectations - Clients:

• Meticulous notes and voice recordings
• Independent sources for facts and statistics

Expectations - Writers:

• Reasonable deadlines
• Last minute requests kept to a minimum
• An understanding of how they work
• Positive feedback

Editing and rewriting

Writer releases work after doublechecking:

• Spelling and grammar
• That it meets the brief

Clients check:

• Trademarks
• Job titles
• Times and dates
• Company specific information

Potential problems areas clients should avoid:

• Faulty briefs
• Change of direction mid-project

Unpardonable sins writers should avoid:

• Clichés
• Missed deadlines
• Starting without an agreed brief
• Making the same mistake twice

The piece of information I particularly liked was: “Writers tend to think in terms of deadlines, drafts and word counts and chunk up their time in units of interviews, research, writing and editing.”

How about you?

until the next
Designers WW,
cat

Photo by seangraham

Quotation and apostrophe abuse

Happy Easter everyone. And since it’s been a week for writing (with more to come), I give you two flicker accounts, “Signs” that abuse “Quotation Marks” and Grocer’s Apostrophe.

Until the next
Sunday Stressbuster,
cat

Resources for this designer’s resolve to learn to write

As previously mentioned, I’m a designer who intends to write better. To nudge myself into writing, in 2006 I began a series. Early January of this year I finalised the series by compiling my writing resources.

After looking through all the writing books I’ve acquired since 2002, I selected the below to start my writing adventure.

Helpful writing books

100 Ways to Improve Your Writing by Gary Provost

1000 Most Important Words by Norman W. Schur

Collins Good Writing Guide by Graham King

Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss

Line by Line: How to Improve Your Own Writing by Claire Kehrwald Cook

On Writing Well by William K. Zinsser

New Hart’s Rules: The Handbook of Style for Writers and Editors by R. M. Ritter (adapter)

New Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors: The essential A-Z guide to the written word by R. M. Ritter (Editor), Angus Stevenson (Editor), Lesley Brown (Editor)

Rules for Writers by Diana Hacker

Developmental Exercises to Accompany Rules For Writers by Diana Hacker and Wanda Van Goor

Spunk & Bite: A writer’s guide to punchier, more engaging language & style by Author Plotnik

The Careful Writer by Theodore M. Bernstein

The Elements of Style by William I. Strunk

The Oxford Essential Guide to Writing by Thomas S. Kane

Weinberg on Writing: The Fieldstone Method by Gerald M. Weinberg

Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe’s Guide to Better English in Plain English by Patricia T. O’Conner

Words Fail Me: What Everyone Who Writes Should Know About Writing by Patricia O’Conner

Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer by Roy Peter Clark

101 Elegant Paragraphs — A Vocabula 101 Series Handbook, by Robert Hartwell Fiske

Wish me good luck?

If you have any business of design resources to suggest like the above, go ahead and send them on over.

Until the next
Resourceful Friday,
cat

Classic branding and marketing favors specialization. According to the conventional wisdom, the narrower you define your area of expertise, the higher the perceived value of your expertise.

But, in practice, conventional wisdom creates serious limitations. In actuality, designers who are able to write enjoy a major advantage over their competition. Being able to write as well as design offers graphic designers numerous practical and profitable dividends.

Writing and trust
The ability to write permits you to create a presence that promotes your “obvious expert” status and creates familiarity and trust that translates into more sales opportunities and less buyer resistance for your design business.

As a designer, your biggest “competition” is not the designer across the street–or across the Internet. Rather, your biggest competitors are anonymity and your prospect’s fear of making a mistake. Writing eliminates both obstacles by giving you a way to demonstrate your expertise before you talk to, or meet, a prospective client. Writing attracts new prospects, pre-sold on your expertise. You’re not a stranger, you’re a trusted advisor.

Books
Books are the most powerful form of “writing as promotion.” There’s magic to your name on a published book. A book becomes your most effective business card, attracting attention from like-minded prospects around the world. A well-written book does more than communicate facts, it communicates a style that projects your personality to prospects before your opening words.

I became aware of the power of a book to project an author’s “likeability” through exposure to Jan V. White’s classic Editing by Design. Editing by Design was a “high personality” book that not only communicated a design philosophy, but did it in a way that made it mandatory that I meet Jan face-to-face.

Roy Paul Nelson’s books Publication Design and Advertising Design reinforced the power of a book to encourage a face-to-face relationship, as do books by designers such as Doyald Young, Alex White, and Jim Krause.

Do books do more than create clients? Well, check out the size of the audience the next time Edward Tufte, author of Envisioning Information and The Visual Display of Quantitative Information comes to town! His day-long seminars fill huge hotel ballrooms, several days in a row.

Consider the task of choosing a designer from a prospect’s point of view. They can hire a familiar face who has established their expertise and style by writing a book, or the prospect can hire a stranger who may have an impressive portfolio, but, “Who are they, really?”

Articles and speaking
The next best thing to a book is an article, or series of articles, that communicate your style and position you as an expert. If you have a type problem, and are a reader of publications like How or Print, why not go right to the best and hire Allan Haley, whom you also remember from his articles in U&lc.

One of the nicest things about writing books and articles is that they inevitably lead to speaking opportunities. And, when you’re in front of a room, displaying examples of your work, your desirability as a designer shoots through the roof! After your talk, prospects will come to you with business card in hand, asking how they can contact you to discuss upcoming their projects. This is a far different scenario than the typical struggle for new business.

The power extends beyond the walls of the room where you are presenting. The mere fact that you are a speaker at MacWorld, a How Design Conference, or any of dozens of other events positions you to prospects–even though they may never attend one of the events, themselves.

Preparing better marketing materials
The ability to write pays off in the ability to prepare better marketing materials for yourself. Designers like Canada’s Maria G. Nozza’s website is an example of effective writing in action. Her downloadable PublicationWise newsletter and her DesignWise blog, available at www.mygraphicsnotebook.com, showcase her expertise in a way that proves her competence better than any amount of conventional marketing could ever do.

Once you become comfortable as a writer, you’ll find it easier and easier to maintain an up-to-date website, promoted through short, frequent e-mail tips. Between the quality of your newsletters and the frequency of your e-mails, your career trajectory will take flight.

Additional income sources
Consistent monthly cash flow can transform your attitudes as much as your business. When you begin the month without needing to worry about meeting the rent and health insurance payments, your stress level will drop. This enables you to create better designs in less time.

Although books and articles, by themselves, will rarely provide consistent monthly cash flow, enterprising designers can easily come up with other ways to turn them into cash. John McWade, for example, plus Before & After, www.bamag.com, a subscription publication available on line and in print.

Other opportunities include creating back-end profits through special reports, tutorials, audio recordings, and Camtasia training videos delivered as downloadable e-books, CD-ROMs, DVDs, or website streaming content.

The goal, of course, is not to succumb to the “publishing” model, but, rather, use ancillary profits from publishing to provide a cushion freeing you from the need to spend every hour on billable client projects.

Writing, better design, and more money
As your writing skills improve, you’ll inevitably become a better, more profitable designer. Although design should remain your primary task, your ability to provide “design-plus” services can increase your earning power while helping you deliver better projects.

Designing from a writer’s perspective, or writing from a designer’s perspective, breaks down the walls that often arise between writing and design. At minimum, your comfort with words helps you offer a “total solution” to those clients who will appreciate the convenience and unified perspective of “one-stop shopping.”

More important, as a designer/writer, your designs will improve to the extent that you feel comfortable tweaking copy at the last minute so it will better fit available space. Slight edits can often convert three line headlines into two line headlines. Likewise, minor word substitutions or transpositions can often eliminate distracting widows and orphans.

In short, the ability to write will result in a better partnership between design and message.

Where do you start?
The starting point is to recognize that there are numerous transferable skills between design and writing. Design is often based on communicating hierarchy and sequence; so is writing. Successful designs are based on simplicity and a lack of clutter; so is writing. Design is also based on taking changes, thinking “outside of the box; so is writing.

Design is also based on craftsmanship, an unwillingness to accept “good” in order to get the job done, when you know that by taking a little more time and fine-tuning the details, you can make the project considerably better. Attention to detail, and an unwillingness to compromise standards, is also a writer’s trait.

By analyzing the skills and abilities that contribute to your design success, and transferring them to writing, you’ll be able to do a better job of promoting yourself and creating endless new profit opportunities.

Roger C. Parker is the author of Design to Sell and the Content Catalyst and Planning Catalyst. Subscribe to his free Design to Sell newsletter at www.designtosellonline.com.

This article first appeared on Designers who Blog’s New Year’s Resolution: Learn to Write series. All posts can be accessed via the Writing Resolve.

I have a confession to make.

Late yesterday, when I went to write the next writers post on the Designers Working With Series, I panicked and contacted mentor, writer, career coach, strategic planner and dear friend, Liz Strauss.

Via email, I babbled all sorts of fears. Writing fears. Basically, that I was scared to be responsible for the writers section of this series.

While I slept, Liz worked. In my morning, we picked it up again.

“Skype?” asked Liz. “I’ll meet you with a coffee frappe”, answers I.

During the three hours of subjects around, about, and including nothing to do with writing, Liz and I talked. Picking through the undertones of the conversation, she stated that I’m not afraid to write this series. I’m intimidated.

That, I am.

I’m intimidated because I’m not a writer. I’m a designer.

I’m a designer who feels that in order for a designer to be taken seriously as a business owner, learning how to write well is a needed skill.

One of the top skills.

Right up there with learning how to draw.

And that’s why I’ve put the writers section to the front of the Designers Working With Series.

But I’m not half intimidated, especially as my own writing skills are not spit-shined squeaky clean. I guess what I’m saying is to please bear with me while I share the insightful opinions from professional writers, as well as a few opinions of my own (perhaps not so insightful).

until the next
Designers WW,
cat

Welcome to BoDo:
The Business of Design online launch

Introducing Write with ME

Gifted writer, ME “Liz” Strauss, brings to the BoDo table enormous experience in business writing, copywriting, communication and strategic management. As VP and Publisher for an American textbook company, she developed products and strategic plans with publishers in Europe, Australia, the UK, and Ireland. She has worked with small companies making acquisitions, companies in crisis, and corporate giants such as Pearson, Reed Elsevier, and Wolters Kluwer. Her expertise extends from product development and marketing into business-startups and long-term strategic planning.

Where else on the Web are you going to get that kind of background to help get your business writing skills on the right track? In Write with ME, Liz will cover all things business writing - proposals, reports, business emails, letters to clients, and more. Yes, designers really should learn how to write!

Beyond all that, Liz authors and posts at several highly popular blogs including, Successful Blog, LizStrauss.com, Performancing.com and Blog Herald.

The BoDo Team
cat - nt - jay