The Best Writing Tip Ever « We Write For You

The Best Writing Tip Ever: Put your words in the right order

July 24, 2009 | Posted in: General Writing, The Best Writing Tip Ever, Uncategorized | Tags: Bale, Batman, Christian Bale, Dark Knight, editing, editing tips, Farmiga, grammar, Heath Ledger, Joker, Ledger, Orphan, Sarsgaard, We Write For You, wewriteforyou.com, writing tips |

When one guys wearing makeup and the other ones wearing a mask, its rather important to know whos who.

When one guy's wearing a mask and the other one's wearing a wig and makeup, it's rather important to know who's who.

For our latest installment of the Best Writing Tip Ever series, let’s touch on a subject that seems like a no-brainer, but it’s a mistake that can appear in everything from a text message to, let’s say, an article in the Los Angeles Times.

Case in point: today’s Times review of the psychological thriller Orphan. Glenn Whipp’s brief article reads just fine until this sentence:

The film does boast fine, slumming performances from Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard, playing John and Kate, the couple coping with Esther’s alarming antics.

True, Whipp writes elsewhere that Orphan boasts a surprising twist, but we’re pretty sure the twist isn’t that Vera plays John and Peter plays Kate.

Granted, Whipp didn’t use the word respectively in his sentence to indicate “in the order given,” but switching the order mid-sentence still makes for confusing reading.

And if the error wasn’t clear because of the genders, we’d be left thinking the actors played the wrong roles.

For example: either of the two people who never saw The Dark Knight certainly would get the wrong idea if one wrote “Christian Bale and Heath Ledger provide dynamic performances as the Joker and Batman.”

See more entries in the Best Writing Tip Ever series by clicking here.

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The Best Writing Tip Ever: “Have went,” NEVER. “Have gone,” sure.

June 12, 2009 | Posted in: General Writing, The Best Writing Tip Ever | Tags: "have gone", "have went", English 101, grammar, tweet, Twitter, We Write For You, wewriteforyou.com, writing, writing tips |

Tom Petty HAS GONE to the theater. The Heartbreakers HAVE GONE to the theater. (Now maybe Petty SHOULD GO for a haircut and a shave.)

Tom Petty HAS GONE to the theater. The Heartbreakers HAVE GONE to the theater. (Now maybe Petty SHOULD GO for a haircut and shave.)

We’re going with the assumption that virtually anyone reading this blog already knows this, but maybe we shouldn’t: there is no such phrase as “have went.” Not ever. Never, ever, ever.

We bring this up because we recently “officially” joined Twitter (shameless plug: click here to follow us on Twitter), and one of our followers claims to have three undergraduate degrees. He further claims to be working on a postgraduate one.

We have no reason to doubt these claims, yet he recently “tweeted” that a certain talk show host’s rating “have went up” in recent days.

Ouch. Total fail, man.

Presumably this particular grammatical issue hasn’t hurt him so far — he’s apparently well-educated and always well-spoken (well, at least until now). But maybe it has.

Maybe writing “have went” cost him a fellowship here or a promotion there. He’ll never know. An employer just passed him by, not knowing he’s a very bright guy making one very bad grammatical error.

For the record, it’s “I went to the store” or “I have gone to the store,” and so on. You never say “I should have went to her birthday party.” You should have gone.

(Speaking of which, you really should have gone to her birthday party. What, were you too cheap to buy a present?)

As usual, we won’t bore you with the English 101 details. Just understand that “have” and “went” should never be adjacent. (And next time, go to the party!)

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The Best Writing Tip Ever: Speaking of dos and don’ts — what’s the deal with apostrophes?

June 5, 2009 | Posted in: General Writing, The Best Writing Tip Ever | Tags: apostrophe, business writing, dont's, dos, ghostwriting, grammar, grant writing, Grantwriting, plural, plurals, We Write For You, wewriteforyou.com, writing, writing tips |

Since we used the phrase “dos and don’ts” in the last post, we thought it might be a good time to quickly address that phrase.

My, that's a cute apostrophe.

Sometimes in writing, you have to wrestle over the choices of going with what’s technically correct versus what looks best. Again, this depends on your audience and what you’re looking to accomplish.

For the most part, it’s best to err to the side of proper grammar. That’s why we use “dos and don’ts.” Yes, “dos” looks weird. It looks like it the Spanish word for two, pronounced like “dose,” instead of what it is, which is the plural for do, which sounds like “dooze.”

In general, you should never use an apostrophe to make something plural. Even people who would never write “we have banana’s for sale” will still add an apostrophe to some plural acronyms: DVD’s, TV’s, etc. The apostrophe is not needed. “DVDs” and “TVs” is correct.

If they look strange, look at it this way: if we can get everyone to start writing them correctly, they won’t look strange anymore!

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The Best Writing Tip Ever Part II: The BWTE Strikes Back

May 28, 2009 | Posted in: Competitive Writing, General Writing, The Best Writing Tip Ever | Tags: Best Writing Tip Ever, business writing, editing, editing tips, grant writing, Grantwriting, marketing, resume, We Write For You, wewriteforyou.com, writing, writing tips |

If you're not separating the wheat from the chaff, you're obscuring your point -- and testing your reader's patience.

“Just give me the time; don’t tell me how they made the watch.”

Translation: Get to the point! And when you get to it, stay on it, don’t stray from it, and don’t camouflage it with a bunch of unessential information.

This relates to virtually every form of business communication, and yet the vast majority of writers consistently ignore it: leave all of the non-essential information, especially non-relevant background materials, out of your main piece.

If you have information that supplements your document well, but it drags down the readability because it’s too long or bulky, include it in an appendix. Or use footnotes. Or provide it separately.

Remember, today’s readers don’t want to waste a lot of time. They want to know what you’re getting at and how it relates to them. If you want to impress them with your bona fides, stick to those that are the only most important and relevant. No one cares if you have 10 years of field work in geology if you’re applying for a grant to open a day school.

If the background is not necessary to achieving your core purpose for writing the document, you should leave it out.

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The Best Writing Tip EVER.

May 23, 2009 | Posted in: Competitive Writing, General Writing, Public Relations, The Best Writing Tip Ever | Tags: Add new tag, annual reports, brochures, business writing, copywriting, cover letter, freelance writing, Fundraising, ghost writing, grant writing, marketing, PR, Public Relations, request for proposal, SEO, We Write For You, wewriteforyou.com, writing tips |

Okay, we’re just kidding with that title. Actually… kidding isn’t quite right. We do have a great writing tip for you today. And it is one of the best writing tips ever. To certain people–maybe even you–it might well be the best writing tip ever.

We’ll have many more writing tips for you to check out if you read this blog regularly. But if we had to choose a Top Ten, this would be in there. It’s probably in the Top Five. And though it sounds obvious, this is the one big rule we see people screw up all the time:

Write with your audience in mind.

It rather sounds simple and obvious, but writers botch this one constantly. All we’re saying is that for whatever you’re writing, you need to identify who comprises your target audience. Then, make sure everything you write is focused on connecting with that type of person.

This is true in virtually every type of writing. It’s true in business writing (sales letters, website copy, news releases, blog posts and plenty more) and in creative writing (manuscripts, screenplays, treatments, outlines, query letters and plenty more).

Yes, it's a rather generic audience shot. It's not always easy coming up with images for a writing blog, you know. At least it's more exciting than the "hyphen" image from the last post, right?

It’s even true in personal writing (emails, thank-you letters, love letters and–you guessed it–plenty more).

If you’re writing for an audience more likely to be compelled (to action, to understanding, or whatever you’re going for) by a warm, lighthearted tone, don’t write in a cold, clinical style.

If you’re writing to a CEO you know has little time on her hands, don’t waste time with a cutesy introduction–get to the point.

Want to sell something to people who are given to purchase luxury items? Make sure the tone of prestige and class informs everything in your sales copy. Targeting buyers on the other end of the spectrum? Focus on the themes of value and high return on investment throughout.

Remember, it’s up to you to orient your writing to the reader’s needs–not the other way around. People don’t have the time or the patience to jump through those hoops; they’ll move on to something that grabs their interest without any extra effort. Be that writer, and reap the benefits.

Check back here at the We Write For You blog (wewriteforyou.com) for more Best Writing Tip Ever installments.

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