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  Words Our Writing Can Do Without, Part 1

  2295 readersWhen a new writer comes to me for advice, I typically recommend they begin their career by stocking their bookshelf with several must-read titles. Some cover the craft of writing, and others, the business. Of course, I always recommend they visit FWJ, too, including, but not limited to, the job listings and Bob Younce’s business

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  Obliterating “And,” “Also,” and “Additionally”

  3199 readersThe rule that you can’t begin a sentence with the word “And” was drummed into my head by elementary school teachers and my mother from the time I could write. “Everyone” knew that was wrong, wrong, wrong. For years, I wouldn’t begin a sentence with “And,” took the word out of every article I edited,

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  More Words to Avoid in Freelance Writing

  2665 readersIf this isn’t a case of attracting what you want to avoid, I don’t know what is. Since I wrote about avoiding the word “And” to begin sentences, I’ve been finding places in my articles where it’s the best transition. And so… at the risk of finding future posts peppered with adverbs, I’m going to

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  If We Collaborate, Maybe We Can Corroborate the Existence of Santa Claus

  1469 readersGrammatical mistakes and word misusage (speaking of which — is that a word? MS Word says it is…) are all around us. I always have my eyes and ears open for what those in the parenting community might call a “teaching moment.” I hadn’t thought of these particular words being confused until I heard them mis-used

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  Should You Ever Start a Sentence with “And?”

  1299 readersFor many of us, it’s one of the first grammar rules we learned: Never start a sentence with “And.” The reasoning? “And” connects two clauses. For those of you who zone out when we start using scary grammar terms like “clause,” a clause is just a group of words with a noun (subject) and a predicate. What

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  All About Adjectives

  1606 readersI recently talked about adverbs as an important part of writing. If verbs are the action – the core of our stories and articles – and nouns are the characters, adjectives are the color and style. An adjective is, quite simply, a descriptive word. In some circles, adjectives are as badly maligned as adverbs. “Flowery” prose

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  Eight easy tips for writing better blog posts

  1367 readers// It’s easy for bloggers to get caught up in community, traffic, word count, social networking, keywords and oh my gosh, the Twitter scene. You may get so caught up in the business of blogging that you might be lacking focus on the actual writing part of blogging. I’m not free and clear either. I don’t

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  Down with Deb Ng! Headline Writing 101

  2524 readersHeadlines are an important, often overlooked part of article writing. They are what prompt readers to click the link, pick up the magazine or buy the paper. Blog posts, magazine articles and news articles have unique characteristics that will be addressed individually in follow-up posts, but there are a few guidelines that apply across the

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  Let’s Get to the Action: Verbs

  2275 readersThis post is the second in my series on “parts of speech.” Workshop teachers often instruct aspiring fiction writers to begin their stories: “in media reas” (in the middle of the action). Without verbs, a story would have no action. How dull would that be? Verbs – Verbs are action words. Nouns can “do” verbs. Dogs bark. Writers have

• 10 Ways To Become A More Efficient And Productive Blogger

  883 readersLet’s face it. Blogging is hard work. If you manage your own blog, in addition to writing posts, you read and answer your comments, network with other bloggers, do proper research for future posts, use social media to promote your work, subscribe and read useful RSS feeds, engage with your readers, find and