I couldn’t help but chuckle at this recent story from The Boston Globe on the overuse of exclamation points.

Remember when email first came into prevalence? I do. Suddenly writing in all caps meant you were virtually yelling at someone. Typing made it easier to EMPHASIZE YOUR WORDS in a way that handwriting just couldn’t. With a quick touch of command + b, u, or i your words could be bolded, underlined, and italicized. Fancy!

Christopher Muther, the author of the piece I read in The Boston Globe, blames two men with the overuse of exclamation points in society today.

In 2008, they wrote a book called “Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home.” It created a minor sensation, partially because the authors condoned the use of exclamation points.

“ ‘I’ll see you at the conference,’ is a simple statement of fact,” they wrote. “ ‘I’ll see you at the conference!’ lets your fellow conferee know that you’re excited and pleased about the event.” –Christopher Muther

One Boston University psycholinguist quoted in the story says that exclamation points can “mitigate the brusqueness of a brief reply by indicating the writer’s enthusiasm, sincerity, surprise…”

I recently wrote a blog post on the perils of email communication where I was involved in a situation where my brief email replies were misconstrued as rude by the recipient. I wonder, now, if I had included a bunch of exclamation points, or, heaven forbid, smiley face emoticons, at the end of my sentences if they would have softened my message. I’ll never know.

I run a blog where I publish stories about weddings in Maine. Photographers submit photos of a particular wedding, and the bride fills out a questionnaire about their big day for their blog post. These questionnaires are consistently dripping in exclamation points.

I get it. Your wedding day is exciting! You’re marrying the man of your dreams! It really is a dream come true! But I omit most of these exclamation points in the blog posts because, well, all the excitement is kind of hard to swallow. Continue Reading

I am a lucky freelancer—I have my own home office and no kids (well, at least not yet) to worry about. And my job means I don’t have to sit in my office, day after day, until I can’t stand it anymore. I get to go out and meet interesting people to interview and take photos. However, not everyone can work this way.

Some of you don’t have a home office, or any office, to work in. You have to work wherever you can, be it the couch, the kitchen table, or in the basement. Finding a quiet space can be difficult if you have a family. And not having anyone to bounce ideas off of can be maddening, too.

That’s why I liked this article posted on Men With Pens about the best—and worst—places to write.

If you have to get out of the house due to cabin fever, loud teenagers, or you just need a new environment to spark creativity, there are places where you should and should not go. Continue Reading

I require my undergraduate journalism students to buy two books to keep by their sides at all times. One of them is the AP Style Book; the other is called When Words Collide: A Media Writer’s Guide to Grammar and Style.

I can’t tell you how much I love my When Words Collide book; I use it all the time. I’d like to share some information with you about one of my favorite chapters in this book. It’s called 10 Little Secrets, 10 Big Mistakes—and the information is useful if you aim to be a better writer.

Secret 1: Read

If you don’t like to read, you can’t possibly love to write. The two go hand in hand. I have always been a voracious reader. I love fiction as well as nonfiction and I’ve been lucky enough to study a handful of classics in literature in both high school and college.

Language is an amazing thing—and you can’t really work on building your own voice without listening to others. Other writers are the best examples of how to do things well—and not so well. Read widely and often. Continue Reading

Dave Copeland of ReadWriteWeb talks about what I preach to my journalism students every week in his blog post titled “Want To Save Journalism? Start At The Bottom“. It’s not enough to just be a good writer or a good photographer these days—you have to be good at everything.

“When I started out as a journalist in the early 1990′s, being a good writer or a good reporter or a good photographer was usually enough to land a good entry-level job in print. That model doesn’t cut it anymore: now students need to have all those skills, plus an ability to work in a range of content management systems. Being able to edit video and audio and being fast enough on your feet to file a broadcast from your smartphone doesn’t hurt, either. Oh, and don’t forget all those crucial social media skills that colleges are not stressing enough.” —ReadWriteWeb

My undergrad alma mater, like many other universities and colleges around the nation and around the globe, started a new media track in the 2000s to help train students for jobs in the digital world. Not solely journalism, or film, or marketing— these new media tracks focus on creating and producing video, web sites, audio files, film, and much more for an audience that gets their news and information from more than just traditional news sources.

At the recent Spring College Media Convention in New York City, college students participated in workshops that touched on many aspects of journalism. Some of them were:

• Website Revolution: Rake in Readers, Tame the Flames, Land a Hot Job
• Phone Alone: How to be a Multimedia Journalist With Whatever’s in Your Pocket
• Brand Me: Using Social Media to Brand Yourself & Your Newsroom
• Video Basics and Beyond: You Don’t Need to be a Final Cut Pro to Make Your Multimedia Amazing

Sure, all of these things are important to know for a budding multimedia journalist. But what about WRITING!? I’ve taught at two schools—one a state university and one a small, private media college. The writing that comes out of these students is usually abysmal. And if this is the way journalism is heading, we should be scared. Continue Reading

When I was in journalism school (in both the late 1990s and mid 2000s), the AP Stylebook was our bible. We didn’t go to class without it and frequently had quizzes and assignments built around it.

I recently wrote a blog post about the future of journalism and how astonished I was to learn that my undergraduate journalism students were never made to even purchase their own copy of the AP Stylebook, let alone use it.

If you are going to write for a newspaper (even some magazines) you need to have your AP Style Guide handy. And the more current the style guide the better. So when I found this article at Ragan.com about frequently botched AP style points, I thought I’d share them. Continue Reading

Before I discuss writing for a content mill, it’s best to determine exactly what a content mill is. And, depending on who you ask, they will probably have a different definition.

Content mills (or farms) have been around since the 90s. The Center for Digital Ethics & Policy have described a content mill as having these characteristics:

• Low hiring standards for freelancers
• Low pay for freelancers
• Large stables of freelancers
• Lack of an editorial process/insufficient quality control
• Extraordinarily high volumes of articles

Sites that have been labeled as content mills include Associated Content, Suite 101, All Voices, and Demand Media.

So how do these content mills work? Their goal is to attract online readers by publishing a vast amount of written articles across a wide variety of topics. They also push writers to use SEO techniques to boost their ratings on search engines, such as Google.

Quality vs. Quantity

You know the old saying, “quality vs. quantity”? Content mills are all about quantity, and quality writing, editing, and payment for such work fall to the wayside. You don’t need to have any sort of degree or previous experience to write for a content mill. It’s citizen journalism at the most basic level. Continue Reading

Do you have to write a press release? It’s not as easy as you think. Writing headlines for anything—be it a press release or a story—is one of the hardest things to do.

The thing with a headline is that you have to create something that signifies what you are writing about while being clever, concise, and exciting. If someone doesn’t like or connect with your headline, they probably aren’t going to read your story.

There are editors out there whose job it is to create headlines. It’s what they’re good at. I am not one of these people.

One of my favorite parts of NBC’s The Tonight Show (which I am rarely awake to watch at night) is the part where Jay Leno shares some of the worst headlines with viewers. Here are some doozies:

• County to pay $250,000 to advertise lack of funds
• Brain gain: Additional schooling may boost IQ levels
• New sewer line is breath of fresh air
• Freetown residents living with odors at Crapo Hill
• Unanimous decision unopposed

Pretty bad, huh?

Sometimes, with the urge to be clever, the headline makes the writer look really, really stupid. Continue Reading

I’m a writer. I like words. I also hate words. What people say in daily conversation rarely makes sense on paper. Using acronyms and emoticons are infuriating—especially to an editor.

Here’s an example: I teach undergraduate journalism courses at a couple of universities in the area. I once had a student hand write me a note and used a colon and parentheses to create a smiley face at the end of her letter. How did shorthand typing evolve into writing?

Another pet peeve of mine is when I get emails (usually from college students looking for an internship) using strange shorthand and emoticons. Talk about unprofessional!

I recently wrote a post listing words that should be banned in 2012. I’ve found en even better list on PR Daily by Arik Hanson on 28 shorthand words to eliminate from our lexicon forever. I had to share—and add my own two cents of course!

“29 terms we obvi need to totes elims from our lexi forevs.”

Did you understand that? Don’t worry, you’re not alone.

I know we’re turning into a texting culture full of shortened and unintelligible words. But we’re destroying our language. At some point, we need to draw a line in the sand. Today’s the day. —PR Daily

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I was tickled when I found this list of 12 words that should be banned in 2012 on PRDaily.com. What started in 1975 as a publicity ploy at Lake Superior State University in Michigan has turned into a phenomenon.

The List of Words Banished from the Queen’s English for Misuse, Overuse and General Uselessness gets submissions from around the world. The word with the most nominations this year? AMAZING. It’s the first time the word has made the list.

Here’s a list of all 12 words (some of them are more than one word phrases) that made this year’s list, in order of the number of submissions they received:

• Amazing
• Baby bump
• Shared sacrifice
• Occupy
• Blowback
• Man cave
• The new normal
• Pet parents
• Win the future
• Trickeration
• Ginormous
• Thank you in advance

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Starting out as a freelance writer is not as easy as it appears. Learning how to become a freelance writer requires business considerations, not just writing chops.

Beyond getting out there and securing contracts, you need to be self-motivated and organized. This is a difficult transition, especially if you don’t have colleagues or friends who have been in the field and can help you along.

If you’re just starting out and hoping to make your livelihood writing, take a look at the seven tips below. Keep in mind that these are geared toward beginners who are pursuing freelance writing as a full-time job—not for those who simply do a little extra writing on nights and weekends. Continue Reading

Credit: elenathewise on Photodune

Freelancing, by definition, is a solitary existence. You probably sit at a computer most of the day, writing, designing, drawing, networking, and have little face to face interaction with peers who work in your industry.

I don’t know how you write, but I need it to be quiet to be productive. Deathly quiet. I have never been able to listen to music—even the classical stuff—while doing homework, working on a paper, or writing a magazine feature or blog post. If it’s rowdy outside my office, I shut the door, and people know not to bother me. When the phone rings, I groan unhappily. A ringing phone is my nemesis.

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Credit: Yuri Arcurs on Photodune

One of my clients, for whom I regularly ghostwrite newsletter and trade journal articles, often drafts material and then sends it to me with a request “for a little wordsmithing.” Fortunately, he has learned that what he is really asking for is a writing consultation. Over the years, I have become his trusted ghostwriting resource (See From Temporary Help To “Trusted Ghostwriter” ) and I have acquired that status largely by going beyond “wordsmithing.”

Mechanical Fixes

Like many clients, when he first started working with me, he thought in terms of “fixing” and “improving” the fine points of his drafts, working at the word level of the material. He wanted me to:

• Fix grammatical problems or particularly striking style problems.
• Suggest a better word or phrase here and there, where he was groping for the right expression.
• Recommend edits to reduce the word count to what was needed for a particular publication, or for his newsletter.
• “Punch it up” a bit, which he thought of as using sexier words for the mundane language he started out with.

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