Effective Writing

The right quote is essential when you’re replying to an inquiry from a potential client. There’s no set formula for creating a quote because each project is different. There are, however, certain elements you can include in your quote to increase its effectiveness.

Here are some tips that will make it easier for you to create a professional, effective writing quote.

One, include a header with your company name/logo and information. This is important as it shows you care about the image you present and that you are professional and know what you’re doing.

Two, use sub-headers, such as “Included Services” and “Price & Terms.” They are essential to creating a well-organized quote that is easy to follow and direct. (Continued)

A professional writing quote should be clear, concise, and informative. The goal is to tell the client exactly what you’re going to do for them and how you’re going to do it. The more detailed and professional the quote, the better chance you have of nailing the job.

Tip: for maximum effectiveness, make good use of bulleted lists, sub-headers, and a professional logo or header. Here is an example format you might use: (Continued)

If you’re looking for specific information about writing, editing, or the like, please let us know; we can probably help. If you have writing or editing questions you’d like answered, leave a comment and we’ll reply.

Recently there have been a slew of questions about writing for Wikipedia. Writing for Wikipedia is actually quite easy; here are some easy steps to follow. Keep in mind that while you can edit a page anonymously, you will be more effective if you do so as a user. Here’s how to start: (Continued)

Bad technical writing. It screams at you from every proprietary page of a comprehensive, network-enabled, specialized technology and advanced application company’s website…

What?

Welcome to the land of techno-babble. Fraught with pitfalls, sinkholes and swamps, it is a land where heavy paragraphs drag you down; sentences trip you up; your eyes glaze over strange words; and service pages provide hazy “solutions.”

Sadly, many people get lost in this land and don’t know where to go or what to do. Give them what they really want and lead them out of confusion; tell them what you do in bold, powerful language that is simple and effective.

Above all else, good technical writing must be accessible. Visitors should leave your site as customers, with a clear understanding of what your product or service does and what it will do for them.

 

A growing phenomenon in the world of words is the use of the suffix -ize. Though it’s acceptable to summarize and harmonize in good taste, there’s rarely, if ever, a reason to utilize or prioritize. Don’t smack -ize onto a noun to create a verb. It sounds worse and a better word always exists.

The word utilize is especially annoying. Use works as well or better, and it doesn’t convey the same coldness and sterility that characterizes the term ‘utilize.’ The same goes for words like prioritize and finalize.

Using the -ize suffix to create a verb immediately separates the viewer from your language. No longer is it intriguing and interestiing, but dull and hollow.  There are some words like harmonize and summarize that can be used sparingly, but please, never, ever containerize!

 

If you’re writing for the web, one of the key factors you need to be aware of is how accessible your text is to your user, otherwise known as “accessibility.” Writing should be as straightforward and intuitive as possible for your readers to ensure their continued presence on your website.

One of the worst things people do when linking to a topic is linking the descriptive words to a site without giving the actual html address. People like to know where they’re going, so do them a favor and tell them! 

Instead of: I like Johnny Depp.

Give: I like Johnny Depp (http://www.johnnydepp.com).

But if the url is useless, like http://www.geocities.com/marge/imagesjd2.html,  link the website to a descriptive title, such as:

I like Johnny Depp (Johnny Depp Fan Site on Geocities.com).

This may not seem like a huge difference, but it is. Your users waste time trying to guess where they’re going, so make it easy on them. For more informaiton on accessibility and writing for the web, check out Jakob Nielsen’s usability website.

How to use Copyscape and Google to track duplicate content

Following up on the last article, a great tool that that allows you to check if your content has been scraped off your site and used elsewhere is Copyscape.com.

You can also pick strings of words at random from several sections of your content and type them into Google (make sure you put them in quotes). This is another great way to track your material.

If your content has been taken and you’ve been penalized, or think you might be, write and ask the owners to remove the content. If they don’t, lodge a formal complaint with Google through the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. You can use it to threaten legal action and apply pressure to both the website owner and host to take the website down.

This also gives web hosts and Internet service providers a measure of protection from false copyright claims. As long as they outline certain notices and take-down procedures in their terms of service and implement them when there is a problem, they are covered in case they are unfairly accused of copyright infringement.

Originality is integral to good content creation. There are penalties for content that repeats other content, and numerous copyright laws. The easiest way to avoid this is ensure your content is original.

If you do use someone else’s work, even if you have their permission, you may still get penalized because of a duplicate content penalty. A duplicate content penalty is given to websites that Google thinks have copied original content from another source.

Unfortunately, duplicate content penalties don’t distinguish between the original content and the copied content, so be careful about letting other people use your content without changing it at least twenty percent. Google could give you the penalty even though you’re the original producer. This has to do with PageRank, and is too complicated to get into here.

Many believe that the search engines are changing this policy so that the original source is considered the site that published the content first, regardless of anything else. but until this becomes fact, don’t allow anybody to publish your content until after it has been available on your website for at least 2-3 weeks or until it has been spidered and indexed by the search engines.

There are many people who steal content and use it word for word; there’s not much you can do to avoid this, but you can track it with certain tools and take the proper action if you find someone is stealing your content. Also, put a copyright tagline at the bottom of anything you create; it can be an effective deterrent for prospective copyright violators.