How to say “I don’t knowR...

How many of you have had a boss who expects you to know and remember everything? He calls demanding an immediate answer, yet he himself can’t remember that he asked you the same question two days ago. Saying “I don’t know” to such a boss is unwise. Doing so can make you seem unprofessional or uninterested in the question. You don’t want to end up looking like Jeff Spicoli from the movie “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.” (For those who haven’t seen it, here is the famous “I don’t know” clip from the movie.) Even more unwise is to give a wrong answer just...

Which style guide rules do you break and...

PR Daily readers love their style guides. As writers and editors, we rely on style guides to set and enforce standards for our company (or client) content or publications: Is health care one word or two? Do we use serial commas? Do we abbreviate the names of states? Though the styles guides we use (the Associated Press Stylebook, the Chicago Manual of Style, or even an in-house style guide) might have conflicting guidelines, without these guides, our content would be a hot mess. As much as we love our style guides, there are times when we are forced to put them aside due...

13 writing tips for the web

In a previous post, I wrote about my favorite book on Web writing, “Letting Go of the Words: Writing Web Content that Works” by Janice Redish. Filled with practical advice and case studies, the book is one of the best I’ve read about Web writing. This week I found another outstanding resource on writing for the Web. It’s a new report from website usability expert Jakob Nielsen, “Website Reading: It (Sometimes) Does Happen.” Using eye-tracking studies of hundreds of users interacting with websites, the report describes exactly how users read Web content. Just...

Did you mean to resign or re-sign? Words...

by Laura Hale Brockway Much has been written on PR Daily and Ragan.com about the hyphen, which I call the most tiresome punctuation mark of all time. As the “AMA Manual of Style” says, “The hyphen is a connector; it may join what is similar and also what is disjunctive . . . it divides as well as marries.” There are rules for when to use a hyphen and when not to use a hyphen, and different style manuals have different usage guidelines. Then there are the exceptions to the guidelines. And finally, when it comes to hyphens, all style guides include the catch-all...

10 fun and inspiring quotes about writin...

For those who could use a little extra inspiration this week, here are 10 fun and inspiring quotations about writing:   1. “I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”—Douglas Adams 2. “And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”—Sylvia Plath 3. “After nourishment, shelter, and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.”—Philip Pullman 4. “Tomorrow may be hell, but today was...

Hey communicators, let’s play R...

Last week my kids were playing “would you rather” in the back seat of the car. For those who’ve never played, it’s a party game that poses a question beginning with, “Would you rather…” It can be a choice between two good options or a true dilemma—one involving two equally unattractive options. Answering “neither” or “both” is against the rules. With my kids, their questions mostly involved superpowers (Would you rather be able to fly or breathe under water?); eating things (Would you rather eat a rotten egg or stinky cheese?); and school activities...

5 ways to humanize your writing

As a medical writer, it is sometimes difficult to apply the style guidelines and rules of medical writing to a general audience of writers. But recently, I was combing through the “American Medical Association Manual of Style” and I found a guideline that can apply to corporate communicators, marketers, and PR folks: “Avoid language that is confusing, depersonalizing, informal, or vague. Words and phrases that can be understood in conversation may not always translate to formal written English. Avoid language that trivializes or de-humanizes patients or...

8 great lines from “Raiders of the...

Memorial Day can mean an array of things to different people. For some, the roughly 150-year-old celebration honors both those who have or currently are fighting for our nation’s freedoms. To others, this past weekend simply meant an extra day or so off from work to grill out with family and friends. For filmmakers and movie studios in Hollywood, however, the holiday marks the unofficial start of summer, as well as the official start of the summer blockbuster season. And this summer, theatergoers have just as much to look forward to. With this year’s Memorial Day...