Copyright 2004 by http://www.organicgreens.us and Loring Windblad. This article may be freely copied and used on other web sites only if it is copied complete with all links and text intact and unchanged except for minor improvements such as misspellings and typos. In part 1 we covered:
The first secret of a successful business – Do it yourself until you can afford and need to hire outside help
The second secret of a successful business – Find your niche, make sure it fits what you are doing and can do, and develop it. Expand only to meet expanding demands.
The third secret of a successful business – When you need help outside your area of expertise be very, very careful. A degree in a field does not mean a person is expert in that field. Particularly true of writing.
The fourth secret of a successful business – You must know that you are at least equal to
best alternative out there….then make sure that your clients do benefit from your expertise more than they expected.
Well, glory be! We have only just begun.
The fourth secret of a successful business was first one which dealt with effective writing.
The first secret of effective writing. In this article we’ll deal with another aspect of effective writing: becoming expert. We’re talking writing here, but it equally applies to anything else which requires writing about it.
How do you create that one of 250 resumes that gets job?
How do you create that business plan that successfully raises funding money?
How do you write grant that achieves success?
How do you write an article which gets message across?
How do you create brochure that stands out from rest and is picked up? Oooops! That’s a different article – later!
The second secret of effective writing – Whatever your language – and yes, I still speak and read and write a little Spanish and a little German – is know your language and use it correctly!
There’re catchwords which’ll trip you up, especially if English is not your first language. Contractions are a fine example. Slang, even that accepted as mainstream, is a killer for an ESL (English as a Second Language) person. Hyphenated words cause problems for many, me included. Homonyms are serious pitfalls: words such as to, too and two; there, their and they’re; red and read; read and reed; site, cite and sight; write and right and copyright and copywrite (copywriting). And my old personal bugaboos, who’s and whose, and who and whom!
Even more, your punctuation will set you apart from crowd. In spoken English using right word sets you apart from people who use wrong word but you can actually slide by with spoken word and not betray your shortcomings. However, in writing you definitely need to be aware of all of above, particularly commas, semi-colons and colons.
In written English you sink your own expertise with a simple little thing like a comma fault. What’s a comma fault? Well, using a comma, which really shouldn’t, be used – lie two in this sentence! Or worse, when stringing together words in a series such as to, too, and two – a comma virtually never precedes an and.
How about using a semi-colon? This is a toughie! Generally you just should never use semi-colons. Then, when you do get to a place where neither a comma nor a colon fits, you might try semi-colon. When reading back your sentence you might also decide to break it down and make two or three sentences instead?
OK, so you’ve learned style sheets and you know how to use right word and correct punctuation – you got straight A’s in English in primary school, secondary school and high school. But hey! That was 30 years ago. How about now?
