Business is down. Costs are up. Driving new business with winning proposals has moved up the priority list from “good to do when I have time” to Must. Do. Today.

Milliseconds before sending an email, you spot an error. You addressed it to the term instead of team. Your group will understand, but this small error is a hiccup for your readers and sets a tone[...]

Writing is a tough job, and most of us need to do it: according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, 73.4 percent of employers want a candidate with strong written communication[...]

Requests for proposals are receiving record numbers of applications, so you need to stand out. After all, you’re confident your solution is the best fit. But sending in your shiniest marketing[...]

Ten years ago, I was among the editors and grammatical hard-liners who fought against using pronouns such as they, them, and theirs as singular. I insisted, “They is plural! It can only apply to two[...]

Just as important as your brand, your writing style—tone, common abbreviations, punctuation usage, etc.—provides a consistent voice for your business. But who owns your company’s writing style? Maybe[...]

Being an editor or writer is like being a gardener of words. I weed sentences, cultivate paragraphs, and landscape pages. That’s why I think it’s easier to visualize the undertaking of a[...]

In the first articles of this series, we talked about the two most important documents in applying for a job: the résumé and the cover letter. But what about other stuff like references, samples,[...]

We recently posted job ads for open positions, and each ad brought in more than 200 applicants. That is a lot of résumés for a small business to go through! That’s why you need to make sure yours [...]

My first résumé out of college had a decorative wheat stalk on it. And yes, “Why?” is the correct response to that. My twenty-one-year-old self liked the look of it, but this design element confused[...]

Have you already finished the sentence from the song? …round and round, round and round, round and round.

In the readability series so far, we’ve explored the differences between physical and conceptual readability, the importance of audience and context, and the value of making good assumptions.

Welcome to the third article in our series on readability, which deals in assumptions.

The second article in our series on readability centers on the context in which readers encounter your writing. A writer or instructional designer’s approach depends on whether an audience reads the[...]

My favorite thing in the world is spending a lot of time writing beautiful content, then publishing something impossible to read.

In case you missed it: Check out the original Word Nerd blog with basic Microsoft Word tips.

Crafting great marketing messages is a study in psychology. A good message tells customers they need a product or service. A great message makes connections. It creates dissatisfaction with the[...]

A wise boss* once told me that a good editor is like a Swiss army knife, armed with multiple tools for many situations. As an editor at McKinnon-Mulherin, I have a pocketful of tools polished and[...]

Nobody on a proposal team likes the editors—those nagging grammarians who hack up your prose. Why, you could find mistakes as well as they do—better, in fact—if you had the time. Remember, proposal[...]