Drop the modifiers on Facebook Strunk & White were right, says viral marketing scientist Dan Zarrella: Modifiers aren't as effective as nouns and verbs. And now Zarrella has the data to prove it. Adjectives and adverbs don’t perform as well on Facebook as nouns and verbs. Zarrella learned this by analyzing his Facebook data set to study the relationship between parts of … [Read more...] about The verb is the story
Tight writing
Six words is the new black
Summarize your story to find your focus Decades after Ernest Hemingway famously crafted a six-word story — “For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.” — to settle a bet, the six-word story format has taken off: SMITH calls for six-word memoirs. The Harvard Business Review suggests summing up your leadership style in six words. sixwordstories.net is dedicated to publishing … [Read more...] about Six words is the new black
End of story? | June 2010
"The internet has evolved a new species of magpie reader, gathering bright little buttons of knowledge, before hopping on to the next shiny thing." — Ben Macintyre, writer at large for The Times End of story? The news of storytelling’s death has been greatly exaggerated “Brothers and sisters, we are gathered here today to mourn the death of Story. As you may have heard, … [Read more...] about End of story? | June 2010
Snip your sentences | January 2010
"(Martin) Amis has loosened his belt, and his slangy, scattershot prose veers toward self-parody. Sentences are either impossibly short or impossibly long. Commas, colons, parentheses and dashes crawl all over the page like flesh-eating microbes." — Jeff Giles, senior editor of Newsweek's Arts & Entertainment section Snip your sentences How long is too long? What's … [Read more...] about Snip your sentences | January 2010
Readers want less | December 2009
"Brevity is the sister of talent." — Anton Chekhov, Russian playwright Readers want less Establish copy length limits Size does matter. All things else being equal, your readers would rather read a short piece than a long piece. In writing — as in eating, imbibing, reality TV viewing and so much else in life — it's good to set limits. In other words, establish an … [Read more...] about Readers want less | December 2009