writing Archives - Words by a Pro

A Christmas Twist: The 12 Days of Content

Greg Hill — Mon, 24 Dec 2018 22:46:27 +0000

Greetings from Words by a Pro! We hope everyone’s enjoying the holiday season so far. But if you’re like most folks, you’ve already had your fill of holiday cheer thanks to the nonstop barrage of Christmas music that comes post-Thanksgiving. We’ve all heard these holiday tunes in stores—in coffee shops—running through our heads nonstop—for nearly […]

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The Flavours of English

Morris Vaughan — Wed, 13 Dec 2017 21:25:28 +0000

In the 1964 movie My Fair Lady, excruciatingly British phonetics professor Henry Higgins worries about the fate of the English language. “In America,” he observes, “they haven’t used it for years.” If you write or edit English prose for hire, you may be called upon to ensure a piece follows the spelling, grammar, and punctuation […]

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Misplaced and Dangling Modifiers

Susan Metzger — Tue, 20 Jun 2017 20:57:35 +0000

“Huh?” you may ask yourself. “I kinda remember hearing those words in high school English class, but I have no idea what they mean,” you may answer. The robber was described as a six-foot-tall man with a mustache weighing 150 pounds. Funny, right? What weighed 150 pounds—the robber or the mustache? This sentence reads as […]

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Flesch out Your Words: How Accessible Is Your Writing?

Greg Hill — Tue, 14 Mar 2017 21:35:24 +0000

I used to think I was a great writer. Of course, that was back in eighth grade, before I had any serious education or formal training in the craft. Back then, all it took to be a great writer (in my mind, at least) was a great vocabulary and a desire to cram big words […]

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Fake News, Alternative Facts, and the Value of Honest Content

Andrew Call — Tue, 31 Jan 2017 20:25:33 +0000

Regardless of your political opinion, it’s safe to say 2017 has already been a year worth remembering. A controversial wave started rolling in last year, and the American people are surfing its surface around the web in all different directions. Buzz terms and notable phrases like “fake news” and “alternative facts” can be seen floating […]

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How Your Language Use Influences Your Marketing Strategy

Brandon Harville — Tue, 24 Jan 2017 10:30:00 +0000

We’ve all had those insightful moments where a brilliant thought or idea rushes through our mind. It’s this time that we run to grab our pencil and paper and quickly jot down our fleeting thought. Did you ever feel like your brilliant idea became a complete flop once you put it into words? Sometimes it’s […]

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Questions for a Language Ninja: Ain’t “Ain’t” Proper?

Holly Troupe — Wed, 12 Oct 2016 00:44:46 +0000

Q: If there’s a place in the linguistic world for the words “sexting”, “twerk”, and “totes”, why can’t we finally accept “ain’t”? It’s been in common usage for centuries. When will “ain’t” finally be recognized as a legitimate word? A: Art and popular culture will never stop trying to elevate “ain’t” from its lowly state. […]

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Breaking All Some of the Rules

Morris Vaughan — Wed, 28 Sep 2016 17:24:15 +0000

The grammar police nabbed me recently. A client whose academic paper I was editing objected to one of my corrections. He pointed out that in a sentence where the subject is in the form “Not only…but also,” the verb must agree with the noun in the “but also” part. Example: “Not only language ninjas but […]

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What’s So Awful About Adverbs?

Susan Metzger — Tue, 13 Sep 2016 23:06:41 +0000

My new husband is a long-time Ayn Rand fan and has belonged to their Objectivist group for decades. I went to a meeting or two. There were some very nice, seemingly intelligent people there, yet I remained skeptical about some of their beliefs about altruism and their extreme anti-religion stance, among others. So, I thought, […]

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Copywriting Lessons from Trader Joe’s

Greg Hill — Tue, 05 Jul 2016 09:30:06 +0000

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Trader Joe’s is doing some guerrilla marketing, isn’t it? Don’t worry—the advertisers haven’t bought me yet. This has nothing to do with advertising and everything to do with me stumbling across some marketing materials that have plenty of copywriting lessons to share. Disclaimer: I’ve never shopped at Trader Joe’s. I […]

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