Writing – Page 2

Judy’s amazing new promo

April 25, 2014 By Administrator

I recently hired Vooveo.com to create a brief, descriptive video of my business, Editing and Writing Services. They did a fantastic job. I highly recommend them. Here are two different resolutions:

Quirky Word Pairs

August 5, 2013 By Administrator

Have you ever been confused by word pronunciations and meanings? Here are a few to make your day:

CHILDISH suggests immaturity/unreasonableness.
CHILDLIKE suggests innocence/mildness/freshness.

EXPLICIT Something deliberately spelled out (contract, document, etc.).
IMPLICIT Not specific, but either suggested or necessary to meet goal.

STAUNCH (adj) means fervent,faithful, strong.
STANCH (v) means to stop the flow. Usually used re bleeding, literally or metaphorically.
These two words are pronounced the same.

SASHIMI Japanese dish of thinly sliced raw fish.
SUSHI cold rice w/vinegar, formed into many shapes & garnished w/raw seafood/vegetable bits.

ASSAULT means threat that makes person fear violence. The act or an instance of unlawfully threatening or attempting to injure another. LEGAL DEFINITION ONLY
BATTERY means violent/ugly intentional touching. The act of beating or pounding. LEGAL DEFINITION ONLY

And if you need a good dictionary, try the American Heritage Dictionary. Superb. And as with other online dictionaries, it has the pronunciation available.

Style issues: book titles on the Web

May 29, 2013 By Administrator

What’s the proper way to display the title of a book on a Web page? The traditional method of underlining makes it confusing for Web users, who expect an underlined word or phrase to be a hyperlink. Should the title be bolded? Italicized? What about quotation marks?

A lot of underlining of book titles is used in bibliographies for scholarly works, but other than that, it’s not done much on the Web. Or shouldn’t be. And it’s not used in the print world much, either. Underlining was initially used to tell the typesetter to put specific text in italics.

The latest style guides say to use italics for titles of books, films plays, and long poems, works of art, periodicals, etc. One of my favorite online style guides is The Web Content Style Guide by McGovern, Norton, and O’Dowd (2002). Another is The Yahoo! Style Guide. I recently downloaded it to my Kindle, and it is excellent.

Chicago Manual of Style, 16th Edition (2010) says (8.166) that when quoted in text or listed in a bibliography, titles of books, journals, plays, and other freestanding works are italicized and capitalized headline style. CMS also says (8.161) that titles of articles, chapters, and other shorter works are set in roman text and enclosed in quotation marks.

Here are a couple of resources that address this issue: Using Italics and Underlining, and Polished Presentations.

How to capitalize titles and headings

January 18, 2013 By Administrator

Need some help creating a website, blog, or ezine title?

Here’s the general consensus regarding capitalization of titles:

Capitalize all words with four or more letters.

Capitalize words with fewer than four letters except:

Articles: a, an, the.
Short Conjunctions: and, or, nor, for, but, so, yet.
Short Prepositions: prepositions like at, by, for, in, of, off, on, out, to, up.

Tips:

Always capitalize the first and last words in titles and subtitles and all other major words.
Capitalize the first word following a dash or colon in a title.
When a heading flows to the next line, do not capitalize the first word of that second line unless it would have been capitalized anyway.

Exceptions:

Many common prepositions function as adjectives, adverbs, or nouns. When they do: capitalize them.
Capitalize prepositions when they are stressed, e.g., A River Runs Through It. Capitalize prepositions that are used as conjunctions, e.g., Look Before You Leap.
Lowercase “at” and “to” in any grammatical function, for simplicity’s sake.

Some style guides, like APA, have a four- and five-letter rule. Capitalize all prepositions of four or five letters or longer.

Tip: avoid starting a heading with a symbol or number. Spell it out or re-cast the heading.

References used: Chicago Manual of Style, 15th Edition
Gregg Reference Manual Ninth Edition

Here is a worthwhile link: Writing Effective, Attention-Getting Headlines and Titles on Your Blog

Gregg Reference Manual Ninth Edition

If you have problems with the technical lingo on these pages, help is on the way! Go to Net Lingo or Wikipedia.