Here’s a quick writing tip to improve your content right away. In stories, heroes fight to overcome challenges – often by confronting a villain.  Having a villain:  Think about who, said or unsaid, you’re setting up to be the villain.  Alternatives to villains:  Here’s an example:  Last week a high school student fought back against punishment from her school for…

Here’s a quick writing tip to improve your content right away. “Tell me like I’m 5” is a popular Reddit page for asking technical questions and getting accessible answers. But is it also great writing advice? No. Unless you’re writing children’s books, your reader is not a five-year-old. They are not incapable of understanding your…

Here’s a quick writing tip to improve your content right away. In standard news writing, you typically place information in order of importance, from most important to least important (the inverted pyramid).  In other types of writing, a different structure can help leave strong impact: the hourglass.  In an hourglass structure, your most important information…

Here’s a quick writing tip to improve your content right away. Pick active action words.  Pick strong, specific action words.  Common filler verbs to look for and consider replacing are: is/are/was/were; do/did/doing. You can also try looking out for action words masquerading as nouns. For example, you could notice “We are doing education,” and instead try “We educate” (or inspire,…

Here’s a quick writing tip to improve your content right away. Avoid words that unintentionally exclude.  Words like citizen, crazy or Chairman can all exclude people you may not mean to exclude – in these examples, based on citizenship status, mental health and gender. Be aware of words that exclude people based on age, disability, belief, political party, region, income, etc.  When you spot a word…

Here’s a quick writing tip to improve your content right away. You may have heard a politician facing a scandal say, “Mistakes were made.”  This sounds awkward and like they’re avoiding something. Why? It’s using passive voice.   Here’s a test for passive voice: If your sentence makes (silly) sense when you add “by zombies,” it’s in passive voice. You may want to consider revising. …