In this post, I’ll show you how to improve your writing by trimming unnecessary prepositional phrases. Prepositional phrases are so common that it can be difficult to notice when they’ve been overused. In fact, it’s easy to string a whole bunch of them together, creating what Martha Kolln calls proliferating prepositional phrases. Here’s an example […]
A New Focus for the Blog
I just wanted to share a brief update about what I’ll be focusing on in future blog posts. So far I’ve experimented with different topics on the blog, such as blogging, teaching, rhetoric, audience building, and writing tools. I’ve talked about the difficulty of figuring out who it is I’m writing to. And about the […]
The English Teacher Gone Bad
I just read Jane Friedman’s The Business of Being a Writer and wasn’t at all surprised by the book’s rhetorical positioning. It’s become quite familiar. Basically, it assumes that the audience, having been trained in the humanities, is resistant to the idea of learning about the business or economics of writing. This resistance must be overcome […]
5 Easy Tools for Creating Infographics
Infographics are a great tool for communicating complex data or long processes in a digestible way. The best infographics are bold, straightforward, and easy to understand; however, creating one that delivers its message boldly, simply, and easily is not always an easy task. Fortunately, there are some great tools available that can help. Before we […]
5 Blogging Mistakes: What I’ve Learned After a Year of Blogging
I started the blog section of this website over a year ago, and after some sober self-analysis, I’ve identified 5 big mistakes that I’ve made so far. My hope is that this post will be instructive for readers and that it creates some accountability for myself in applying what I’ve learned from these mistakes. Now, mistakes […]