Yearly Archives: 2018

Powerful verbs: Beyond the passive voice

This entry was posted in Techniques Writing and tagged grammar verbs on by

“Carthago delenda est!” Do you think the passive voice is weak? That passive-voice construction (“Carthage must be destroyed!”) brought down a powerful nation.

Most writers at least vaguely recognize that the passive voice is often a bad thing. Fewer of them know why, or even what it is. People trying to sound smart use the term “passive voice” for many things that aren’t. It’s just one of several ways that verbs are often weaker than they could be. Let’s take a look at them and learn the differences.
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Stop being an unpaid publicist for Google!

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged Google Internet research on by

Google has accomplished something impressive. It has thousands or millions of people who regularly tell others to use its search engine. They don’t do it because they think it’s better than the alternatives. They don’t do it because they’re paid to. They do it because being an unpaid publicist for Google is a social norm. Want to show you’re smart when someone asks a question? Tell them to “Google” for it. No intelligence required.
Google is far from the only search engine around. Among the alternatives:
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Note on ContentGather

This entry was posted in Writing Writing as business and tagged ContentGather on by

If you write for ContentGather, you should be aware that you won’t get email notifications when a regular marketplace article of yours sells. You have to check the site periodically to find out if you’re owed money. There isn’t any preference setting which lets you get notified about a sale of a regular article. You can, however, get notifications about the sale of custom jobs.

This seems like a way to hang on to writers’ money longer.

Writers’ echo chambers 1

This entry was posted in Writing and tagged research writing on by

Did you know that a laptop is stolen every 53 seconds? It must be true, it’s all over the Internet! The oldest mention I can find of that factoid dates from 2009. At the time, the supposed source was the FBI, without any citation. Lately it’s usually Gartner, still with no citation.

Phantom statistics

Recently a customer asked me to include that “statistic” in an article. Fortunately, it wasn’t a requirement, just a suggestion. The customer also wanted all links to be no more than a year old, so citing a nine-year-old figure didn’t really seem like what they wanted. Even if the figure was once accurate, the theft rate is sure to have changed over the years.
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Holiday e-book shopping: Files that Last and Yesterday’s Songs Transformed

This entry was posted in My writing Writing and tagged books Tomorrow's Songs Today Yesterday's Songs Transformed on by

Here are a couple of discounts for your holiday shopping.

Files that Last: Digital Preservation for Everygeek is available at 60% off with the coupon code WZ63B. It’s aimed at any computer-literate readers who want to keep their data usable for many years.

You can get Yesterday’s Songs Transformed: A Historical Tour of Song Rewriting at 30% off with the coupon code LS92Y.

Files that Last cover

Yesterday's Songs Transformed cover

Please share this information with your friends. My book sales help to support this blog. The coupons expire December 26, 2018.

Update: I should have mentioned how you can give Smashwords books as gifts. Recipients do have to register with Smashwords to accept the gift, and there’s not much I can do about that. But if you want to buy a copy (very important!) and give the recipient the PDF, I won’t object to that. Just don’t share a single purchase, please. We writers gotta eat.