Monthly Archives: February 2018

Can you rely on Grammarly?

This entry was posted in Techniques Tools and tagged grammar Grammarly on by

Mistakes in spelling or grammar can torpedo an otherwise great article. Grammarly is a popular online tool for catching them. I use the free version regularly to check articles before submitting them. It does a decent job at catching the worst of my blunders. It hasn’t impressed me enough to go for the paid version, too. It has its quirks, being obsessive on some issues and plain wrong on others.

My cat Mokka guarding a dictionary

Mokka sternly protecting a dictionary. December 30, 2008.

If I agree with Grammarly’s recommendation, I use it. If I don’t, I leave my writing as it is, or I make a different change. But I get the impression that a lot of writers take its recommendations as Holy Writ, and I wonder how much it’s affecting writing styles on the Internet.
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This entry was posted in Writing on by | Open »

I’ve just updated my settings to create nicer-looking permalinks. Unfortunately, this has broken the existing links to all my posts. The posts are all still available from my blog page.

The soul-crushing client

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

Writers have to deal with rejection and not let it hurt too much or too long. Sometimes you write a really great piece and it’s just not what the client wants. Sometimes clients don’t make it clear what they need, or their needs change suddenly. And sometimes you have to admit you were in over your head, or you had a bad writing day and wrote a piece of garbage. It’s all part of the job.

What’s harder to deal with is the deliberately malicious client. The one who tells obvious lies just to spite you. These people claim you made errors which you didn’t make, or that you didn’t do work which you did. Many of them like to string writers along. They’ll encourage you to submit a revision and then claim you didn’t follow instructions when you did meticulously, or they’ll reverse their previous requests.
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What writers should know about HTML

This entry was posted in Techniques Writing and tagged HTML writing on by

When you’re writing for the Web, usually your material will end up as HTML. With modern online editors, you may never have to write it directly, but you still need to understand it. The formatting of your writing has a close relationship to the final HTML, however it’s dressed up.

Properly using HTML tags helps a page’s accessibility. Browsers may present the content as spoken text, with enhancements for readability, or otherwise modified. Mobile browsers will present it differently from full-sized ones. Good markup will let all representations of the page work better.

HTML markup should focus on the semantics of a document. The site will use CSS to make it look however the webmaster wants. Tags shouldn’t determine how an element looks, but what role it plays. There are several common mistakes, and they cause problems in the final page.
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