↑
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to content
  • Skip to footer
Follow @thewritetips

Executive Writer

Business Writing Training and Business Writing Workshops

  • Home
  • About
  • Workshops
  • Newsletter
  • Reviews
  • Blog
  • Contact

Blog

Blog

Our blog explores all aspects of writing and proofreading, and passes along effective business writing tips. Do you have questions or concerns about workplace writing? Then join our discussion!

Word of the Week: Umbrage

Posted on 12.24.18 | Leave a Comment

Umbrage means a feeling of resentment after being slighted or insulted.

For example, “When the client mockingly inferred that Keith’s sales figures were inflated, he took umbrage at the remark, turned and walked away.”

Word of the Week: Mordant

Posted on 12.17.18 | Leave a Comment

Mordant means showing a sharp or critical quality, biting.

For example, “Keith refused to work with the intern because he did not like the intern’s mordant sense of humor.”

Word of the Week: Verbose

Posted on 12.10.18 | Leave a Comment

Verbose means wordy, using more words than necessary.

For example, “Keith’s response to a company inquiry of his excessive spending at a tradeshow was verbose, confusing, and misleading.”

Word of the Week: Codify

Posted on 12.03.18 | Leave a Comment

Codify means to arrange laws or rules into a systematic code.

For example, “The CEO asked Keith to codify the many different HR policies that their company implemented over the past 10 years.”

Word of the Week: Camaraderie

Posted on 11.26.18 | Leave a Comment

Camaraderie means a spirit of friendly good-fellowship.

For example, “Keith felt his team’s camaraderie gave them a leg up against the competition.”

Word of the Week: Cloister

Posted on 11.19.18 | Leave a Comment

Cloister means to cut off or seclude from the world.

For example, “While Keith was protective of the two new interns from his alma mater, he did not want to cloister them either.”

Word of the Week: Nocuous

Posted on 11.12.18 | Leave a Comment

Nocuous means harmful.

For example, “Unlike several of his colleagues, Keith felt the tweet about the company’s recent drop in the DOW was nocuous and replied with a scathing tweet of his own.”

Albert Einstein Explains the Difference Between Fools and Geniuses

Posted on 11.08.18 | Leave a Comment

Plain writing (aka, plain language and plain English) is simply another term for clear and concise writing, something writing instructors have been trying to instill in their students for literally centuries. Plain Writing has a number of definitions. One good one is: “A communication is in plain writing if its wording, structure, and design are so clear that the intended readers can readily find what they need, understand it, and use it.” But Albert Einstein—a plain writing master long before the term was coined—made a keen observation that applies to writing and just about every other human endeavor: “Any fool can make things bigger and more complex, but it takes a touch of genius to go in the other direction.”

Word of the Week: Enigmatic

Posted on 11.05.18 | Leave a Comment

Enigmatic means mysterious; relating to or resembling an enigma.

For example, “When asked about his role in the practical joke played on the HR manager, Keith simply gave an enigmatic smile and left the room.”

Is it one space or two after a sentence? One! Here’s why.

Posted on 11.04.18 | Leave a Comment

Put one space after each sentence when using proportionally-spaced fonts, which means just about every font found on a computer including the one on this webpage (notice that an i takes up less than half the character-space width of an m). Put two spaces after sentences when using mono-spaced fonts, such as Courier New and those found on a typewriter. With mono-spaced fonts, an i takes up the exact same character-space width as an m. Reading documents written with mono-spaced fonts becomes, well, monotonous, so someone long ago decided to put two spaces at the end of each sentence to make it more readable and to act as an “eye rest.” It’s hard for some people to make this change because they’ve been putting two spaces at the end of a sentence forever. But if you need final proof of this rule, open any book, newspaper or magazine: you’ll find only one space at the end of each sentence.

  • « Previous Page
  • Page 1
  • Page 2
  • Page 3
  • Page 4
  • …
  • Page 10
  • Next Page »
FacebookLinkedinYoutubeTwitter

Footer

Information

  • About
  • Workshops
  • Reviews
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Newsletter

Recent Posts

Word of the Week: Clement

Word of the Week: Venal

How to turn on the writing “faucet.”

Word of the Week: Adjudicate

Word of the Week: Myopic

Contact Us

The Executive Writer
11833 Hidden Valley Road
Sandy, Utah 84092-5735


Phone: 801-553-0906
Email: info@executivewriter.com

The Executive Writer © 2016 • All Rights Reserved • Designed by GO Marketing