Spike Wyatt’s book on freelancing grabbed me from the title. ‘Going the Half Hog?’ I asked myself. Did this mean a half hearted approach to freelancing, as opposed to going all out aka the full hog? No, it didn’t. Instead this is a book for those who want to make a part time income or work part time as freelancers.

The book is subtitled Freelancing without Marketing – another draw for me. Sure I can get my writer marketing done in a short time, but not marketing at all? I was intrigued.

Going the Half Hog Contents

I found Spike’s book an easy, no-nonsense read. The contents list includes:

• How to freelance as a writer
• What you need to get started as a half-hogger
• The basics of online content creation
• The “natural marketing” alternative that takes almost no time or effort
• Where to find freelance writing jobs that suit you
• How to sort through the crap jobs and find the gems
• The major ways to earn – all with their pros and cons
• Avoiding the cheats and scams
• The editing and proofreading route to success

The Best Bits of Going the Half Hog

I knew I was going to love the book when I read the disclaimer, which stated: ‘the author has been known to talk crap’. From then on, I was clear that this was going to be a down-to-earth read with no pseudo-guru-speak – yay! And I was right.  Spike promises ‘real information with actual, explicit ideas and guidelines’ and that’s what he delivers. Among my favorite bits were:

• on what clients really want – most just want a reliable, professional writer who will produce high-quality work on time, every time
• on getting paid – Repeat after me: you deserve to be paid the same as full-time freelancers of similar talent for similar work.
• on running a writing business – There is no ‘right’ way to run a business, beyond a few simple concepts such as honesty, integrity, producing quality work and meeting deadlines
• on how to freelance successfully – Provide solutions. Create accurate specifications. Offer simple, clear contracts. Keep deadlines. Do quality work.

I also liked the 5 principles of being a good freelancer – simple rules which anyone can sign up to – and the questions you need to know the answers to when you get started. These are especially useful for new writers. New writers will also get value from the section where Spike provides a simple structure for writing articles for an online audience.

My one point of disagreement with Spike was on the importance of spelling, grammar and punctuation. He says: ‘I’m not saying that spelling, grammar and punctuation are unimportant: they just don’t have to be perfect for the majority of online media.’  I say: people notice these things, even if subliminally, and it’s important to get them right. That’s the only niggle – and I’m still prepared to recommend the book.

I know the experienced writers out there are wondering what’s in it for them. I can tell you where I learned something – in the section on scams and cheats. I’ve seen my share of writing scams, but Spike added a couple twists on them which haven’t yet come my way (probably because I stay off the bidding sites.) It’s always good to know about these things in advance.

The Verdict

Overall, I think Going the Half Hog lives up to its description:

With this unique, straightforward book you’ll learn everything you need to get started as a freelance writer, including content creation, ways to earn online, where to find freelance work that suits your skills and schedule, how to sort through the rubbish jobs and find the gems, how to avoid the cheats and scammers, a “natural marketing” alternative that requires almost no time or effort and lots more to build a solid foundation that you can scale up whenever you want.

With all that value, at $7.50 it’s not hard to see this as a good investment in your writing career.

Disclosure: I received a review copy of Going the Half Hog and I like it so much that if you click on the links below and buy it, I might earn a few cents.

Check out Going The Half Hog: Freelance Writing Without Marketing (or the Kindle edition) on Amazon.com

Check out Going the Half Hog: Freelance Writing Without Marketing (or the Kindle Edition) on Amazon.co.uk

I’m always looking for the chance to learn new things, so when American Writers and Artists Inc (AWAI) offered me the chance to review their Accelerated Program for Six Figure Copywriting, I jumped at the chance.

This course is aimed at copywriters and would-be copywriters. If you’re a writer or blogger looking to use your skills in a more lucrative area, then it’s worth considering this course. And if you’re already in the direct response copywriting game, but want to know how you can take your skills and earnings to the next level, then this course is definitely for you.

What’s Inside AWAI’s Accelerated Copywriting Course

The course is in 13 chapters (more than 500 pages) covering the following topics:

• #1 Getting Started as a Copywriter: The Opportunity & Lifestyle
• #2 Taking the First Step towards Copywriting Success
• #3 Copywriting Myths and Realities
• #4 The Secret Structure of Direct-Response Letters
• #5 Communicating with Your Prospect
• #6 Building Your Offer One Brick at a Time
• #7 Making and Closing the Deal
• #8 Why We Need Guarantees
• #9 Ready … Set … Write!
• #10 Backing Up Your Claims
• #11 Putting It All Together
• #12 Becoming a Master Storyteller
• #13 You’re a Copywriter!

There are also writing exercises and resources to go with each chapter, as well as a wealth of bonus materials. You can access these online or download the PDFs so you can peruse them at your leisure.

There are also lots more materials on the site: webinars, teleconferences, job listings and a forum – there’s seemingly no end to the resources available. And there are links to other courses too.

Looking Deeper At The Accelerated Copywriting Course

Getting back to the course itself, there is a lot of information packed inside those pages. Each section gives an introduction to the topic, provides examples (lots of them) and lets you apply what you have learned. This is not your average online course – you will need time to work your way through it. I have been reviewing it for weeks and still haven’t quite finished because it takes time to absorb the course content.

Although I’m not a direct response copywriter, I believe that I’ve already learned some techniques that will help me to improve sales pages and marketing for my own products and, who knows, perhaps one day those copywriting skills might come in handy for clients. As AWAI says: “Even if you’re not interested in becoming a professional copywriter, the selling and marketing knowledge you’ll gain from this program will help you in any business you happen to be in.”

Is It Worth It?

This course costs $397. Yes, that’s a hefty price tag, but it’s nothing compared to the cost of a college course, and considering all the additional resources you get, it’s a bargain. I’ve seen lots of criticism online of the promises made in the sales page about earnings in the tens and hundreds of thousands once you complete the course. I don’t believe that everyone who finishes the course will earn at that level (I’m always sceptical of big promises), but I do believe that some will, especially if they’re prepared to put in the effort to market their new skills. In any case, what I’ve completed so far convinces me that writers can still gain something from this course.

This course has got information that you can use right away to improve your writing, as long as you’re prepared to invest some time. And there’s a guarantee. If you buy the course and don’t think it’s wonderful – you can get your money back within 30 days after you purchase it. So what have you got to lose? I recommend that you try AWAI’s Accelerated Program for Six Figure Copywriting today. (And I’m not the only one; other writers I respect share my view).

Disclosure: AWAI didn’t pay me for the review but they did offer me free access to the course materials so I could review it. I liked the course so much that I’ve signed up as an affiliate and I’ll be devoting some time every week to completing it.

Whether you have an affiliate marketing site of your own, or you are a freelancer who has been commissioned to write copy for somebody else’s, one thing it will almost certainly need to have is reviews of the products you are aiming to promote. These serve two purposes – one, as content that can help search engines find your site, thus boosting traffic, and two, as sales copy to encourage your reader to take further interest in, or buy, the product. Here we take a look at some of the ways you can write great product reviews that will meet both of these objectives.

SEO

SEO (search engine optimization, to the uninitiated) is all about getting the best possible search engine ranking when somebody runs a Google (or other) search on keywords which are relevant to your website. You need to make sure your product reviews are optimised with keywords in the title and body which are the best and most likely match to what a prospective customer for your product might search for. What these are will vary depending on what you are promoting. If you are selling something with a particular brand and name, which people are likely to search for explicitly, then that would make sense as a keyword, perhaps in connection with keywords to do with the price of that item (“cheap”, “discount” etc.). If the name of the product is less well known you need to think about what it does, and questions it might be the answer to.

Information

If you are in an affiliate program, chances are you picked it because you believe in the product you are marketing, and even if you don’t you are going to write from a positive perspective because you want people to buy. Of course, people reading reviews are actually looking to find out how a product works and if it delivers on its promises, rather than to read a lot of sales copy about how wonderful it is, so try and give a good mixture of actual information about the product as well as the positive review element. If you are marketing computers, don’t just say that the model is the fastest and most reliable on the market, actually discuss the specs and compare it favourably to some competitors (ones it is superior to, obviously, don’t out and out lie).

Call to Action

As with any sales related copywriting, the piece should end with a call to action. This is harder to do with a review than with normal sales copy, but not impossible. You could mention that you got the product you were reviewing at a very good price because of a promotion that was going on, and urge your reader to participate in the same promotion right away. The reader needs to be told to buy, rather than just imparted with a positive overall feeling about the product.

Product reviews are really great content for any affiliate marketing site, and by following this advice you should be able to create ones that really add value.

Image: digitalart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

One of the best books I’ve read recently is Mike Stelzner’s Launch. Even though it’s not a writing book (that is to say, it’s not about technique), it’s a book every owner of a writing business should read. In Launch Mike tells you how to launch a successful business with content. As writers, content is our business and that’s why we should read it. I defy anyone to read it without having at least one lightbulb moment.

This book captivated me as though it had been a best selling novel and I devoured it within a few hours. I know I won’t have taken everything in, so I plan to go back and reread at leisure, dipping into the sections I need as I need them.

The book is subtitled How to Quickly Propel Your Business Beyond the Competition and through 9 chapters, Mike uses a spacefaring analogy to show you how to do just that. He speaks of adding rocket fuel to your launch and shows how you can put the pieces together.

Launch – Chapter Listing

The chapters are:

1. Rockets Don’t Fly Themselves

2. Starting Your Mission Plan

3. Finding Inspiration by Looking Outward

4. Leveraging the Power of Other People

5. Actively Engaging Other People

6. Making Content the Fuel of Your Marketing

7. Creating and Using Primary Fuel

8. Creating and Using Nuclear Fuel

9. How to Employ Marketing

There are also five appendices with examples of primary fuel content. If you haven’t been reading Social Media Examiner, then you’ll enjoy these. A key idea of the book is the Elevation Principle – meeting your customers’ needs by helping them to solve their problems at no cost.

Why Launch Rocks

Since I’m not a natural marketer, but really enjoy writing, the way this book was set out really worked for me. It’s almost like an anti-marketing manifesto – marketing without marketing – heaven! The most useful chapters for me were chapter 5 on engagement and chapters 7 and 8 on creating and using different kinds of content – those were a real cauldron of ideas.

If you haven’t been reading Social Media Examiner, then you’ll enjoy the content samples in the appendix that Mike uses to illustrate his points.

There’s no point in reading a book like this unless it’s going to provoke change. The guidance in this book has inspired me to revamp some of my web properties and resources (this is ongoing), and I’ll be using some of the principles in my next launch.

I highly recommend Launch. I’ve known Mike for a while, since writing a few articles for Writing White Papers back in 2006  so I’ve watched him do exactly what he talks about in this book – that’s part of the reason it’s so inspiring – real advice from someone who has done it.

Grab your copy here:

Launch – Kindle Edition (US)

Launch (Amazon.com)

Launch (Amazon UK)

Launch (Kindle, Amazon UK)

I’m always a bit sceptical about tools that claim to improve your grammar and, as a result, your writing. Maybe that’s because I’m a professional writer with an excellent command of the language and its rules. (I even know when it’s OK to break them.) But I couldn’t help but be intrigued by Grammarly, which claims to be ‘the world’s most accurate grammar checker’, so I decided to check it out. After all, it couldn’t possibly be worse than Microsoft Word’s tool, could it?  According to the site, 300,000 students as well as international business people and bloggers are using it to provide:

• 150+ Grammar Checks – Check your text for the proper use of advanced grammar rules. Get accurate error explanations.
• Plagiarism Detection – Find borrowed text before it gets you into trouble. Automatically generate references.
• Vocabulary Enhancement – Use words that make an impact. Liven up your sentences and improve readability with context-optimized word choice suggestions.
• Contextual Spell Check – Spot correctly spelled words used in the wrong context. No more embarrassing typos like then-than, to-two-too, lose-loose.

It can also check citations, and features an in-line editor.

Grammarly in Action

Here’s what happened when I put it to the test.

I pasted a 900 word blog post into the checking window, selected ‘blog post’ as the type of content I was checking, pressed the review button and waited a short time. It found 53 issues, each of which had a pop up card with short and long explanations of the grammar point being flagged. You could even vote on whether the information was useful before moving on. How many of those did I agree with? Here are the notes I made as I was going along.

• Incorrectly saw the ‘in’ in LinkedIn as a preposition at the end of a sentence – perhaps that needed to be added to the dictionary.
• Pronouns – though I didn’t agree with the error it highlighted, it indicated that I could have omitted one pronoun.
• In one sentence, it didn’t pick up that picture was being used as a verb and flagged it incorrectly.
• Grammarly correctly found one missing comma around the phrase ‘of course’.
• Then to the spell check – it didn’t recognize blogging ( in this day and age, come on! ) but at least it offered the option to assume the word was correct.
• Did plain text need a hyphen? Perhaps!
• It didn’t pick up my bullets on copy and paste so incorrectly flagged lower case letters.
• Some people might find the tips on word choice helpful, but didn’t do much for me. When I described something as beautiful, that’s what I meant, not beauteous, divine or lovely.
• Perhaps where I used good, I could have replaced it with brilliant or nifty.

Out of 53 issues, I agreed with 3 or 4, and I loved the ability to save the grammar report as a PDF.

Testing Academic Grammar

My second test was with a dissertation excerpt ( the other categories are academic essay, report, book review, research paper, presentation and business document). It found very few errors, disliked the use of square brackets and ignored Harvard referencing which is common in UK academic institutions. However, it did give examples of how to fix the references using three forms of referencing common in the US. This would be extremely useful to students, who often struggle with this area.

I performed the test again on a piece of writing I knew was flawed (I won’t say who it came from) and it correctly identified spelling and punctuation errors (though I would have loved to see some word choice suggestions. For this person, who struggles to write clearly, Grammarly definitely has some potential benefits.

Good Grammarly Features

Things I liked about Grammarly included:

• being able to see a summary report with one click – there’s a link at the top of the screen
• as much or as little explanation of errors as you can cope with
• the plagiarism checker – I checked this with a post I knew had been scraped and correctly identified it as 100% plagiarized, though it didn’t find the original source
• the fact that you can choose from several different types of documents.
• the ability to ask questions about grammar points from the review screen via a pop up form – answers appear on http://answers.grammarly.com/
• the online grammar handbook – http://handbook.grammarly.com/
• the grammar checker is better than the one in Microsoft Word, in my opinion

Who is Grammarly for?

Most of the writers I know write too well to need a tool like Grammarly, but as a teacher, I knew plenty of students and beginning writers who could have used the help. Like other tools of the type, Grammarly isn’t a substitute for knowing the rules yourself, but if you’re a poor writer, it can help you improve. A year’s subscription will set you back $7.95 a month, but there are 20% increases for quarterly and monthly plans.

As most of you know, I’m an avid reader of pretty much anything I can get my hands on. That’s why I’m always happy to review new books/ebooks that come my way. Of course, I don’t always get around to publishing the reviews quickly, but I’m working on it. Here are a couple of books I liked that crossed my desk recently.

The Smart Business Guide to Winning New Work

The Smart Business Guide to Winning New Work (aff) by Pawel Grabowski offers some great tips for beginners taking their first steps into self-employment. Small business owners and freelancers are the main target market.

The 50 page ebook is divided into several sections, answering key questions about how to market yourself in order to win new work. Issues covered include:

• What is sales?
• The three traits of a successful salesman
• The 3 characteristics of a good prospect
• Where do you find prospects

I found this book an easy read which will give those starting out plenty of ideas for selling themselves and their services. However, this is not a get rich quick book. Pawel warns readers both at the beginning and the end of the book that putting these lessons into practice in order to achieve success will take hard work – and I like that lesson best of all!

Update: The Smart Business Guide to Winning New Work will be on sale at a 30% discount on April 1, 2011 ONLY!

Guest Blogging Guide

I got this book when I signed up for Pro membership of MyBlogGuest. This is a site which automates guest posting – not in a bad way, but by providing a one stop shop for guest bloggers and those seeking guest posts to get together.  This 35 page ebook provides tips on guest blogging. It covers:

• What is guest blogging?
• Benefits of guest blogging
• What guest blogging is NOT
• How to find great guest posting opportunities
• How to approach the blog owner
• Guest blogging best practices

For me, the most useful section was a search tip in the section on finding guest posting opportunities about using wildcards to help you identify the opportunities. It’s not that I didn’t know about wildcards – I do, I do! – but Ann’s examples showed me how I could improve my searches not just for blogging opportunities but for writing work.

Those were the non-fiction books that made the most impression on me recently. What have you been reading that you’d like to share?

Authopublisher first came to my attention last year when owner Ivin Viljoen commented on Get Paid to Write Online and then offered a guest post. Since then he’s become an occasional contributor, so when he asked me to review the site, I was happy to oblige (with the proviso that I could give my unbiased opinion, of course ).

When I visited the Authopublisher site before writing this review, I was greeted by a shiny new theme which really shows off all the great content this site has to offer. I found the sidebar a bit cluttered, but that’s just a personal preference.

About Ivin Viljoen

Ivin says he’s a self publishing expert. With his first book written in three days and published within a fortnight, he just might be right. The blog is intended to help people who are looking to self publish.

The Content

Authopublisher covers a range of topics, including How tos, Blogging, Publishing, Writing Tips and the interesting WWE inspired series of posts on writing. Some of the posts I’ve found most interesting include:

• Writing Tips: How To Write Articles For Online Newsletters
• How to Find Screenwriter Jobs on the Internet and Build Up Your Profile
• Writing For Fun And Profit
• Steps to Publishing Success
• Publishing Tips: The 4-11 On The ISBN

Ivin’s also got a number of interesting videos, as well as links to competitions and interesting freelance events.

The Verdict

English is not Ivin’s first language so you may spot the occasional odd turn of phrase, but that also means that there’s very little waffle. Most of Ivin’s posts get straight to the point. When you read them, you can see that he’s not just giving you directions, but sharing his actual experience, which is important as a reader looking for reliable, tested information on self publishing. I stop by the blog to see what’s new on a regular basis and I’m looking forward to seeing how it develops. If you’re just stepping into writing and self publishing, then it’s worth a look. Check it out for yourselves!

You’ve probably seen all the publicity about the new Yahoo! Style Guide – a guide that, according to the publishers, is ‘the first of its kind to address questions about online writing’. I got the chance to look at a review copy and it certainly covers a lot of ground in six sections and about 500 pages:

• Write for an online audience (4 chapters)
• Speak to your entire audience (2 chapters)
• Write UI text, email and mobile friendly content (3 chapters)
• Manage the mechanics (3 chapters)
• Clean up your copy (3 chapters)
• Resources (4 chapters)

I got the chance to do a short  interview with Senior Editorial Director, Chris Barr, about the Yahoo! Style Guide:

Chris, why have you decided to bring this book out now?

Because there was a glaring need for this book. While excellent style guides exist for print publications, none addresses writing for the Internet exclusively, or even in depth. Two popular sellers are The Chicago Manual of Style, and The Associated Press Stylebook, each with millions in print. Neither offers much guidance for writing and publishing for the Web.

This guide started out as an internal reference on how to write “Yahoo!” and was used by Yahoo! Web content developers to attract and build audiences. Little by little the guide grew as Yahoo! ventured into new areas, and was asked for by writers, marketers, editors, programmers, community managers, and product managers. Today it provides guidance for all writers in the company network, whether they’re bloggers, video producers, reporters, newsletter copywriters, or documentation specialists.

We’re happy to share these best practices with the world because everybody benefits when content is concise and easy to read.

This book seems to cover areas that go beyond style – what’s the rationale for that?

We felt it was important to address topics like how to write for an online audience, how to develop your voice, how to write online headlines, how to incorporate SEO into Web copy, and on and on, because nobody else had. The Yahoo! Style Guide also provides lots of Internet-specific information like why you should avoid italics. Other guides tend to be a bit behind the curve when it comes to styling Internet words. For example, we’ve been using ‘website” for years, and AP just closed up “Web site” in April 2010. And they still use “e-mail” while we use “email.” Also, our usage examples are far more entertaining!

Yahoo! Style Guide will not only address overall principles of good writing and editing, but also Web-specific subjects such as:

• How to write for online reading
• How to choose the right words to bring more people to your site with search engine optimization
• Best practices for corporate and personal blogging
• How to write effective email and newsletters
• Internet law: trademarks, copyright, and defamation
• Headlines for online content
• Writing and editing English for an international audience

And the Yahoo! Style Guide has exercises where people can test their Web-writing skills.

What’s your vision for this guide?

We feel this guide is essential for anyone writing for English-speaking audiences, including businesses that are creating or improving their websites. While it may appear that businesses have embraced the Internet, Jupiter Research found that just 36 percent of all businesses with fewer than 100 employees had a Web presence (New York Times, Feb, 14, 2008,) Even businesses that already have websites need help optimizing their content for the Web and learning how to create more compelling copy, clearer email, and attention-grabbing, community-engaging blogs.

Journalists, personal and corporate bloggers, writers, technical writer, editors: Anyone who creates or edits content for websites needs to understand the unique requirements of Internet content. From paragraph length, formats, and headlines, Web content is different from what most people have been taught. All writers need to be aware of the burgeoning legal issues of online copyright, including fair use and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, to the issues surrounding user-generated content, third-party content, as well as libel and slander.

Schools, colleges, universities, journalism schools: Students world-wide can learn the best practices for Web content, which is different from traditional writing styles.

Marketing organizations, advertising and PR agencies: Every outfit that writes marketing copy, email solicitations, Web advertisements, business communications, newsletters, customer or employee communications documents require education for using this new media.

Newspapers: Especially those that are augmenting paper distribution with digital distribution.  Reporters in newsrooms are being asked to do more to attract online readers. This story from the Washington Post explains the dilemma:

“Now they must also operate in an online environment where ‘search-engine optimization’ is a key goal. That requires new skills and time-consuming additional duties. Separate online headlines must be written in a way that attracts attention on the Web. Links must be found, vetted and inserted into online stories, and so-called “keywords” must be highlighted. All of this is designed to make it easier to find Post content on the Internet and more likely for the Post to win the intense media competition to show up at the top of results lists when readers use search engines such as Google and Yahoo.”

Global English speakers: The Guide will appeal to universal English speakers, including non-native English speakers by stressing clarity and simplicity. It will point out differences between, say, American English and that used in England.

Creators of content for mobile devices: The mobile Web is one of the fastest growing areas of the Internet, especially internationally, yet there are no usage guides available. The Guide will address best practices for developing mobile content.

Web developers, designers, information architects: Many of the pages within a website contain valuable information written to help users. FAQs, help pages, error messages, and user-interface text must be written clearly can concisely. Moreover, user-generated content, and community aspects such as comments will be addressed.

Thanks, Chris. My initial look suggests that this is a useful reference book, and the exercises will help readers to really get to grips with the material it contains. I plan to hang on to my copy and check it out in more detail. There’s also a great site where you can get quick help on many common issues. If you want to buy the book, here’s the link for the Yahoo Style Guide.

I was intrigued when I first heard the title The Gettysburg Approach to Writing & Speaking Like a Professional. Written by marketing communication consultant and business writing tutor Philip Yaffe, the 288-page book is based on a course on the fundamentals of good writing and speaking given to students who don’t speak English as a first language.  Don’t let the 288 pages stop you from reading it. The Gettysburg Approach is an easy read, divided into three main sections.

• Fundamentals Of Good Writing (55 pages)
• Oral Presentations: Giving Voice To Your Words (43 pages)
• Appendices

The reason for the title is that Yaffe says that Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address demonstrates all the principles of clear writing that are described in the book.  If you’re interested, he shows you how in one of the appendices.

Writing Fundamentals

However, I was more interested in the writing advice.  Some of the sections that stood out for me in the writing section included:

• the essentials of a good argument
• the difference between expository and creative writing, and creating the right mindset for each
• the purpose of expository writing
• how to make writing clear and concise (Yaffe gives formulas you can use to remember the principles he outlines)
• building your text, sentence by sentence
• using the inverted pyramid (which happens to be one of my favorite tools to explain article structure)

There are exercises and examples to illustrate each point, as well as an extremely useful summary table on expository writing.

The best quote in this section is:

So what distinguishes professional writers from non‐professional ones? You may be tempted to say “natural talent.” This no doubt plays a role, but only a minor one. The real difference is in how professionals go about their work — their attitudes, methods, practices and procedures.

Advice on Speaking

In the section on better speaking, some of the principles in the first section are repeated to show how these relate to speaking. Yaffe highlights some important differences between written and spoken language and has some interesting tips on using body language to enhance the effectiveness of public speaking and on designing slides.

Finally, the appendices give exercises, analysis and revision of the principles involved. This is a meaty section, but you can pick the areas that interest you most and just work on those.

What I Thought

I enjoyed the book, which was written clearly, with particular interest in the section on writing. Most people could improve their writing using the tips here and it’s written so that anyone can understand and apply the tips.

I leave you with Yaffe’s Law about good writing:

If you give people what they want first, they are  likely to accept anything else you want them to  have. If you give them what you want first,  chances are they won’t accept anything at all.

The Gettysburg Approach to Writing & Speaking Like a Professional is available on Amazon.

100 Writing Mistakes to Avoid is the first book to come out of Daily Writing Tips, owned by Daniel Scocco, of Daily Blog Tips fame. Authored by Maeve Maddox, chief  editor on the DWT site, the 45 page ebook offers ‘a practical guide to 100 common mistakes of spelling, usage, grammar and punctuation’. Since I’m a bit hung up on these things (and used to write for DWT once upon a time), I could hardly wait to dive in.

A Time Saver For Writers

The short introduction lays out the purpose of the book – to save writers time by giving them a quick way to identify and avoid common errors in written English.  I was pleased to see that the book included information on British and American usage, where this differed,  as well as points of contention, all of which are indicated with asterisks. Be warned, this is not the place to go to learn grammar – it’s intended for those who are familiar with common grammatical terms.

What’s Inside

100 Writing Mistakes to Avoid is divided into four sections: spelling mistakes, usage mistakes, grammar mistakes and punctuation mistakes. The layout is simple and clear. There’s a number followed by the words and expressions being discussed (in red), examples of incorrect and correct usage, followed by a couple of sentences giving meanings or explanations.

This book is for you if you’ve ever wondered:

• what the rule is on article use before an acronym
• which verb form to use with ‘either’
• whether you can end a sentence with a preposition
• where to put commas (there are several points on that in the final section).

There’s just one thing that would make 100 Writing Mistakes to Avoid even more useful: a clickable index of all the points, so I could easily go straight to the one I want to research.

How I Will Use It

Truth to tell, I don’t have many problems with the issues raised here, but there’s always that moment when you have a moment of self-doubt.  This book will make it easier to identify and avoid mistakes which might make our clients think less of us. As a British writer who often writes for an American audience, it’s useful to have guidance on a few stylistic points that may feel wrong to me but may be right for my readers.

100 Writing Mistakes to Avoid is available from Daily Writing Tips at $19.99.