3 Universal Rules of Good Writing

There are so many different types of writing that it’s futile trying to list them all.

Yet, there are some principles that hold true in almost every writing situation. I’m tempted to call them “Universal Rules” of good writing, in ANY language.

Here are three such rules:

Brevity. If you can express an idea in one word, do NOT use two words. Shorter is always better unless you’re writing a poem or involved in some aesthetic experiment.

For example, “I did go there” is always better than “as a matter of fact, I did go there”. Eliminate the deadwood and allow your text to breathe comfortably.

Modularity. Break down long procedural descriptions into easily digestible short steps.

Chop your long paragraphs into shorter ones.

If writing for the web, don’t be timid to post each sentence on its own line, with white space in between individual sentences.

Headers. Break up your text with bold headers and sub-headers since most people will only skim through the headers.

Headers that contain the gist of the paragraph below increase comprehension and retention.

For example, here is a good one: “How G-30 suntan lotion reduces skin cancer rate”.

And here is a not-so-good header preceding the same hypothetical paragraph: “Suntan Lotion, Sun, and Your Life”.

MS Word - Assigning Autotext to a Hotkey and a Toolbar

Imagine you have a piece of text that you’d like to quickly add to your documents no matter which document you are in, and regardless of what’s saved in your clipboard.

One solution is to assign that text to a new toolbar button as Autotext.

Here is how to do it:

1) Select Tools > Autocorrect Options from the main menu to display the Autocorrect dialog box.

2) Click and select the Autotext tab.

3) Paste (or type in) your text in the Enter Auto Text Entries Here field.

4) Click Add to have your text listed in the list box below.

5) Close the Autocorrect dialog box.

6) Select Tools > Customize to launch the Customize dialog box.

7) In the Commands tab, select Autotext from the Categories.

8) Find your text in the Commands pane.

9) Click Keyboard button to launch the Customize Keyboard dialog box.

10) Again select Autotext from the Categories and find your text in the Commands pane.

11) In the Press New Shortcut Key enter a new shortcut for this autotext.

Try not to use those shortcuts already in use. For example if you assign Ctrl+V, you’ll be reassigning a very well know shortcut for pasting the content of the clipboard to pasting your custom text. That could lead to confusion.

12) Let’s assume you physically press Control key and then the K key. The shortcut “Ctrl+K” is automatically added as your new shortcut.

13) Click the Assign button and close all windows.
Now, whenever you click Ctrl+A, Word will enter your advisory test at the cursor. You don’t have to type it anymore.

Another method to retrieve your Autotext is to place it in the Toolbar:

In the Customize dialog box:

1) Click and DRAG your autotext to any TOOLBAR you wish.

The text will be inserted as a rectangle. Anytime you click on this rectangle, the associated autotext will be automatically inserted into your text.

However, you can replace this text-button with an icon as well.

2) Select the text-button and click the down-arrow at the end of its toolbar to display the pop-up menu.

3) Select Customize to display the Customize dialog box.

4) Select Autotext from the Categories and find your text in the Commands pane.

5) With the Customize dialog box still open, click the text-button on the toolbar to enable the Modify Selection button.

6) Click Modify Selection button and from the pop-up menu select Change Button Image to display the available icon images.

7) Select an image and then select Default Style option. Your text-button will be replaced by the icon you have chosen. Now every time you click that icon on the toolbar, your autotext will be inserted at where your cursor is.

8) To delete the icon from your toolbar, select Tools > Customize.

9) Click on the icon button and drag it out of the toolbar. This does not delete the autotext from the Customize screen but it’ll delete it from the toolbar.

Freelance vs. Corporate Employment for Writers

Which way should you go as a writer? Should you try to swing it out on your own or become an employee for a company?

Here are the pros and cons for each option:

Freelancing

PROS:

Freedom. You are your own person. You don’t need to listen to any boss figure. You “eat what you kill” and some people just love that kind of life.

Variety. Freelancers work on a variety of assignments, depending on client needs. Less chance for boredom.

Money. Successful freelancers earn more than their employee counterparts.

CONS:

Need to sell yourself. You need great social skills. You have to be an outgoing warm personality to win hearts and contracts.

Need to network constantly. You need to have a deep rolodex to keep in touch with decision makers and also with your colleagues for valuable references.

No benefits. You pay everything yourself and usually at a higher rate. Freelancers, for example, pay a lot more for medical benefits since they do cannot get group rates.

Corporate Employment

PROS:

High job security. If you do your job well, you don’t need to worry where your next paycheck is coming from.

Good benefits. Corporations lavish a number of benefits on their employees including medical coverage, paid holidays, and paid training opportunities.

No marketing. Once you find a full-time job, you do not need to market yourself day and night. Your job is there waiting for you every morning.

CONS:

Lower Income. Corporate writers, even if they are at a senior level, make less than experienced freelancers.

Lack of Variety. Some writing positions can become boring in the long run. Try writing assembly instructions for wooden garden furniture day in day out for 5 years.

Lack of independence. Your fate is tied to that of your company. When the company ship goes down, you’re out there without a job.

MS Word 2003 - How to Create Customized Letters with Mail Merge

You can easily create dozens and hundreds of letters each addressed to a different person and each including customized references.

For example, you can generate a series of letters that look like these:

LETTER 1:

“B. Smith, 123 Road, Boston, MA Zip1

Dear Bob, It was great meeting you on July 23, 2005 in Cincinnati. I’d love to do business with your company Iron Works General, Inc. …”

LETTER 2:

“Coreen Brandonty, 73 Office Tower, Los Angeles, CA Zip2

Dear Coreen, It was great meeting you on February 3, 2006 in Paris. I’d love to do business with your company Tantastic Lotions, Inc. …”

Etc.

This is how you do it:

1) Fire up your Excel, create an excel spreadsheet and save it. Each variable should be a column. Read across, each RECORD will represent all the variables that you need to customize in a letter.

For example, for the above sample letters, the columns may read Name, Last Name, Street Address, City, State, Zip, Date Last met, City Last Met, Company Name, etc.

2) Switch to MS Word 2003. Create a new blank document.

3) From the main menu, select Tools > Letters and Mailings > Mail Merge to display the Mail Merge SIDEBAR on the right side of your screen. Word will automatically display the Mail Merge TOOLBAR on top of your screen.

4) Click Next to go to the next sidebar screen to start your letter.

5) Select the “Use Current Document” radio button.

6) Click Next to go to the next sidebar screen and select your “recipient database.”

7) Click BROWSE in the sidebar to find the Excel sheet.

8) Click Open. Click through the prompt windows to select the appropriate table(s) and variables. Your spreadsheet should now be listed in the sidebar under the “Use an existing list” section.

9) Click on “Edit Recipient List” and then click OK in the “Merge Mail Recipients” dialog box.

10) Click Next to go to the next sidebar screen to start WRITING your letter.

11) Start typing your letter on the blank page. When you come to a VARIABLE that should change from one recipient to another, click More Items in the sidebar to display the Insert Merge Field dialog box.

12) Select the variable that you’d like to insert into your letter and it will appear as a place holder in between a pair of double-chevrons, depending on the way you have named your columns in the Excel spreadsheet.

13) Repeat Step 13 as many times as necessary as you type your letter.

14) When you finish, click Next to preview your letters.

15) You can now preview your letters one at a time by clicking the Front and Back arrows in the sidebar.

16) Click Next to complete the merge and print the merged letters. At this stage you can also edit the individual letters to add your own customized flourishes and notes.

And you are done! Congrats. Now it’s time to mail them.

You can create individual labels, envelopes, directories and even e-mails following the same steps and selecting options appropriate for the kind of mail-merge you have in mind.

This is one well-tested and bug-free MS Word feature that in my judgment beats OpenOffice’s mailmerge functionality which crashes often.

MS Word - The "Da Gates Code" of Hidden Paragraph Markers

Have you ever wondered why you cannot edit just the way you want to edit a selected numbered list item in MS Word?

Were you ever frustrated by your inability to change the step numbers from, let's say, plain-black to bold-red and then to italic-green (without changing the body text) no matter what you tried?

All that maddening difficulty is due to a "secret style principle" built into the very code of MS Word. If you do not know this secret (and it really is no exaggeration to call it a "secret") no matter what you do to the text of a numbered list item, you will not be able to change the styling of its number. Or conversely, sometimes you'll see "weird" changes that you do not want and can't get rid of!

Here is the secret that will save you untold hours of frustration in the future:

In MS Word, the paragraph style information is embedded not in the paragraph itself but in the PARAGRAPH MARKER! How's that for a surprise?

Therefore, unless you select the paragraph mark that FOLLOWS a listed step, you will not be able to change properties of the list number easily, in a controlled manner.

What is a paragraph mark? It is the character that looks like the Greek letter "Pi." Also know as the "hard return" marker, it is created automatically every time you hit the Return (Enter) key on your key board. If you are using the Word without turning on your text markers you won't see the paragraph markers and you will not know what to select to change the styling of your list numbers.

Thus it is good practice to always have your paragraph markers turned on when you are working with Word.

By only selecting the paragraph marker that follows a numbered step you can assign a different font color from the font color drop-down list and thus have each step start with a differently-colored number while the body text remains the same. How cool is that to impress your friends and clients?

MS Word -- Slick Word Link in a Blink

You can insert HTML links to your MS Word documents in a split second.

1) Select the target word.

2) Press CTRL and K keys to launch the Insert Hyperlink dialog box.

3) You can link the word selected to an existing file or web page, a bookmark within the same document, an e-mail address, or to a new document. Click the appropriate button in the LINK TO navigation bar.

To link the word selected to a web page or online document, click the Existing FIle or Web Page button in the navigation bar. Then, enter the URL of the page (either somewhere on your server or out there on the Internet) in the ADDRESS field. For example, you can link any word you like to www.cnn.com so that when you click that word you'll be able to read the latest news.

Note: for external web sites do not forget to start the URL with "http://"

To link the word selected to a bookmark, click the Place in This Document button and then select a bookmark from the list of bookmarks displayed on the right.

To link the word selected to a new document, click the Create New Document button and follow the directions.

To link the word selected to an e-mail address, click the E-mail Address button and fill in the associated fields.

4) Click OK and you're done. Now when you click on your word, things will happen, depending on the way you set up your link.

5) To remove the link, select the word and press CTRL and K keys to display the Insert Hyperlink dialog box. Click the Remove Link button and it's gone.

Congrats!