Never begin a sentence with “There is” or “There are” if you can find a noun or a pronoun and a strong verb to do the job. For example, which is the stronger sentence: “There are a number of people who agree with you” or “A number of people agree with you”? These are only some of the handy devices you can use to maintain the dynamic nature of your e-mail newsletter. Read the rest of this entry »

The paragraph is the basic unit of composition. It begins with a topic sentence and then proceeds to elaborate on that. Especially, when you’re writing for the computer screen, keep paragraphs short, and format chunks of text that are manageable when the reader is scrolling through your newsletter. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’ve created your outline in a word processor or a text editor, you can simply open it and get started. All the rules for writing well apply, and in this section we’ll review some of them. Use active voice. Why? Because it’s more direct and alive. Passive voice is used by those who don’t want to take responsibility for what they’re writing, and, indeed, the first part of this sentence is in passive voice. Here’s another example: The selection of the new CFO was made public. This sentence raises some questions: Read the rest of this entry »