It’s the most capitalised time of the year, with plenty of Eves and Days and News to contend with, and as you browse the internet and the shop fronts, you’ll no doubt see plenty of interpretations of how to spell them all. To be fair, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day tend to be capitalised properly, but it’s New Year’s Day that causes confusion, probably with good reason. Do all three words start with a capital letter? Are any words capitalised? And that about that apostrophe? Here’s your guide.
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Searchmetrics “Changes cannot be saved” error message
You know the drill. You encounter a problem with a popular app, and a quick search reveals someone else has had the same issue. That solves it. So when I was working on a document in Searchmetrics, a massive SEO tool, and this kept popping up …
… I was surprised to see not a single mention of the issue anywhere. Very strange.
The issue is in Searchmetrics Content Manager, within Content Experience. It allows you to write SEO-friendly copy by cross-referencing yours with existing content covering the same subject. The full text is:
Changes cannot be saved to an outdated version of the content. Please refresh the page to view the latest version first.
Error message, Chrome browser, Searchmetrics, Windows 10
Well, I finally got to the bottom of it, and it turned out to be down to an annoying habit of mine that I can’t shake off.
Continue readingMy top twelve English corrections
English is always changing, so today’s common corrections can easily become tomorrow’s accepted forms. It’s precisely how we’ve arrived at where we are now. But there’s a core to the purpose of any language, and that is that we all understand it so we can communicate. We accept variations from the mean, but stray too far and meaning can change. Some people say we don’t need apostrophes as the meaning is always obvious from the context. I’d say that’s true 99% of the time, but there are always borderline cases where it can cause confusion, so it’s better to have a rule and accept that it might sometimes be disobeyed (wilfully or erroneously) than to simply abandon the rule altogether.
Continue readingWhat page am I on in Google Docs?
If you’re used to using Microsoft Word and glancing down to the bottom of the screen to see where you’re up to on a document, you’ll know how simple and intuitive it is:
Similarly, with Adobe Acrobat, you just have a quick look at your dashboard to get the page number:
But when you’re on Google Docs, there is no such counter active on the screen. So how are you supposed to find out what page you’re on in a document? It’s not immediately obvious, but it’s simple when you know how. On desktop computers, you just hover the cursor over the scroll bar on the right to see this pop up:
And there you have it. You’ll also see the current page number in the same place if you use the scroll bar to move through the pages, but that’s not much use if you just want to see the number of the page you’re working on.
Continue readingShould “however” have a comma after it at the start of a sentence?
It’s a debate that can split editors and writers: which of the following is right?
However some people disagreed with the move.
or
However, some people disagreed with the move.
For me, it would always be the second option, for two reasons.
Continue readingGoogle my Busy-ness
Regular blogging is, we are told, essential for gaining and maintaining search ranking. Not only are we providing more content to help the search engines to find us; we are also showing we’re still a going concern, and talking about our work and our industries.
But what happens when we’re just too busy to maintain a blog? It’s something that never really occurred to me when I was re-starting my freelance career after a spell in employment. I did have time on my hands to think up blog ideas, research them, write and edit them, add images and submit to my Google my Business page.
Then I got super-busy.
Continue readingHarry Potter in 500 words: the importance of including research time
I’ll never forget the day a client asked me how long it would take to write 500 words of copy. I said it depends on the subject, but generally speaking, we’re talking somewhere in the range of 1 to 3 hours.
“Cool,” they replied. “I want you to summarise the Harry Potter books in 500 words. Three hours sounds about right.”
“Ah,” I replied. “I’ve never read any Harry Potter books.”
“Well, just skim through them and get me a 500-word summary by tomorrow. Otherwise we’ll drop you and find someone who can. Cheerio.”
The truth in fiction
Of course, none of that happened. But the inner truth is sound – the end product of a copywriting job is just the visible part of a much greater task. You can see instantly that reading the seven Harry Potter books’ 4,000 pages would be part of the job, not just the 500-word bit. Some companies get it; others don’t. But unless the time required to fully research a topic is granted in terms of deadline and fee, the end product won’t be very good.
Continue readingWhen does proofreading become copy editing, and editing copywriting?
All proofreaders have been asked to perform a quick proof, only to realise the job is more than correcting apostrophes. And all editors will have edited a job so much that a re-write would have been better. I’ve already covered the differences between proofreading and copy editing, but what happens in those grey areas?
Continue readingColons and semicolons: how to use them
Colons and semicolons are easy to confuse, and in my work as a proofreader and editor I see them misused daily. I’ll just go through the uses of each here.
Continue readingHow to reduce word count (or letter count) in a document
A relatively common task assigned to copywriters and editors is reducing word count or letter count. The motivation is usually:
- aesthetic (making the copy fit on the page more pleasingly);
- restriction (where certain counts are mandatory or advisory, for example in tweets or meta descriptions, or perhaps to make sure a booklet is exactly 32 pages long);
- simplicity (where the original is technical and heavy-going, but needs a simpler rendering for a general audience); or
- for readability (simply shortening rambling text to make it shorter and quicker to read).
Although the reasons for shortening copy might differ, the end product is consistent: to say the say thing with fewer words. Let’s have a look at how to do it.
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