Posted By Emily Warn on May 17, 2012
Twitter is overwhelming. Twitter is noise. Twitter is the definition of TMI.
How many times have you heard people say that? I won’t argue with them. Twitter is all of the above if you don’t know how to join the conversation. And that’s all Twitter really is: a captivating discussion that at any given moment can be entertaining, informative, intimate, playful, impassioned, boisterous, or deadly serious.
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Posted By Emily Warn on April 12, 2012
P's and Q's of Editing
© 2012 Cynthia Hartwig
I can say with complete confidence that all editors learn on the job. Some add tabs to The Chicago Manual of Style, while others dog-ear sections; my favorite one covers the use of quotations. Most of our bookshelves are weighed down with reference books and at least one dictionary. Then there’s the daunting task of learning to use the many copy-markup tools in Microsoft Word or other word-processing programs.
Lucky for us, leading editors and toolmasters offer their advice on blogs and websites. Here are three that we find particularly useful.
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Posted By Cynthia Hartwig on April 3, 2012
You might be surprised to know that headlines are lazy. They often lie dank and listless without an interesting visual.
Take it from me—a former ad agency creative director with more years of experience than I care to admit: almost any headline can be saved with a great image.
“Real” copywriters—not the Copyblogger hacks, but the kind who work for creative agencies such as Wieden + Kennedy (the agency that gave us Chrysler’s “Imported from Detroit” campaign) and BBDO-Taiwan (the agency that created the Melchers Travel ad below), have used this technique for eons.
They combine intelligent headlines with visuals that complete the idea.
Let me break it down for you. In this ad for Harley-Davidson created by Momapropaganda, you, the reader, have to “get” that the six-year-old we’re looking at is a tattooed and bitchin’ Harley rider in the making.
Momapropaganda let its photo of the Harley-Davidson buyer in the making do most of the heavy lifting.
Posted By Emily Warn on March 24, 2012
Author and Blogger Rebecca Agiewich
Blogging, like any form of writing, is a very personal endeavor. There is no one right way to make your blog compelling. What is most important is that you create the blog that is right for your needs and your audience’s needs.
But there are a few elements that are crucial to all successful blogs. Whether you’re writing about parenting or Disney, scholarly publishing or grammar; whether your tone is chatty, snarky, profound, or irreverent—here are my top four blogging “musts.”
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Posted By Emily Warn on March 12, 2012
VIDA's count shows that at major literary publications, including The New Yorker, it's better to be a male author if you want to be published.
Posted By Cynthia Hartwig on March 1, 2012
© 2012 Cynthia Hartwig
I just read an interesting, well-written blog post. Intrigued, I checked the writer’s About page to learn more about her before I subscribed to her blog. Here’s how she rewarded me:
“I hate to talk about myself because I never know what to say. If I have to talk about myself, I feel like I’m bragging.”
Seriously? I come to you with a desire to know more about you, and all you can say about yourself is that you’re embarrassed? The old creative director and brand consultant in me wanted to howl.
Posted By Emily Warn on February 18, 2012
“I have been complimented many times and they always embarrass me; I always feel that they have not said enough.”
–Mark Twain
Imagine if Mark Twain optimized his content to show up high in Google rankings. (Or, for that matter, imagine if he thought of writing as “content”!)
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Posted By Cynthia Hartwig on February 12, 2012
I’ve been an advertising creative director for more than thirty years so I’ve seen plenty of great headlines. There’s a snap and crackle to a solid headline; a good one makes you smile; the truly great ones make you sit up to read more. Unfortunately, the blogosphere settles for a lot of lank and dank heads that lie spineless on the page. If you want to get read, the single-most important thing you can do is improve the way you get attention.
An example of an attention-getter headline (dare you not to click this one)!
Posted By Emily Warn on February 2, 2012
Pollinate or Pollenate?
Posted By Cynthia Hartwig on January 29, 2012
An environmental portrait of Dr. Arnie Smith while he was chief scientist at Seattle Biomed
© 2009 Cynthia Hartwig
