December 16, 2009, Volume 3, Issue 17

With the New Year just around the corner, people are starting to think about their resolutions. We all want to be thinner, healthier and wealthier. While we can’t help you achieve those goals, we can help you become a better writer. Or at least point you in the direction of some sites that will help add WOW to your words and POP to your prose. (You’re on your own for the other stuff!)

Are you smarter than a 7th grader?

No matter how prolific or pithy you think your writing is, if people can’t understand it, you’re not getting your point across. Experts say that in order to make copy readable, it has to be written at a 7th grade level or lower. It’s the old K.I.S.S. approach: Keep it Simple Stupid! But how do you know if your writing is too lofty? Check-out ADDEDBYTES. Paste your text into the box and it generates a readability score based on six different readability formulas. It takes these scores and then averages them out to what grade level your writing is aimed at. For example, we plugged in our opening paragraph and came in right at a 7th grade level. Better tone it down a bit, eh? Try it next time you’re writing you may be surprised.

Visualize Yourself As a Better Writer!

How many times have you drawn a total blank when you’ve needed another word for something? Us too. And we find that the dictionary and thesaurus tools in Word and similar programs just don’t cut it. You need to be able to think beyond the obvious, branch off in different directions and follow your own train of thought to the right word. Guess what? We know the very site you’re looking for! Visual Thesaurus helps you see the relationships between words rather than just spitting suggestions at you with little or no context. A year subscription costs just $20. That’s a whole lotta words! And the site is fun too. We like the Spelling Bee feature. Neat!

Grab A Fresh Perspective on Writing

A new website called www.VocabGrabber.com is a great tool to help you see the errors of your ways in writing. This innovative new service allows you to enter a block of text into a box and hit a button that says Grab Vocabulary. VocabGrabber analyzes your text and spits back a word cloud of terms used. From there, you can click on words and see synonyms as well as how many times you used a certain word. It’s a great way to keep your writing fresh, especially if your writing is for a recurring project. No more writer’s block!

This is our last newsletter for 2009! It’s been a great year and we’d like to thank you for continued readership. If you have ideas for topics you’d like to see covered in 2010, please let us know. Until then, have a safe and happy holiday!

Happy New Year!

Wendy