(www.inkthinkerblog.com) — In Saturday’s Washington Post, Jonathan Yardley discussed his relationship with “style,” which, he said, is not a word that describe the newspaper industry’s “ungrammatical, unlovely attempts to compress as much information as possible into as little space as possible” despite the fact that we call it “AP style.” According to Yardley, true style, real style, is something you find in Strunk & White’s Elements of Style. “I have been a Strunkaholic for almost as long as I have been a journalist, though no doubt there have been times when one would never have known it from my prose,” he said.

The language takes a daily beating, often from people who, as both Strunk and White point out, are more interested in appearing elegant and erudite than in actually being so, people who believe that pompous, inaccurate language is evidence of deep thought and noble purpose. The truth is the opposite.

Go check out the full article. You’ll be glad you did.

Contents Copyright © 2006-2014 Kristen King

Tags: freelance writing blog, freelance writing, freelance, writing, communications, strunk and white, elements of style, jonathan yardley, washington post, strunkaholic, kristen king, inkthinker

(www.inkthinkerblog.com) — Thanks to all who blogged about, linked to, spoke at, attended, and otherwise supported Saturday’s American Independent Writers seminar, Push the Electronic Envelope. (If you missed it, you can still take a look at the program.)

A couple of folks had a hard time making it out because of the weather (thank you, hurricane season!), but we still had nearly 70 in attendance on the campus of GMU in Fairfax, VA. And despite some weather-related delays, all of our speakers made it and delivered fantastic presentations.

Speaking of which, you know how you go to a seminar or conference and some of the presentations are just duds? We didn’t have a single one of those on Saturday. Hard to believe, I know, but every single speaker was a total slam dunk. As one attendee put it, “There weren’t any clinkers!”

As promised, this week, I’ll be posting PowerPoint presentations, handouts, and lists of links from the seminar’s speakers.

If you missed the event, I hope you’ll be able to make it next time! I’ll keep you posted on upcoming seminars, workshops, and conferences.

Contents Copyright © 2006-2014 Kristen King

Tags: freelance writing blog, freelance writing, freelance communications, american independent writers, aiw, inkthinker, kristen king

(www.inkthinkerblog.com) — If you hadn’t yet guessed, Branding Bootcamp isn’t about bludgeoning you with brutal sarcasm or doing a million push-ups. It’s about the conscientious development of a personal brand that feels right without limiting your potential. Last week, you brainstormed your signature. Now it’s time to implement those ideas in lasting ways.

The Three Questions

When I work with marketing and branding clients, I develop each piece of copy, each SEO plan, and each strategy with the following three questions in mind: Is it authentic? Is it simple? Is it sustainable? These questions are the holy trinity of my work…because I know they work. Simply put, they’ve never let me down. Let me tell you why. [continue reading…]

(www.inkthinkerblog.com) — Thanks to my unscheduled genius blog breaking the other night, the site will be undergoing scheduled maintenance Saturday night from 8:30 to 9:30 ET to fix what I screwed up (though the links should already be working again! Woohoo!) and perform the upgrade to WordPress 2.6.1. Rest assured, I will not be doing any of that stuff. My new tech guru, Kim Woodbridge, will be taking care of the back end from here on out for all of Inkthinker Communications’ blogs and sites. Can you feel my sense of relief and gratitude? It’s huge.

FYI, today’s scheduled third installment of Erin Blakemore’s Branding Bootcamp will be posted on Monday instead. The fourth installment will be on Friday, September 12, as originally planned. If you missed the first two installments, here they are:

• Branding Bootcamp Week 1: Who Do You Think You Are?
• Branding Bootcamp Week 2: Do Your Insides Match Your Outsides?

See you next week, when things are back to normal! And you can look forward to meeting Kim then, too.

Contents Copyright © 2006-2014 Kristen King