One of the simplest – and most powerful – tools you have is your brand voice. It helps people recognise you, remember you, and connect with what you stand for. 

In this post, we’ll show you how to shape a voice that’s not only clear and consistent, but easy to use across all your content.

What is a brand voice?

Simply put, your brand voice is how your brand sounds to readers. It’s not what you say, but how you say it – your tone, choice of words, and personality – and it shapes how you come across in emails, on social media or even in product packaging.

For example, a skincare brand catering to women in their 20s might joke around with its customers, while a law firm will more likely stick to sounding calm and clear to establish its authority. 

Whether you’re writing a website blurb, a product description, or a customer support reply, your brand voice helps your audience recognise and connect with you instantly.

Brand voice vs tone

People often mix up brand voice and tone, but they’re not quite the same thing. Your brand voice is your overall personality and way of speaking, and it stays consistent no matter where you’re posting. Your tone, on the other hand, can shift depending on the situation.

Think of voice as who you are and tone as how you express yourself in a specific moment. A brand might always sound confident (voice), but use a softer tone in an apology or a more energetic tone in a product launch.

Why does brand voice matter?

When it’s consistent, your voice helps people recognise your brand instantly. That’s invaluable in a market where logos and websites all tend to look quite similar.

A strong, consistent voice builds familiarity and trust, which can turn passive scrollers into loyal customers. In fact, multiple studies and surveys have shown that brands that present themselves more consistently see increases in revenue compared to those that don’t.

Beyond recognition, your brand voice helps you connect with your audience on a human level. It signals who you are, what you value, and why someone should stick around. Whether you’re aiming to sound witty, wise, or warm-hearted, a clear voice makes your message more memorable (and therefore much harder to ignore).

3 steps for shaping your brand voice

Shaping your brand voice will take a little time and effort, but it’s a relatively easy process once you know what steps to take.

1. Read your existing content

Start by gathering a few pieces of your best-performing content (e.g. blog posts, emails, social media captions, product pages) and read through them carefully. 

While you’re doing this, ask yourself: What does this sound like? How does it make people feel? Look for patterns in the words that you use, the length of your sentences, your tone, and even the reading “level” (i.e. could it be understood by a grade 3 reader or would you need a degree to follow it?).

Next, try to sum up your current voice using three descriptive words. For example:

• Friendly, helpful, upbeat
• Confident, professional, authoritative
• Warm, grounded, honest

This exercise helps you capture what’s already working so you don’t reinvent the wheel. A sudden shift in voice can feel jarring to your audience, especially if they’ve come to expect a certain sound from your brand. 

Building on what you already have keeps things feeling natural and consistent.

2. Understand your audience

To shape a brand voice that resonates with your audience, you need to know exactly who you’re speaking to.

If you haven’t already, create two or three simple buyer personas or fictional profiles that represent your ideal customers. Include details like age, job title, goals, challenges, and what kind of content they engage with.

Once you’ve built those personas, ask yourself: What kind of voice would speak to this person? A B2B audience might respond best to a voice that’s clear, concise and authoritative. But if you’re selling baby products to new moms, a softer, more encouraging tone might feel more supportive and relatable.

The goal isn’t to copy your audience’s language, it’s to meet them where they are so that your content feels like it’s written just for them.

3. Create your guidelines

Once you’ve pinned down your brand voice, document it. This makes it easier for you – and anyone who might create content for you – to stay on brand. 

Start with a simple chart that lists your three core voice words. For each one, add a short description of what that word means in your context. For example:

Be sure to keep your guidelines short and sweet. The goal is to make them clear enough that someone new could easily pick them up and write something that still sounds like you.

Tailoring your tone for different channels

While your brand voice should stay consistent, your tone should adapt depending on where you’re showing up. 

Different channels call for different levels of formality, detail, and even energy. On Instagram, your tone might be more playful and visually expressive. In email newsletters, you might take a conversational, value-driven tone. On your website, you may want to sound clear, helpful, and confident.

The key is to stay recognisably you, but shift the tone to suit the format and the reader’s mindset. Meeting your audience where they are – in both style and substance – helps your message land more effectively without losing your brand’s personality.

Examples of brands with standout voices

A distinctive brand voice can make a company instantly recognisable and deeply relatable. Here are three brands that have mastered this art:

1. Duolingo: Playful, cheeky and relentlessly on-brand

Duolingo’s voice is a masterclass in personality-driven marketing. From the sassy reminders in their app to their viral TikTok presence, they blend humour with accountability. 

Their mascot, Duo the owl, has become a symbol of their fun yet persistent approach to language learning, making the experience engaging and memorable across all of their platforms.​

2. Dove: Empowering, sincere and body-positive

Dove’s voice consistently champions self-esteem and authenticity. Through campaigns that celebrate real beauty and challenge stereotypes, they communicate with warmth and sincerity. 

This empowering tone has helped them build trust and foster a strong emotional connection with their audience.​

3. Liquid Death: Bold, irreverent and unapologetically edgy

Liquid Death turns the mundane act of drinking water into a rebellious statement. With slogans like “Murder your thirst,” their voice is deliberately provocative, blending heavy metal aesthetics with environmental messaging. This audacious approach has carved out a unique niche in the beverage market.

Final thoughts

A strong brand voice isn’t just a nice-to-have, it’s one of the most effective ways to stand out, connect with your audience, and build long-term trust. 

Whether you’re just starting out or refining what’s already there, taking the time to define and document your voice will bring consistency and clarity to everything you publish. And the best part? Once you’ve done the groundwork, using your brand voice becomes second nature. 

It’s not about being perfect. It’s about being recognisable, relatable, and unmistakably you.

These personas served as a foundation for more targeted content planning, strengthening the Passion Passport brand, improving performance across channels, increasing the number of unique website visitors by more than 35% and delivering stronger engagement across all key metrics.

Leading three major advertorial campaigns for Japan Airlines, Visit Arizona, Banff & Lake Louise Tourism, and Northeastern Ontario Tourism, we oversaw the creation of more than 100 pieces of content from strategy development and briefing to editing and design guidance.

Northeastern Ontario Tourism

Arizona Tourism

Japan Airlines

Website

Blog

The results set the stage for ongoing success: The internal team has since expanded on the strategy to win many more awards, including being named Africa’s Leading Safari Company in the World Travel Awards, Safari Tour Operator of the Year from the South Africa Prestige Awards and having dozens more Africa Travel Experts recognised as Condé Nast Top Travel Specialists.

Contrary to popular belief among editors, web readers are not lazy. In fact, most web users engage with multiple long-form posts each day and digest large volumes of content. However, information on a screen is slightly more difficult for our brains to absorb. 

Despite this, most readers on the web (wrongly) believe that they are able to work through more information at a greater speed than if they were reading on paper. 

This is why it’s important for content writers and editors to understand how people read on the web and structure our content in a way that is most likely to help them get the information they need quickly and effectively.

How people read on the web

A very old study by Nielsen that investigated how people read on the web concluded, very simply, that they don’t. 

Back then, Nielsen found that 79% of people on the web scan articles rather than reading them word for word. Only 16% of users read each and every word. We’re not quite sure what happened to the other 5%.

Although Nielsen’s original research is nearly 30 years old, their findings haven’t changed much over the course of the internet’s history.

The point is that it’s very rare for people to read online. It’s far more likely that the users who are visiting your website are scanning your content to find the information that they’re looking for. (This is also why well-written metadata is so important for driving traffic.)

There are two main things to keep in mind when trying to understand how users read on screens – and therefore how to structure pages and articles:

1. Users follow an ‘information scent’; and
2. Scanning patterns are predictable

The information scent

When searching for information, users will enter a website based on what they predict they’re likely to find on a certain page or via a certain path on the site.

In this context, they make a mental trade-off between what they believe they can gain and what they think it will cost them to make that gain. 

This means that your content must be valuable and easy to find. If information is useful but difficult to find, the user will leave your page. If it is easy to find but not useful, the result will be the same. 

There are two things to consider here: getting users to your page and keeping them there.

Getting users to your page

Writing content that targets a particular keyword and considers the searcher’s intent in relation to that keyword will help users to find your page. 

You’ll also want to ensure that the metadata for your page speaks to the user’s keyword and search intent in order to encourage them to click on your link on the search engine results page (SERP).

Keeping users on your page

Average bounce rates on the internet range from 26 to 70%. Looking at those stats, it’s clear that there’s an art to keeping users on websites—and some web editors haven’t mastered it. 

If you’ve developed your content to speak to a particular keyword and have kept the likely intent of the searcher in mind when building your page, you already have a pretty solid start here. 

From there, it’s essential that you create a sound and logical structure for your content (including headings, lists, internal links, and imagery) that will help to guide the reader to the information they’re looking for on your page.

Scanning patterns

Another important factor when understanding how users read on the web is scanning patterns. There are a few common patterns that people follow when reading web pages:

1. F pattern: focus on the left-hand side of the page, paying more attention to the first few lines of each paragraph.
2. Layer cake pattern: reading headings and subheadings
3. Spotted pattern: skipping through large chunks of information, searching for specific words, numbers, or other items
4. Marking pattern: eyes focus on one point as mouse or scroller moves (important on mobile)
5. Bypassing pattern: skipping the first word in a line when multiple lines start with the same word
6. Commitment pattern: reading all of the text

While it would be ideal for all of our users to follow the commitment pattern (only the most highly motivated and invested readers use this approach), this is unfortunately not the case.

Most readers scan text in the F pattern and use a combination of the other methods to find the information that they’re looking for in our copy. Understanding this, we’re now able to write and format our content to suit web readers.

How to write for web readers

When writing for the web, it’s important to keep in mind that you aren’t only writing for human readers, but also for androids like SEO spiders and web crawlers. As such, it’s important to structure your content to work for both people and search engines.

To take advantage of the most common scanning patterns (the F, layer cake, and spotted), editors can use the following formatting guidelines:

1. Include clear and descriptive headings and subheadings
2. Keep paragraphs short and use them to group related information
3. Put the important points up front—convey information that answers a search query in the first two sentences of the first two paragraphs
4. Add internal links to highlight related, helpful information
5. Use bulleted lists to make important information stand out

Implementing these five guidelines will ensure that users who land on your website are able to find the information that they need quickly and efficiently, which may encourage them to carry on reading or even return when they have another question in future.

Once you know how people read on the web it becomes far easier to structure your content in a way that increases engagement and moves potential customers towards conversion.

A content writer’s job is to ensure that their copy taps into that emotion in the shortest time possible. Which requires choosing the right words – and keeping your copy tight.

There are plenty of places on the web where you can find useful tips that will help you improve your writing or writing assistant software that will rid your copy of errors. But, if you want to consistently create better content, you need to practise.

Here are three helpful exercises that will help you to up your writing game.

If you have 5 minutes: free writing

Popularlised by English professor Peter Elbow, free writing is exactly what it sounds like.

You’re encouraged to sit down, pick a topic, grab a piece of paper or open a doc, and write. Not to take note of the words you use or the typos you might make. Not to put down fact-packed paragraphs. Just to write.

If you have any anxieties around writing, free writing is a great way to overcome these. Plus, it can help you to overcome writer’s block and give your day a creativity injection. Which is always helpful.

My favourite way to free write is using The Most Dangerous Random Prompt Generator.

The web app generates a prompt, you choose your session length (anything from 3 minutes to 60) and get to writing. There’s no required word count, but if you stop writing for more than five seconds, your progress will be lost.

When you reach the allotted time, your copy is safe and, if there’s anything you might want to use, you can copy it over to a document. Alternatively, you can restart your session with the same prompt.

The Most Dangerous Random Prompt Generator also has hardcore mode, where the text is blurred so you’re unable to see what you’re typing. Definitely not for the faint of heart.

If you have 15 minutes: text synthesis

This one is incredibly straightforward: take a Wikipedia paragraph or section and cut it down to a third of its original length.

Wikipedia’s first two content guidelines are “Be clear” and “Be concise”. The platform requires writer to be “plain, direct, unambiguous, and specific” and to “omit needless words”.

In short: cut the fluff and writing what you mean. Which is what makes text synthesis so helpful for content writing.

You’re forced to root out exactly which information drives the story forward and which is superfluous to your point. Plus, word choice and sentence structure become extremely important.

Below is a passage I synthesised from the introductory paragraphs on the Anglo-Zanzibar War page. The original was 410 words and my summary is 137 words:

Fought between the United Kingdom and the Zanzibar Sultanate on 27 August 1896 and lasting only 38 minutes, the Anglo-Zanzibar War is the shortest recorded military conflict in history. It marked the end of the Zanzibar Sultanate’s sovereignty and the start of a period of heavy British influence.

The war was triggered by Sultan Khalid bin Barghash succeeding  Sultan Hamad bin Thwuaini after the pro-British ruler’s death on 25 August – contrary to an 1886 treaty with the British. The British demanded that Khalid vacate the palace or face war; he instead called up his guard and barricaded himself inside the building. 

The ultimatum expired and the British swiftly began their attack two minutes later. The battle continued until 9:40, resulting in around 500 casualties for the Zanzibari defence but  only one for the British.

Practise this a few times a week for a month and you’ll see a marked improvement in your writing. Practise it a few times a week for a year and you’ll be writing tighter copy than anyone else out there.

If you have an hour (or more): write and review

One of the best ways to improve your writing is to get feedback from other writers and editors.

Set yourself a task (with a good topic) and a deadline, and get writing. Then, find another writer who’s willing to give you some feedback.

There are loads of writing and editing groups that you can join on various social media platforms (I find LinkedIn and Facebook the most useful). Ask if there are any group members who would take a look at your work and provide feedback, then send them your text or provide a link to your portfolio website.

When posting your content or copy, it’s important to provide a brief summary of the requirements. For example, if there are any keywords you were targeting, the audience you were writing for and anything else.

And when it comes to feedback, remember to assess the objective value of the commentary you might receive.

Constructive notes on technical elements that can be backed up with reasoning (e.g. “This sentence is long and the comma usage creates ambiguity. Rather break it up into two sentences.”) are valuable. Subjective opinions that don’t have anything to support them (e.g. “I don’t like how this sounds.”) are less so.

As with any other community that you join, remember to add your own value. That may mean creating a quick post that highlights what you learned from the feedback your received, or providing feedback of your own on other writers’ work.

Final thoughts

When it comes to writing, the well-known adage about practise making perfect is always true.

Free writing, synthesising text and asking for feedback from more experienced writers are three great ways to practise and improve your writing skills. All you need is a little bit of time and determination.

That sentence causes a lot of controversy among professional writers. Many would say that not everybody can write; there are those who have a knack for it, and those who don’t.

But having edited the work of hundreds of writers of all levels of experience over the years, I don’t believe that to be true. Writing is a skill and, like any other skill, it can be learned and refined.

Below are five tips that you can apply to instantly improve your marketing copy and web content writing to better connect with your audience.

1. Keep it simple

You write content to be read. So write for the reader.

Readers don’t want to have to wade through chunks of copy filled with words they don’t recognise. They want to find the answer to the question or solution to their problem quickly and easily.

Which is why the most important rule for writing content marketing is to ensure you have a clear message that your audience can understand. You want what you’re writing about to be the focus, not how you’re writing it.

Ironically, keeping it simple can be tough to do, but there are a few tried-and-true tactics you can use to ensure that your content or copy is easy to read:

• Use plain language: Unless it’s completely necessary, avoid jargon, unnecessary (and unexplained) acronyms, technical or unusual words, and obscure phrases.
• Be brief: Stick to short sentences and paragraphs – don’t use two words where one will do and break your text up into easily digestible pieces (five lines is usually best).
• Follow a plan: Set a clear goal for your writing and create an outline that will keep you on track and ensure you communicate what you need to without unnecessary diversions.

2. Stay active

Use the active voice in your writing wherever possible, following the subject, verb, object construction. In other words: put your reader – or the thing you’re writing about – at the front of your sentence.

Using this sentence structure does a lot for your writing. It helps to insert the reader into your marketing story and turns your call-to-action into a command, all while making your content easier to read for non-native speakers.

What’s more, the active voice requires fewer words, so it will help you to keep things simple too.

There are some instances where the passive voice might be beneficial (like varying the cadence of your sentences) or impossible to avoid, but try your best to only use it sparingly.

3. Be different

Variety, according to a well-worn saying, is the spice of life. Using different words, types and lengths of sentences and paragraphs will help to keep your readers engaged.

As author Gary Provost pointed out, rhythm is really important for holding a reader’s attention. Long sentences sound smoother. Shorter ones are snappier. But it’s best to use a combination of the two to create cadence in your copy.

Paragraphing is important, too. Group like thoughts together, but try to avoid passages that spill over more than five lines. If you’re looking to draw attention to a point without using any other visual cues, a single-sentence paragraph will certainly do.

On top of making your writing sound interesting, text elements like call-outs, pull quotes, bullets and even text treatments (think bold and italic) are great ways to draw attention to different parts and piece of your content.

Highlight important notes or summaries using a call-out. Or feature words from an industry leader using a pull quote. Action items can easily be listed using numbered or bulleted lists. While bold and italic text help to stress key words or phrases. Avoid underlining, though, as this usually indicates a hyperlink on the web.

That said, too many text element in one piece of content can be distracting for the reader. So don’t get carried away.

4. Be positive

The words you choose to use naturally have a massive impact on your writing. While some words are out – like jargon and tech specs – synonyms are definitely in. Perform a search on your text and whip out your thesaurus to find replacements words you’ve used frequently.

Note: Be sure to take note of the meaning and connotation of the word you’re finding synonyms for – words may have the same meaning, but convey a different feeling to a reader.

Favouring positive expressions over negative ones has heaps of advantages for both your writing and your brand.

Negative words can lead to a condescending, adversarial or even hostile tone, and nobody wants to read something that makes them feel as though they’re under attack. Plus, negative expressions are often wordier, so leaving them out can tighten your copy.

Scan your writing for the following words and replace them with a positive alternative where beneficial:

• ‘no’ and ‘not’
• Words with negative prefixes (un-, in-, mis- and non-)
• Negative adverbs (e.g. scarcely, hardly)

5. Know your reader

Definitely the most tricky of the five tips, knowing your reader will ensure you understand who you’re writing for. Which will help you to identify what information to include in your content, how to arrange that information and choose the right words, plus how to make a connection with the people reading them.

Many content marketing experts will tell you that you need delve into piles of data and create buyer personas to understand your reader. But this isn’t necessary.

If you’re just starting out or are writing content to build a portfolio, think about who you want to help with your content. Keep it simple but specific. Think about the interests your reader has or problems they want to solve. And take it from there.

Bonus: Use headings and subheadings

Break your copy up using headings and subheadings.

In a world where most users simply scan webpages without reading them, headings and subheadings help to guide the eye to important information. They also make the page more easily navigable – and Google loves them!

When creating headings and subheadings, be clear and concise. Point to exactly what the reader can expect to find in the copy they’re about to read.

Takeaways

Anyone can write. And write well.

To maximise the efficacy of your content, be sure to understand who you’re writing for and adjust your style to suit that audience.

Who you’re writing for and what you’re writing about aside, your content should always be clear and concise, and laid out in a way that’s easy to scan. What’s more, you want to introduce variation with the words you use, the structural elements and how you set up your paragraphs.

You can always use tools like Grammarly or even Microsoft Word’s built-in checker to catch any mistakes, but the best way to ensure long-term improvements to practise!

1. Identify a ‘seed’ keyword

Consider the topic you’re writing about or the item you’re trying to promote. Think of a broad concept that relates to this topic to find the seed keyword. Typically, this would be the first thing a user would type into a search engine.

For example, if you need to produce stories about Paris, ‘Paris travel’, ‘visit Paris’ or ‘travel to Paris’ will likely be good keywords to start with. 

Once you have your seed keyword, finding more targeted keywords becomes easier. Next, you can use an SEO tool (Moz and Ahrefs are two popular examples) to identify more specific keywords.

2. Search for specific keywords

Use your seed keyword as the jump-off point for finding more specific keywords. Search this phrase and inspect the keyword ideas, looking at phrases and terms that include your seed keyword, questions related to the seed keyword, as well as other phrases or terms that pages containing your keyword rank for.

Note: The average top 10 result on Google’s search engine results page (SERP) ranks for 1,000 keywords. So it’s imperative to include a main keyword along with a variety of supporting keywords on each page.

Think about questions that you might ask in relation to your keyword as well as long-tail keywords that include your term. Long-tail keywords are phrases that consist of three or more words. 

These are both great for targeting, as they’re more specific than general terms (like ‘travel Paris’) and allow you to target more niche demographics of users who are likely more engaged than those searching for broad terms. 

For example, someone searching ‘When to travel to Paris’ or ‘How to get to Paris’ is likely to be further along the marketing funnel than someone simply searching ‘travel Paris’.

Type the phrase into Google’s search bar for the auto suggest options, or use keyword research tools like Answer the Public; Google’s Keyword Planner, Search Console, or Trends; Questiondb; Keyword Sheeter and others.

3. Account for search intent

When selecting a keyword, it’s important to consider what the user is searching for.

For example, while the keyword ‘travel and leisure paris’ has a relatively low difficulty and a good search volume, it’s unlikely that a searcher using these words is looking for articles about travel and leisure activities in Paris. More likely is that they are looking for pieces published by Travel + Leisure, and wouldn’t click on results not produced by this outlet.

Also think about the type of content that a user is looking for (e.g. guides, products, resources), the format they want (e.g. listicle, how-to, itinerary), as well as the angle they want (e.g. secret spots, not-to-be-missed sights).

4. Prioritise your keywords

Possibly one of the most important steps in identifying keywords, this stage requires you to consider the various metrics attached to the keywords you are researching. 

Important considerations here are: keyword difficulty (KD), keyword volume, clicks and cost per click (CPC). All of these factors should be considered alongside and weighed against one another when making decisions about keywords.

Keyword difficulty

Keyword difficulty (displayed as KD on Ahrefs and most other keyword tools) is a measure of how much competition there is to rank for a particular keyword on a search engine. Ratings range from 0 (easiest) to 100 (most difficult).

While it’s preferable to choose a keyword with a low difficulty rating, these are also less likely to have a decent search volume.

Keyword volume

This metric reveals how many times a specific keyword is searched within a particular time frame. Selecting a keyword with a low volume – relative to similar keywords around the same topic – likely means that your content won’t be seen by many searchers. On the other hand, high-volume keywords are likely to be more difficult to rank for.

While high-volume keywords are likely to drive many impressions, they don’t necessarily translate into website visits. Which is why it’s important to consider clicks.

Clicks

The number of times a keyword drives a click through to a web page is indicated by the clicks metric. When determining which keyword to pick, compare the volume and clicks. This will indicate the traffic potential and give you an idea of how likely a keyword will be to lead searchers to your website.

Note: Be sure to take note of where there is any cost-per-click (CPC) data attached to a certain keyword. If your research platform is showing a CPC, you’ll be competing with advertisers and, if you’re not going to be putting money behind this keyword yourself, it’s likely a better idea to target a different one.

5. Perform competitor research

Next, look at what your competitors rank for. Use an SEO or competitive intelligence tool to figure out which keywords your competitors rank for, where opportunities exist, and to perform a gap analysis.

6. Avoid keyword stuffing

The name of the game is optimization. While it may be tempting to pack multiple keywords into a single sentence, this will likely result in a poor reading experience and cause users to navigate away from your page quickly. Low on-page times and high bounce rates signal to Google and other search engines that a post does not meet user needs and will affect its ranking.

Always favour natural language and informative materials over a ‘gamified’ SEO approach.

Keyword research is an integral part of any SEO strategy and goes a long way to helping your content be seen on SERPs. And it can be relatively easy.

Use keyword research tools like Moz or Ahrefs to identify opportunities by considering how users are searching around your topic as well as what your competitors are targeting. Remember to consider the keyword difficulty and volume, plus the number of clicks your keyword drives to get a better understanding of its potential.

Then all that’s left is to get writing – just remember to use your keywords naturally.

In addition to including relevant keywords to help Google – and other search engines – identify whether a page will provide a user with the answers or information they are looking for, features such as headings, tables of contents, and internal links help spiders crawl pages quickly and effectively.

Scannable content

Use formatting and visual aids to your advantage. Headings, short paragraphs, lists, imagery, and infographics, as well as lists can all serve to highlight and isolate important information – both for the reader and search engine spiders.

A table of contents with links to each section will also ensure that the user is able to access the information they are seeking quickly and easily. Which may be the reason they choose to use and return to our content over that of another outlet.

What’s important here:

• Use descriptive (and keyword-optimized) headings to break content up into smaller, scannable sections
• Write short paragraphs (keep chunks of text to six lines or fewer)
• Include lists to help important information stand out
• Add imagery that will help the user better understand concepts (e.g. a map or visual representation of the weather in different seasons)
• Use sidebars or call-outs to highlight information you want the reader to notice

There are also a few tricks and tips you can use when writing for the web to ensure that users find exactly what they’re looking for.

HTML tags

Heading, subheadings and table of contents

These features are important both for search engine spiders and user experience. 

Adding a title (H1) that features your target keyword will help humans and search engines to decipher what an article is about and whether it will be useful to them. Subheadings (H2s to H6s) will give the article a logical structure, and a table of contents will help them to navigate this structure.

Some rules of thumb:

• Use the <h1> tag for the article title or heading on the page. 
• Only feature one H1 per article.
• All subheadings must feature an HTML tag.
• Keep your structure as shallow as possible. If you find the need to go beyond an H3, you may want to consider restructuring your article.
• Use keywords in your heading and subheadings.
• Be consistent. Headings should create a list when read on their own.

Metadata

All articles must feature a meta title that includes the target keyword, as well as a meta description that provides a brief summary of the contents of the piece. There are a variety of metadata best practices that you can apply to ensure your entry on SERPs are clickable.

Alt text

Alt text is the HTML feature that is used to describe the appearance and function of an image on a page. This text appears when an image doesn’t load, and helps search engine spiders and visually impaired readers to understand what imagery appears on a page.

When writing alt text, there are three important considerations to keep in mind: 

1. Be specific: set out exactly what is in the image
2. Keep it simple: don’t complicate your text with unnecessary descriptive language
3. Use keywords sparingly: where you can incorporate a keyword naturally do

A few other rules of thumb:

• Keep alt text to 125 characters or less
• Ensure that your copy is specific and informative
• Never start with ‘image of’ or ‘picture of’
• Never add alt text to decorative images (e.g. brand graphics or logos)

Internal links

An internal link is a hyperlink to another page or resource on our site that relates to the topic at hand. These types of links help users to identify additional content that may be useful to them, and build a crawlable network for search spiders.

Importantly, hyperlinks should be contextual. In other words, they should tell the reader (or the search engine) exactly where they should expect to be taken when clicking on them. For example:

To make the most of your content marketing, get familiar with the basics of SEO.

Call To Action

Calls to action tell the user what to do or where to go next. They’re also a great way to round off an article.

End your content with a call to action that features a link to a relevant website section or article that will provide the reader with a logical next step.

Once you’ve written a succinct, scannable piece of content that includes headings, links, metadata and a call to action, it’s time to add some keywords, upload it to your website and start promoting it.

Why do we copy edit?

The purpose of copy editing is to ensure that our content is able to be easily read and understood by anyone who comes onto our website. 

Essentially, when we copy edit, we are standing in for the reader. We want to test the copy to make sure that all of the facts contained in the piece are correct, that the piece flows well, and that it’is easy to follow.

How to copy edit effectively

There are three stages to copy editing, executed in the order set out below.

Stage 1: Skim reading

When receiving a piece of copy, the first read should be quick yet critical. Go through the text once to get an idea of what the story is about. Highlight anything that jumps out at you.

For example, you may find that a writer leans on metaphors too much or that their punctuation makes the piece difficult to read. You may realise that you’re unable to follow the chronology of the story. Or that there are too many unusual words in the text.

Take note of recurring errors you find as well as your overall first impression of the piece as you complete the first read. These annotations will likely be the most useful of any you make if you need to provide feedback to the writer further down the line.

Note: Many copy editors are unable to resist correcting glaring errors on the first pass. This is not necessarily a problem. However, you should limit yourself to five seconds or less per error. If you find yourself taking minutes to restructure a sentence, this is not a job for the first reading.

Stage 2: Critical reading

The second reading looks into the workings of an article and should take much longer than the first. This stage is crucial for ensuring that the piece is factually correct and easy to read.

Here, you will consider and adjust:

• spelling errors;
• repeated words (synonyms);
• clumsy wording;
• grammatical errors;
• distracting punctuation; and
• sentence structure.

This is also the stage at which you will test facts, check that names are correctly presented in the text, and apply your style guide of choice. 

Use your favourite search engine to check facts. Anything that isn’t the writer’s opinion should be verified to ensure its veracity and accuracy. For example: Is X landmark really Y kilometres from Z hotel? Where is the City of Gold? Was Nelson Mandela released from Robben Island in 1994?

At the same time as you’re ferreting out facts, you’ll want to ensure you’re applying the style guide—and doing so correctly. 

The best way to do this is to ensure that you are well-acquainted with the document. Although the number of rules may be a little overwhelming at first, the more time you spend with the guide, the more easily you’ll be able to apply it. 

Note: It’s well-established that we absorb information better when reading it on paper. As such, it may be a good idea to print a copy of the style guide to refer to when copy editing.

Stage 3: The final reading

There’s one final read-through necessary before you can send the article off for proofreading. Ideally, there should be at least 12 hours between the critical reading and the final reading.

Here, you’ll approach the article in the same way you would if you came across it on a website or in print. You’ll want to read through it at your regular pace—and enjoy it.

This moment is reserved for picking up any residual errors or inconsistencies that may have slipped through during the critical reading and ensuring that the piece is in line with the style guide you’re using.

Once you’re satisfied that you can do no more, send the document off for proofreading.

On a trip to the Philippines, my then boyfriend and I were wondering about the country’s socioeconomic situation. Looking around, it seemed that many people were indigent, though the reported poverty levels in the Philippines stood in stark contrast to this.

Most articles appearing in Google’s search results indicated that fewer than 20% of Filipinos live below the poverty line, while some bore headlines about the coming eradication of economic insecurity.

Now, we could have taken this in face value. In fact, because the information was presented by legitimate news outlets (e.g. Al Jazeera, The World Bank), my boyfriend did. But being involved in publishing and journalism, I was a bit more sceptical.

A few targeted searches about the Philippines’ political system led me to its president, Rodrigo Duterte, and the conclusion that anything written on the back of government-issued statistics should be considered with a fair amount of scrutiny.

Why do I tell you this? Well, because it’s often difficult to find the ‘truth’ on the internet. Even more so when objective new stories are obscured by positive press releases and propaganda.

The research skills that help journalists and other writers separate fact from fiction take years to develop. There is good news, though: Google’s easy-to-use search operators will refine your searches and uncover accurate and reliable information.

Here are a few that are both highly effective and easy to use:

Conclusion

Harnessing these search operators can help you to find accurate information from trustworthy sources to write balanced and objective reporting pieces.

These three simple practices will help you to get started with effective SEO for your business.

1. Relevant keywords

Arguably the most important element of SEO, keywords are the words and phrases that searchers enter into search engines.

Include keywords that are relevant to both your business and what searchers are looking for (i.e. their search intent). Having content that incorporates these search terms will increase your website’s chances of being seen by searchers who are looking for the goods or services you offer.

Any good SEO strategy starts with solid keyword research, which will help you to determine which search queries to target. This, in turn, will determine the type and amount of traffic you attract.

Unfortunately, without the right keywords, you won’t be optimising for the right things and even high traffic volumes are unlikely to result in leads or conversions.

Once you’ve found relevant keywords that apply to your business, you can start to create website copy that includes these terms.

This might involve working one or two words into sentences, or including longer phrases made up of several terms (long tail keywords). Whichever you choose to target, be sure to incorporate these keywords into your copy in a natural way.

There are a couple of on-page areas – other than your body copy – where you can include keywords to help search engines figure out what your content is about:

• Title tags: This is the title of your web page and is usually the most prominent text for each entry on the SERP (search engine results page). 
• URL: Also known as a ‘web address’, the URL specifies the location of a page on the internet.
• Meta description: Another component of SERP entries, the meta description summarises what a searcher can expect to find on a particular page. 
• Header tags: Your page content should include various levels of headers (e.g. Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3, etc.) to improve the readability of your copy and add SEO value.

2. Evergreen content

As the name suggests, evergreen website content is content that is beneficial all year ′round (until the topic dies). This type of content will retain its value and stay relevant no matter when it’s consumed. 

As evergreen doesn’t date, it has the potential to continue bringing traffic to your website for years after it’s published.

Besides reducing the need to continuously create new content, a good piece of evergreen content also has the potential to produce plenty of backlinks long after it goes live. Plus, content that’s relevant in the long term and is good enough for other sites to link to is going to be a hit with search engines.

That said, you will need to keep an eye on your search rankings and refresh your content to ensure it remains competitive. This might include:

• Fixing broken links
• Updating the year in the title
• Replacing or adding images
• Adding new information or discoveries

3. Good user experience

When SEO first began to gain importance, ranking on the first page – or even in first place – required strong copy filled with keywords. Now, search engines like Google are becoming increasingly more concerned with the usability of the sites they recommend.

User experience refers to the impression made by a website when a visitor enters. It relates to the overall quality of the experience they have when navigating both pages and content.

Also known as UX, user experience fits into SEO because the practices share a common goal: guiding searchers to the content they need.

As with keywording, there are a few areas and elements where improvements will provide a good return on investment (ROI) in terms of improving search rankings:

• Navigation and site structure: A well-organised site with a functional menu makes it easy for both users and search engines to find what they’re looking for.
• Headings: Using headings to divide information into digestible chunks and indicate what information is contained in various sections of each page.
• Images: High-quality (but small-size) images that are relevant to the copy on a webpage will capture a user’s attention and engage your audience.
• User signals: Users interacting with features such as CTAs (calls-to-action), related content and touch points shows that your content is interesting and engaging.
• Responsiveness: Mobile-only web browsing is expected to be the norm for three-quarters of internet users by 2025, so it’s essential that the mobile experience on your website is a good one.
• Site speed: Users expect a page to load in 2 seconds or less and Google takes note of this, which means that your site needs fast load times to rank and retain visitors.

With web design and best practices constantly changing, UX does too. There’s also much more to creating a good user experience than these six points, but they’re a good place to start. 

It’s worth exploring other websites and noting what you like about the experience versus what you don’t – it’s likely that those things are appealing to many visitors.

The UX journey doesn’t stop there, though. Once you’ve refined your site, you’ll need to continually monitor how visitors use it and make updates to ensure that your website’s traffic and conversions keep climbing.

There are many more facets to SEO than those presented here – Google’s algorithm uses literally hundreds of parameters to rank web pages – but incorporating relevant keywords into useful evergreen content that appears on a well laid-out site is a good place to start.

What’s important is getting started with a website optimisation strategy and sticking to it to ensure you start ranking.

Although the variability of day-to-day activities is something many small business owners enjoy, the rate of change across these fields can be overwhelming. 

Nowhere is this more true than marketing. With guidelines constantly shifting, it can be tough to discern between passing trends and best practices. This can lead small business owners to stick to tried-and-trusted approaches rather than learning about new marketing tools.

While SEO might have seemed like a fad, this is certainly not the case. The importance of the practice is constantly increasing and its application is only expanding. Which is why small businesses need to take advantage of SEO.

What is SEO?

Let’s start with the basics. Search engine optimisation, or SEO, is a method of adjusting your website to be scanned by search engines. In essence, you are enhancing your website’s reach to potential customers.

Search engines like Google have algorithms that determine how useful a webpage will be to searchers. This is based on that page’s relevance to the searcher’s query, which is determined by both on-page and off-page SEO. 

On-page SEO uses keywords, URL construction, website taxonomy and the type of page (Google loves blogs) to convince search engines that a page is relevant. Page load time and responsiveness – whether your site automatically adapts for mobile – are some of the other major factors here. 

There’s also the less visible off-page SEO, which involves link building, social media, business profiles and other articles. As the bulk of off-page SEO relies on other websites linking to yours, it is slightly more difficult to master than its on-page counterpart. 

What’s the value of SEO for a small business?

In short: SEO is the most cost effective way to get people to see your company’s website. Organic search is an integral part of obtaining website traffic for most businesses.

Increased visibility

The majority of potential customers looking for a particular good or service will head straight to their favourite search engine and type in a keyword or two to find suppliers. The search engine will then produce a list of web pages it considers most likely to be helpful to the searcher.

Being recognised as a useful source in relation to a particular keyword will increase your brand’s visibility in the search results.

Targeting keywords also ensures that customers who have an interest in your product or service are being directed to your site. With qualified customers and greater visibility, your website is likely to generate more leads and sales. 

As user experience is a big part of successful SEO, an optimised website ensures that the potential customers are able to find what they’re looking for, increasing the chances that they’ll convert.

Competing in the big leagues as a small business

Effective optimisation has the added benefit of levelling the playing field between small businesses and bigger industry players for a relatively low cost. Size and renown have no effect on where your company will appear in search results, but an optimised website does.

Refining your site to mention particular keywords, work for mobile and load quickly are small changes that have the potential to help you win business over prominent corporations. And making these modifications can be far more cost effective than an advertising campaign.

Strong SEO is critical in ensuring a good web presence in today’s market. With ever-increasing competition across markets, SEO has the ability to help you set your business apart from others and highlight your unique selling points.

Given their ubiquity, it’s unsurprising that there are many ways to deal with numbers in writing. And that these differ depending on subject matter and context.

Know your numbers

The first thing to know when you’re dealing with numbers is how to write them.

If you’re spelling numbers out, remember that compound numbers must be hyphenated. This applies to all numbers from twenty-one to ninety-nine.

When using numerals or digits, there should be a visual separator to demarcate every thousandth integer. In other words, where a number consists of four digits or more, there should be a space or comma every three digits. For example:

Where a large number is indefinite (not exact), it is always spelled out. For example:

“There were thousands of wildebeest crossing the river.”

Three, two, one, go!

The most widely applied rule is to write numbers one to nine out and use numerals for 10 and over. In other words:

Single digits must be written out in full, while double digits and higher can be presented in numerals.

Another approach is to write numbers one to ninety-nine in full and use numerals for 100 and above. This application is less common than the first, but is also acceptable.

The bigger the better

For very large numbers (usually over a million), it’s acceptable to use a combination of numerals and text to ensure ease of reading. However, this flips some of the previous rules on their heads. For example:

“Nearly 2 million people around the world marched to show their support for environmental change.”

Getting started

It’s best to avoid starting a sentence with a number. If that’s not possible, write the number out. This rule applies regardless of the size of the number. For example:

“Fifty-five thousand people tuned in to watch Dinner for One on New Year’s Eve.”

Note: Where a number that starts a sentence is followed by a unit of measurement, that unit of measurement must also be written out in full.

From 0 to 100 in 5 seconds

There are often instances where you’ll need to use various numbers in the same sentence or paragraph. What’s important here is to ensure consistency to prevent any confusion. The general rule is that the way numbers are presented should be consistent with the rest of the document. For example:

“The study found that one in 3 500 males is affected by duchenne muscular dystrophy.”

One on top of the other

Sometimes is necessary to have two of the same number appear alongside each another. Naturally, this can cause confusion. In these cases, it’s best to write one number out and use numerals for the second. For example:

“There were twelve 12 square metre stalls available for the tech show.”

“This experiment requires four 4 millilitre pipettes.”

TL;DR

• Numbers one to nine should be written out in full, while 10 and over should be in digits.
• Large numbers use a combination of digits and written numbers.
• Avoid starting a sentence with a number. But if you have to, spell it out.
• Keep your treatment of numbers consistent.
• If two of the same number appear alongside each other, spell one out and present the other in numerals.

Even typing the last word of that blurb out, Microsoft Word is kind enough to highlight it with a little red squiggly line. Although acronyms and initialisms are two different types of abbreviations, the definition has of ‘acronym’ has slowly been expanding to include initialisms, which can cause confusion when they’re presented in text.

TL;DR

• Abbreviations are the shortened form of words or phrases. They usually need some kind of punctuation.
• Acronyms can be said like words. They don’t usually need punctuation.
• Each letter of an initialism is pronounced. Because they’re presented in all caps, they don’t need punctuation either.
• What you ultimately need to use to decide whether to punctuate or not is the style guide for the content you’re working with.

But let’s start at the beginning, with general abbreviations.

e.g.         

An abbreviation is a shortened form of a word or phrase. Letters or syllables are left out for the sake of speed and brevity, and you’re left with a collection of letters that represent a word or concept.

Typically, abbreviations should be punctuated with full stops. This is to prevent them from appearing to be a different or misspelt word. For example:

                i.e.
                e.g.
                p.a.
                etc.

Laser sharp

Acronyms are those abbreviations where the first letters of the words in a phrase or words are used to create a new word. For example:

Light
Amplification by
Stimulated                          =             laser
Emission of
Radiation

Acquired
Immunodeficiency          =             Aids
Syndrome

What’s crucial here is that the acronym can be pronounced as a word. There are plenty of well-known examples of acronyms, like Nasa and Eskom. What’s not plentiful are rules on how to present them in text.

How you write acronyms out will depend on the style guide you’re working from. If there isn’t any clarity, though, a good rule to follow is to treat them like words: no full stops between the letters, and capitalisation only at the beginning of the sentence or if they’re proper nouns.

Of course, there are exceptions to the capitalisation rule, like RAM and OPEC, which is why it’s safest to look up each acronym you come into contact with.

ICYMI

Initialisms are similar to acronyms; they’re also made up of the initial letters to syllables of well-known phrases. Where they’re different is that you can’t pronounce an initialism as a word, so you say the individual letters. For example:

Central
Intelligence                        =             CIA
Agency

Chief
Executive                            =             CEO
Officer

Some writers and editors feel that a full stop should be placed after each letter to show that letters have been omitted (somewhat in line with how you use the apostrophe of omission). Others believe that it’s unnecessary as the added punctuation can make copy look messy and make it more difficult to read.

Again, the style guide you’re working with should tell you exactly how to deal with these abbreviations. If there’s no guidance, it’s probably best to present initialisms in all caps without any punctuation (unless they’re at the end of a sentence or in the possessive form)

Over the past few weeks, my work has led me to checking and verifying quite a few addresses. It’s generally quite boring and uneventful, but there have been a few instances where businesses have listed there addresses, and wrongly so.

TL;DR

What often happens with addresses is that the wrong information will get out there somehow and then be adopted. For example, there’s a road called Rhone in the suburb where I grew up:

66 Rhone
Pinelands
Cape Town
7405

There’s no road or street after Rhone. It’s just, simply, Rhone. But people in the area have the tendency to say ‘Rhone Road’; probably because not identifying the type of pathway when you’re speaking feels slightly odd (Google Maps appears to have tacked on ‘street’).

Which led me to wondering why roads and streets are called such, and whether there’s any difference between the two. What I found is that there are way more routes than just roads and streets. And the differences between them have all got to do with city planning.

The Road is Long

The most basic naming convention for a paved route, a road joins any two points. Roads will usually connect two distant points, like towns or suburbs.

Baker Street

A street is a paved pathway with buildings – residential or commercial – on either side of it, which enables human interaction.

In this sense, a street is a road, but a road is not a street. Main Street will probably connect two points in a town and be lined with shops and cafes. This isn’t likely of a road connecting two towns.

Electric Avenue

Avenues are traditionally straight pathways lined with trees. They’re usually quite pretty and can lead to the driveway of a large house.

Boulevard of Broken Dreams

Found mostly in larger cities, boulevards are usually multi-lane roads with a landscaped median. (If you live in Cape Town, Nelson Mandela Boulevard is a perfect example of this type of pathway.)

Highway to Hell

A multi-lane road designed for high-speed traffic on long-distance routes without same level intersections, highways are top-tier roads. (This definition is a combination of the American highway, freeway and expressway, as South Africa prefers to use ‘highway’ as a coverall.)

Life in the Fast Lane

A lane is a narrow street with no shoulder or median. Usually of the dirt variety in rural South Africa. They should never be fast.

Ocean Drive

Long roads that wind or snake through an area due to the presence of natural obstacles like rivers, mountains or oceans are known as drives.

• City planners name routes according to their uses.
• Streets can be roads, but roads aren’t streets.

Although we’re often taught that ‘or not’ is a natural follow on to ‘whether’, this isn’t entirely true. There are times when it’s appropriate and times when it’s not.

As with many other conventions in the English language, there’s no hard and fast rule when it comes to ‘whether or not’. More often than not, the ‘or not’ is optional. But that’s not always the case.

TL;DR

• “Whether” can usually be used on its own
• If you’re using whether to mean “regardless of whether”, you need the “or not”
• If the “whether” clause modifies a verb, you need “or not”

One

‘Whether’ comes from ‘which’ and ‘either of two’. So, by using ‘whether’, we are setting up a scenario in which there is a choice to be made. Where that choice is between alternatives related to a single element or ‘thing’, the or not is usually implied and can be left out. For example:

“I can’t decide whether I like ice-cream.”

Here, the first choice is liking ice-cream, while the second is the alternative (not liking ice-cream). There are only two possible choices here (liking/disliking), so it’s unnecessary to include ‘or not’ because we can easily draw the conclusion about what the second one is.

A simple rule of thumb is that ‘weather’ can stand alone when the clause it’s in functions as a noun. For example:

“Her decision to go to the mall will depend on whether her car is running.”

The ‘whether’ clause is the object of ‘on’ and functions as a noun, so there’s no need to have ‘or not’.

Or the other

In instances where you mean ‘regardless of whether’, you always need the ‘or not’. For example:

“Whether she ever wins the pageant again, Candy has cemented her image as one of the greatest beauty queens of all time.”

The ‘whether’ that’s used to open this sentence could be replaced with ‘regardless of whether’ because Candy’s image has been locked in and nothing can change that.

If the ‘whether’ phrase acts as an adverb (modifies the verb), you’ll also have to use the ‘or not’. For example:

“She will go to the mall tomorrow whether or not it rains.”

In this case, the clause modifies the verb phrase ‘go to’ and therefore requires an ‘or not’.

TL;DR

• If you’re writing any kind of story, answer the questions, ‘Who?’, ‘What?’, ‘When?’, ‘Where?’, ‘Why?’, ‘How?’
• Read Pigs in the House

While some believe that the 5Ws (and an H) construction is solely reserved for news stories, it can help anybody who is writing anything to put together an informative, well-rounded piece.

It’s pretty simple to understand what’s what and who’s who when it comes to the 5 Ws and an H rule. That said, there can be various pieces of information in your source material that answer these questions – making it tricky to determine exactly what to include.

To make this rule a little easier to understand, we’ll use Pigs in the House by Steven Kroll (which you can read here or have read to you here) as an example of how to categorise information from a source.

Who was involved?

This question is relatively easy to answer. All you need to do is point out the key players – or introduce the characters – to the reader.

In some cases, the parties involved will be clear from the start. In others, as with Pigs in the House, you may find that identities are unknown or reveal themselves at some later point in the story. It’s good to make a note of this, as you may be able to use a ‘big reveal’ to your advantage when writing.

The ‘Who’ of Pigs in the House

• Three unidentified creatures (eventually found to be pigs)
• Farmer Mack
• Bess (the farmer’s wife)

What happened?

Answering ‘What?’ will give you the outline for your story. Setting down the facts will help you to identify places where you may want to expand by using quotes or providing additional, relevant, interesting information.

Establishing the facts can be challenging when you have multiple sources who are providing anecdotal accounts of an event. Memory and recall are never perfect, and different people can experience the same situation in wildly different ways.

Here, it’s a good idea to bring all of the descriptions of an event together and strip them of their emotion. In other words, compare all of your source material, see what lines up and jot down that information to form the outline of your article.

It’s best to have a single sentence that sums up the entire ‘What’ as well as a few more detailed notes to help you flesh out your story.

The ‘What’ of Pigs in the House

• The ransacking of a farmhouse

• Farmer Mack and his wife Bess were tending to the farm all day.
• Upon returning home, they found the farm house in a state of complete disarray.
• Train sets and toys were strewn across the lounge; feather pillows were destroyed and springs were escaping from the mattress in the bedroom; milkshakes were knocked over; three layer cakes lay destroyed in the kitchen; and costume trunks in the attic were overturned.
• Mack and Bess were marching up the stairs shouting “like ten angry bears” when three unidentified creatures rushed past them, down the stairs and out of the house.
• When Mack and Bess went outside of their residence to look for evidence of the creatures, none besides an odd lampshade and feather boa could be found.
• The creatures appeared to have come to the house via the pig pen, as the gate was found unlatched.

When did it take place?

Figuring out the ‘When’ is great for setting the scene for your story (e.g. ‘Before the break of dawn on Saturday’ or ‘At two o’clock on Wednesday morning’). It can also help you to establish a logical timeline – and flow – for your article.

Keep in mind that, like the ‘Who’, the ‘When’ can change as your narrative moves along. Such is the nature of time!

In cases where you’re telling a story that spans time, try to keep things in chronological order to help the reader to follow along. Alternatively, if you choose a less linear construction, give them regular updates as to when the exact moment you’re referring to happened.

The ‘When’ of Pigs in the House

• During the day (day, date, time unspecified)

Where did it take place?

‘Where?’ is another important lead question that will help your reader to orientate themselves and paint a picture of the scenario you’re reporting in their mind’s eye.

Although this question is fourth in the traditional order of things, it’s usually best to place this information up front alongside ‘the brief explanation of ‘Who’, the short answer to ‘What?’ and ‘When’.

Depending on the type of article you’re writing, you can add as much or as little description as you feel is necessary to set the scene.

For example, “Taking place in the university’s central hall …” may be best if you’re shining a light on an event rather than the location. On the other hand “On a boulder-covered hilltop overlooking the vast plains of the savannahs …” might be more appropriate for a travel story that focuses on Tanzania’s Serengeti.

As with ‘When?’, the where can change over the course of an article and it’s important to keep your reader apprised of their location.

It’s not necessary to give detailed descriptions at every stage (e.g. ‘just a few metres downstream …’), but it’s best to do so where there’s a drastic change in scenery or location (e.g. ‘On the other side of town, with its litter-strewn pavements …’)

The ‘Where’ of Pigs in the House

• In the farm house belonging to Farmer Mack and Bess

Why did it happen?

Getting the ‘Why’ of a story straight can be slightly tricky.

If you’re writing a news piece, you’ll want to keep things factual and avoid speculation. This is easier to do in some instances than others. For example, the reason for an event taking place is simple to determine. The motivation behind a robbery, for example, can be more difficult to ascertain (unless you’re able to talk to the perpetrators).

In the case of news, if you can’t find evidence that supports an explanation of the ‘Why’, rather leave it out.

There’s a bit more wiggle room in feature articles or opinion pieces. Here, you may be able to draw inferences or suggest possible causes for the events that unfolded if no harm is caused to any of the parties involved.

The ‘Why’ of Pigs in the House

• It would seem that the three unidentified creatures were out to have a day of fun and found the farm house unattended.
• The many sources of entertainment and nourishment in Farmer Mack and Bess’ home appear to have provided the perfect opportunity for these creatures to run amok.

How did it happen?

This is another area where getting answers may be a bit tricky.

Again, you don’t want to make assumptions and lead your reader down the proverbial garden path if you’re writing a news piece. Stick to the facts and leave this out if you don’t have evidence to back up your assertions.

Articles intended for entertainment, on the other hand, may be enriched by a bit of postulation – especially if the aim is to get your reader thinking more deeply about the topic.

The ‘How of Pigs in the House

• It could be that the three pigs escaped from the pen and proceeded to have a ball in their keepers’ home. But wouldn’t that be ridiculous?

As you can see, getting the answers to these six questions creates an excellent backbone for any story. So if you’re struggling to get your point across or find that your story just isn’t hitting the mark, ask, ‘Who, what, when, why and how?’

For a more in-depth read about the goings on in Farmer Mack and Bess’ house on that fateful day, read Pigs in the House.

TL;DR

Two’s company

There are two types of apostrophes: possession and omission.

Someone’s favourite apostrophe

Possession implies ownership of something. So the possessive apostrophe is used to show that the subject of the sentence (a noun) owns the object of the sentence (another noun). For the most part, singular nouns and plural nouns that don’t end in ‘s’ will get an apostrophe ‘s’ (’s).

For example:

The jersey that belongs to Nicole is pink.

Becomes

Nicole’s jersey is pink.

Nicole (a proper noun) is the subject of the sentence. She owns a pink jersey, the object of the sentence. Instead of saying “The jersey that belongs to Nicole is pink,” we can use an apostrophe and an ‘s’ to show that this is the case.

When you first read this sentence, you’ll think ‘Ah, teachers have identified the curriculum’. But then you’ll realise there’s additional information and the beginning of the sentence mislead you.

If you’re working with a plural noun that ends with an ‘s’, you’ll just add an apostrophe.

For example, if I have two dogs and their leads are on the door:

The dogs’ leads are hanging on the back of the door.

Sometimes you’ll come across singular nouns that end with an ‘s’. These are somewhat more tricky, as the way you treat them is entirely up to preference. Some will prefer to end with a simple apostrophe, while others will prefer to add and apostrophe and an additional ‘s’.

For example:

Mr Jones’ new car.

OR

Mr Jones’s new car.

It’s mine

An apostrophe of omission is used where we omit something, or leave it out. What happens here is that we place an apostrophe in lieu of additional letters. This creates a contraction. There are some common contractions:

As you can see, one or more letters is left out in each case to create a shorter word. This happens for a number of reasons, but mainly because English speakers are lazy. It’s much easier to say “I don’t have a pink jersey,” than, “I do not have a pink jersey.” It also sounds more friendly – although that’s just because we’re not used to hearing the word “no” in any of its forms.

It’s a date

When referring to the shorthand form of dates, like the ’90s or the ’80s, apostrophe placement is key. Many people place the apostrophe between the number and the ‘s’ no matter what. However, the regular rules of the apostrophe apply here, so:

• Where you’re leaving something out (e.g. the ‘19’ from 1980 or 1990), put an apostrophe in its place
• Where you’re showing that something belonged to a time (e.g. ‘The 80’s beloved glam rock bands’), place the apostrophe between the number and the ‘s’

TL;DR

• If you’re combining two longer words and leaving some letters out, it’s an omission and the apostrophe will take the place of the missing letters (e.g. can not = can’t)
• If you’re trying to show that the noun of the sentence owns something, it’s possession and you place an apostrophe ‘s’ at the end of the word (e.g. Nicole’s bag)
  • If you’re dealing with a plural noun ending in ‘s’, just use the apostrophe
  • The rules fly out the window if it’s a singular noun ending in ‘s’

TL;DR

When you’re writing for newspapers and magazines, words are precious. Words mean space, and space is a finite resource when you’re in print. (You shouldn’t be using unnecessary words on digital platforms either, but there are different reasons for that.) One of the first things a copy editor will do when reading a piece is to chop ‘that’ everywhere possible.

Besides saving space, leaving out an unnecessary ‘that’ can improve the flow of sentences and give them a rhythm. As lovely as a rhythmic sentence can be to read, a great tempo is pointless if the sentence doesn’t make sense. Which one of the problems with leaving out ‘that’: it can create ambiguity.

Here’s an example:

The teachers have identified the curriculum needs more independent work time.

When you first read this sentence, you’ll think ‘Ah, teachers have identified the curriculum’. But then you’ll realise there’s additional information and the beginning of the sentence mislead you.

This is known as a garden path sentence. It appears to mean one thing at first but then turns out to mean another. What happens with these sentences in the reader is forced to re-read them to make sense of what’s being said – something writers and editors want to avoid at all costs.

Aside from cases where leaving a ‘that’ out would introduce ambiguity, it’s generally a matter of personal preference. There are a few rules that can help you to figure out when it should be left in – or out.

Same, same, not different

The rule of parallel construction applies here. In other words, you need to stick with one grammatical form per sentence. In the case of ‘that’, if you’re going to use it in one case, you must use it in every case. For example:

Nicole realised she left her book at home and that she’d forgotten her lunch.

Nicole either needs to realise she’d forgotten her lunch or that she left her book at home. Failing to use parallel construction can confuse the reader and force them to go back to the beginning of the sentence to figure out its meaning.

Double trouble

A sentence should never contain a double ’that’. Even though it might make sense.

It depends what you’re doing

There are some verbs that usually need a little ‘that’ to make sense. You can usually figure this out by reading aloud.

A few of the common ones:

 It’s all relative

If your ‘that’ is acting as a relative pronoun (it’s the direct object of the verb in a relative clause), it can be excluded. For example:

It’s the baboon that we saw steal the watermelon.

But if it’s the subject of the verb in a relative clause, ‘that’ shouldn’t be dropped.

It’s the same baboon that stole the watermelon.

Sub-standard

Drop ‘that’ wherever it functions as a subordinating conjunction. This is where the dependent clause (which provides non-essential information) is the direct object of the verb in the main clause (the bit with all the important stuff) and is directly after another verb. In other words:

Many people started saying that they felt sick.

Many people were saying (verb) something (main clause). That something was that they felt sick (dependent clause). So they don’t need to be ‘saying that’.

Stage a demonstration

When ‘that’ is used as a demonstrative adjective or pronoun, it cannot be left out. These parts of speech modify the noun so that we know exactly what is being spoken about. For example:

I want that dress.

She took that hair tie from my desk.

TL;DR

• ‘That’ can be left out in many cases. But beware of creating ambiguity or “garden path” sentences.
• There are a few solid rules for when it should be included or excluded:
  • There must be parallel construction in a sentence.
  • Don’t use a double ‘that’.
  • There are a few verbs that need a ‘that’. You can read aloud to figure this out.
  • If it’s used as a relative pronoun, you can drop it.
  • Don’t use ‘that’ where it functions as a subordinating conjunction.
  • You have to include it when it’s used as a demonstrative adjective or pronoun.

It recently came to my attention that there’s a difference in how you use greetings when you’re emailing and writing a letter. At school, I’d always been taught to address the recipient with ‘Dear’ and place a comma after the greetings. In other words:

Dear Mom,

Something that stuck out to me when I started working was that this comma is omitted in emails and most writers just say ‘Hi’. Like so:

Hi Janet

Using Dear or placing a comma after the greeting can actually seem quite jarring when included in electronic mail. 

Knowing that what we’re taught at school can change – and having a letter I’d asked to be proofread returned without the punctuation following the greeting – got me wondering whether there are any concrete rules. And here we are.

This is a relatively complicated topic, because what is accepted isn’t technically grammatically correct. The basic rule is this: letters should be addressed using ‘Dear’ and a comma after the greeting, while emails use ‘Hi’ in the greetings and don’t get any punctuation. 

To the letter

Let’s start with letters, seeing as they’re simpler.

Unless you don’t know who you’re writing to, use ‘Dear’ as the greeting, followed by a comma. Here, “Dear” functions as an adjective, so there’s no need for punctuation between it and the name.

Dear Mom,

Hope you’re enjoying your week …

If on the off chance you’re writing a letter to someone whose name you don’t know, address it using ‘To Whom It May Concern:’. The first letter of each word is always capitalised and the greeting is always followed by a colon. In fact, the colon is the preferred punctuation mark in all formal communications. That’s straightforward enough.

To Whom It May Concern:

I write to you in application …

Disruptive technology

Email is quite different from traditional letters. And a bit more complicated.

If you know the recipient, a simple ‘Hi’ followed by their first name is perfectly acceptable. If you don’t know the recipient and they’re a peer (have a similar or lower rank than you), ‘Hi’ is still perfectly fine. I would steer away from this if you don’t know their first name, though, as ‘Hi Mrs X’ can sound a bit awkward.

Here’s where it gets a bit murky. If you’re using ‘Hi’ as your greeting, you’re using an interjection. Interjections need to be followed by punctuation – usually an exclamation or, where they’re part of a sentence, a comma. And because the greeting is a sentence, it needs a full stop at the end. Which means it would look like this:

Hi, Dan.

Although this is grammatically correct, it is quite jarring considering the email greetings we’re used to. 

It’s widely accepted that the comma between the greeting and the recipient’s name should be dropped. Many people would even find a comma placed after the recipient’s name odd. However, it’s not altogether incorrect, so you can choose which you prefer.

Hi Jane

Hi Jane,

As with letters, the punctuation you use is very much dependent on the situation. If you’re writing to someone you don’t know to request something, it’s likely that you would use the most formal greeting, which is ‘Dear’ followed by a colon, until such time as they use a different format to address you.

Dear Mrs Logan:

TL;DR

While there is a grammatical rule prescribing how written greetings should look, it’s been gently eroded over time. These are the fast (but not hard) rules:

• The recipient’s name in informal letters and formal emails follows “Dear” and the whole greeting ends with a comma.
• Formal letters and emails will both use “Dear” and have a colon after the recipient’s name
• Greetings in informal emails start with “Hi” and don’t have any punctuation. 

TL;DR

An error that we see all the time is the misuse of commas with appositives.

An appositive (or identifier) is a noun or pronoun that provides more information about another noun or pronoun. These little grammatical gremlins are preceded by commas – unless they’re restrictive. In other words, an appositive that provides unnecessary (or interesting) information follows a comma. In every other case, the comma is left out.

When in doubt, leave it out

At school, most of us are taught that a name or proper noun should always be preceded by a comma. This, however, is incorrect. All this construction serves to do is create an unnecessary pause between the appositive and the noun. Unless the name is the only thing that can be described by the appositive, leave the comma out.

For example:

“I made many mud pies with my childhood friend, Sandy.”

I had a childhood friend named Sandy, but she was not the only one who could be described by the phrase “my childhood friend”. Using the comma here would imply that Sandy was my only childhood friend. However, seeing as I was such a social butterfly, including the commas creates the wrong impression.

The correct construction, using the name and appositive, would be:

“I made many mud pies with my childhood friend Sandy.”

Two’s company

When it comes to appositives in the middle of sentences, it’s important to remember that the commas always work in pairs. So, where the appositive is applicable only to the noun or pronoun, you will use two commas to separate it from the rest of the sentence.

For example:

“Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, loves gadgets.”

This sentence would make sense without “Tim Cook”, so we put this additional information or non-restrictive phrase between commas.

TL;DR

• If a noun, pronoun or phrase is essential to the sentence and will change the meaning of that sentence if it’s removed, don’t put a comma in front of it.
• If the appositive is non-essential, it needs to have commas on either side of it.

Featured image courtesy of Aaron Burden on Unsplash

TL;DR

• If it’s moving from point A to point B at speed, it’s ‘fast’
• If it happens in a short period of time, it’s ‘quick’

Although they seem to be interchangeable and native English speakers have little difficulty choosing the correct option when speaking, quick and fast are often misused in writing. Maybe this is because people tend to think ‘quick’ sounds more formal than ‘fast’. I can’t be sure though.

The basic difference is this:

• Quick specifies a short (or shorter-than-expected) period of time
• Fast refers to rate

You can see the contract between the two when you look at the synonyms for each.

Linguistically, ‘fast’ acts as an adjective and an adverb. ‘Quick’ is an adjective, becoming ‘quickly’ in adverb form.

The fast car.                                                Adjective – describes the car
The boy ran fast.                                       Adverb – describes the run
The quick fox jumped.                            Adjective – describes the fox
The fox jumped quickly.                         Adverb – describes the jump

I’ll do a piece on adverbs and adjectives another time because I’m not in the mood for parts of speech at the moment. All you need to know for now is that adjectives describe nouns and pronouns, while adverbs describe verbs, adjectives and other adverbs.

But here’s a problem with the examples above: why is it a ‘quick fox’ but a ‘fast car’?

From what I’ve found, it seems that ‘fast’ as an adjective is preferred for nouns powered by engines or electricity. All swift things with a pulse are ‘quick’.

Featured image courtesy of chuttersnap on Unsplash

TL;DR

‘Myself’ is used later on in a sentence that contains ‘I’

‘I’ is a subject and ‘me’ is an object, consider which part of the sentence you’re working with to decide which to use.

If there are two pronouns or a noun and a pronoun, delete the first and see if the sentence still makes sense

Use ‘me’ when the pronoun follows a verb or preposition

Which word to use

Knowing which word to do when is all about knowing how pronouns work. Because parts of speech are complicated and can be confusing, here’s a recap:

Pronouns are used in place of a noun. A pronoun replaces a noun but refers to it (see what I did there?).

“Jade went to the shop; she bought a chocolate.”

There are six kinds of pronouns (some people separate reflexive and intensive, which makes seven, but I prefer to group those together):

It is me! Or is it I?

We’re mostly told that the convention is “always ‘and I’”. Although this is true in many cases, it’s not true in all cases.

Me and I are both first person singular pronouns.

First person: takes the place of the name of the speaker
Singular: takes the place of one person or thing

The difference between the two is that ‘I’ is the subjective case and ‘me’ is the objective case. This means that ‘I’ is the subject of the verb, while ‘me’ is the object of the verb or preposition.

“I saw the dog.”
“I was bitten by an ant.”
“The dog bit me.”
“Believe me.”

There are two simple rules that can help you decide whether to use ‘I’ or ‘me’:

1. Where there are two nouns or pronouns, delete the first and see if the sentence still makes sense.

“My mom and I love bargain hunting.”
“David fetched Tom and me in his new car.”

2. Use ‘me’ in place of ‘I’ when the pronoun follows a verb or preposition.

“Between you and me, I prefer chocolate cake.”

‘Between’ is a preposition, so ‘me’ is correct

One more rule about ‘I’ and ‘me’: it is always ‘and I’, never ‘I and’, but it can be either ‘me and’ or ‘and me’ .

I’m very into myself

‘Myself’ is a reflexive pronoun; this means that it refers to the subject of the sentence. It is used when the object of a preposition or pronoun is the same as the subject of the sentence.

“I ended up driving myself.”
“I managed to implicate myself in the doughnut heist.”

Besides acting as a reflexive pronoun, ‘myself’ can also act as an intensifier. In these cases, it is used after the subject to emphasize it.

“I myself can cook the food.”

Important to remember: never use ‘myself’ after a preposition of place. You must use ‘me’ in that case.

“He jumped in front of me.”
“She sat beside me.”
“The dog lay next to me.”

Featured image courtesy of Plush Design Studio on Unsplash

Being a native English speaker (and writer) in a land where British English is the accepted standard, I’ve been taught to use an ‘s’ instead of the ‘zee’ that’s favoured in American English (I’m talking about words like organise, realise, recognise and finalise). And it just seemed right.

Conjugating these verbs, however, has always made be slightly uncomfortable. While the pronunciation of the ‘s’ in organise is soft enough to justify its use, the ‘zing’ that rolls off the tip of your tongue when pronouncing the present participle (organising) always made me think twice about the spelling.

For years, I have fought my instincts while writing these words. Steadying my wrist as I head into the final syllable, ready to trace the exact opposite shape of the sharp, swift ‘z’ that I wanted to scribble down so badly.

But I shall restrain myself no longer.

I recently stumbled across an article (multiple articles, in fact) which pointed out that Oxford prefers the -ize suffix for many of these ‘traditionally’ -ise words. And it’s not just Oxford, Cambridge and Collins do, too. If you search for any of these verbs using -ise, you will be directed to a page with the -ize version, with an ‘also’ or ‘usually’* beneath the main entry suggesting the -ise spelling as an alternative.

The question is: why?

The reason is etymological. The -ize suffix follows the Greek convention of verbs ending with –izo and –izein, which was the standard when these words were first defined in print (some as far back as the 1400s). Newspapers and other publications latched onto the -ise spelling between 1800 and 2000, which is why you’re likely to see it more often. The point is, neither is right or wrong, so you’re entitled to use whichever tickles your fancy. Just as long as you’re consistent.

Unsurprisingly, there are certain words that must always be spelled with an ‘s’ – like ‘unsurprising’ – because they’ve come into the English language in a different way. But that feels like a topic for another day.

All I know for now is that I no longer have to resist the urge to let my pen zig-zag across the line when I recognize the need to use one of these words.

*This is wildly incorrect. The -ize suffix is usually used in British English. You can have a look at Google’s Ngram Viewer – which charts the frequency of comma delimited search terms per year for a particular language – to see the difference in popularity between the -ize/-ise terms. I tried it out with organize/organise here.