I’m not trying to be dramatic. I’m not claiming that passive voice is the go-to tool of oppression or that it represents the downfall of free society. All I’m saying is that one of the many strategies oppressors have at their disposal is to use the passive voice in their writing (or speaking). For this reason, writers should use the passive voice judiciously and always consciously, and readers should watch for it and question its use.
Author Archive: splane
Five Commandments for Writing for the Internet
Writing for the Internet is a special kind of writing with its own conventions. Because on the Internet people read content on a screen, on the fly, and in a head-to-head comparison with a gazillion other articles on the exact same topic, you’ve got to take particular care to get your writing noticed and to hold your readers’ attention until the end and for the future. Don’t waste your time by working hard to create worthwhile content and then ignoring the following five commandments for writing for the Internet.
Why You Need to Break up with the Exclamation Point(!)
In our fast-paced, Internet-driven world, we are constantly bombarded with “urgent alerts,” “shocking news,” information about “breakthrough formulas,” and “astounding research.” You need to know how to write content that stands out amid a herd that’s bellowing so loudly. The lazy writer will turn to the exclamation mark. By adding fifteen exclamation points, she reasons, she can show just how innovative!/stupendous!/mind-blowing! her content is. (Or by CAPITALIZING or underlining or boldfacing every other word, she calculates that she can at least make you read half of what she wrote.)