Tagged: writing

4 easy tips to become a better writer

As much as I get frustrated with some of the things I edit, my current job is teaching me a LOT about where people fall short in being able to communicate well in writing.    Up until recently, most of the editing I’ve done has been for a relatively small group of people. In any given job, I’d be editing stuff written by the same handful of people all of the time. Now, I’ll probably edit things written by 70+ different people each month, and from month to month, I only get a few repeats. As a result, I’ve started...

How a one-off rant about hair donation changed how I blog

Five years ago, I wrote what has become, by far, the most popular and most widely-read article I’ve ever written, with close to 200k unique views. My article on hair donation and why it’s not for me turns up on the first page of results for a number of Google searches related to hair donation, gets shared on social media by people I don’t even know, and stirred up the most comment section controversy this blog has ever seen. When I wrote this article, the only people who really read this blog were friends, family, and a few colleagues. I’d...

Pen wanted

Continuing with what appears to be a theme of posts about my favorite things, this post is about my favorite pen. I found it on the ground…somewhere…a couple of years ago. It is unusual in most respects, particularly compared to most pens that I’ve ever used. First and foremost, it has a nib width of 0.4 mm. Yes, you read that correctly, and I did not make a typo. Outside of specialty pigment pens and imported pens, the smallest nib you can find here in the U.S. is 0.5 mm. The narrower and more precise line is what made this...