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- Write it Right, a presentation by Kevin Norquay about writing for the press.
- Identify and write for your audience not yourself!
- Audience Matters so think of them.
- The Plain English Campaign has a series of guides, provided free of charge on this site. The guides are provided in (PDF) format. If you cannot read PDF files on your computer, you will need to download a free PDF Reader such as Sumatra.
- Daily Writing Tips, where you can subscribe to get a daily email.
- Make your documents and designs more readable. Some simple but powerful tips.
- Motivating Your Reader and Yourself - Motivating Yourself to Write Books A series of articles on motivation.
- The Inverted Pyramid approach to writing.
- Word outlining capabilities, that can make it easy for you to organise your thoughts and improve your writing. (This tip works with Microsoft Word 97, Word 2000, Word 2002, Word 2003, and Word 2007).
- Word Document Map displays a list of all outline headings in your document down the left-hand side of your document window. In many respects, the Document Map performs a similar function to a navigation bar on a webpage.
- SAS: Simple Active Short. A simple technique for better writing: ‘say’ don’t ‘write’.
- Managing Long Documents (1).
- Word: Managing Long Documents (2).
- Planning a major document(3).
- Keep it Simple Stupid: Using Basic Design Maxims for Effective Communication, shows research results presented by Colin Wheildon in his book, Type & Layout:How Typography and Design Can Get Your Message Across - or Get in the Way.
- How to Write, Speak and Think More Effectively - a summary of Rudolf Flesch’s Rules of Effective Writing
- Writing Tools - a SeniorNet Workshop
Digital Storytelling
Digital Preservation
- A presentation by Mick Crouch - Archives New Zealand
- Preserve your digital records. A site from the US Library of Congress
Grammar
Readability tests
- The Basic English Grammar ebook a PDF download..
- FREE Online English Usage Rules. You can also subscribe to a daily newsletter.
- Great Books Online from Bartleby.com contains free full versions of books such as Thesaurus (Roget) , The Kings English (Fowler) , The Elements of Style (Strunk) and too many others to mention. A useful language resource of older publications.
- The Guide to Grammar and Writing by Charles Darling, was originally designed to help students write reports and research papers. He created a site where students could look up grammatical issues.
- How to write magnetic headlines.
- How To Write Powerful Headlines that will grab your reader's attention immediately.
Indexing
- An introduction to the principles, alternative methods and some traps in indexes and indexing by Lindsay Rollo
- Microsoft Word Add-Ins for Publishing Professionals. While primarily aimed at professional publishers, looking over this material will alert readers to issues or problems they may be confronted with when preparing long documents
- SemiQuad vs A4 demo - a comparison of paper
- Drivel Defence, is a software package that will help you to check the use of plain English! Please note: Drivel Defence uses JavaScript to run, so you will need to have this enabled in your browser. Click on the link in the page above to check your settings.
- How to Put the the Flesch in and Take the Fog Out of Your Writing.
- Fog Index and Readability Formulas.
- Calculate readability with this free online software tool.
- The Wasteline Test assesses whether your writing is ‘flabby’ or ‘fit’. The test works by counting percentages of words in five categories commonly associated with stodgy sentences: weak verbs, abstract nouns, prepositions, adjectives/adverbs and 'waste words' (it, this, that, there).
- Bullfighter is software that works with Microsoft Word and PowerPoint to help you find and eliminate jargon in your documents. It may look like a little toolbar with three buttons, but it's actually much more. Bullfighter includes a jargon database and an exclusive Bull Composite Index calculator that will allow you to see -- in an actual window, on your PC display, live -- just how bad a document can be.
Readability
- Readability is a simple tool that makes reading on the web easy, by removing the clutter around what you're reading. Get Readability and select from the listed settings (1). Drag the Readability bookmarklet (2) to your browser's bookmark toolbar.
- Norman Billbrough - manuscript assessor - points to note.
- Story Corps - prompts for family history conversations of a lifetime. These questions are suggestions for getting a conversation going.
- This list of questions is a very valuable resource for collecting your family's past history.
- Geneaology links noted by John MacGibbon, author of the New Zealand publication Your Family's History,a guide to researching, writing and publishing your family's history.
- New Zealand History online of general, births, deaths and marriages,shopping lists, cemetery records, whakapapa, forums, guides and immigrant groups links.
- Over 600 New Zealand Genealogy Links.
Typography
- Typography Primer with the basics you need to know.
- 10 Simple But Useful Ways To Use The Character Map & Your Lesser-Used Fonts
Publishing
- PublishMe has free member booklets on planning, writing, editing/proofing, designing, printing and selling your books.
- From Manuscript to Book - a how to guide - Brian Wood
- Want to reduce printing costs? Choose the font type carefully.
