Writing, Clear and Simple

The winner of the drawing for The Elements of Internet Style is Katy Preston! Congratulations to Katy, and thanks to everyone who entered.

Remember, anyone who orders a copy from me before the official release date—December 26—will get a 10% discount on the regular retail price of $24.95. Drop me a line, and I’ll put you on the list to receive a copy.

When I announced the drawing for a free copy of The Elements of Internet Style, I forgot to mention that the deadline for entry is midnight (Central Time; GMT -06:00), December 16. So if you want a chance to win, send that e-mail now! (Put “Elements Giveaway” in the Subject line.) I’ll announce the winner on December 17.

And if you want to order a copy, drop me a line. Everyone who orders before the official release date—December 26—will get a 10% discount on the regular retail price of $24.95.

It’s finally here! Yesterday, the postman dropped off a few prerelease copies The Elements of Internet Style, a book from EEI Communications and Allworth Press. Keep reading to learn how you can score a free copy!

My longtime readers may recall that back in March, I mentioned that I contributed a chapter to this book: “Shaping Information for its Users: The Pursuit of Usefulness.” Well, it’s finally ready to hit the bookstores (real and virtual), and it was worth the wait.

Here’s the table of contents:

• The New Publishing Landscape and Lexicon
• Creating Valuable Content: The Internet Influence
• Connecting with Tomorrow’s Readers, Customers, and Colleagues
• Understanding What Web 2.0 Means for Editors and Writers
• Listening to People Talk: How Conversational Media Works
• Shaping Information for its Users: The Pursuit of Usefulness [That one’s mine!]
  
• Web Style: Writing, Organizing, Editing
• The Rules Used to Matter. What Now?
• You’ve Got a Style of Your Own
• New Usage: Adventuresome, Troublesome, or Tiresome?
• Coda: The Future of the Book 

To give you a bit of its flavor, here’s an excerpt from the preface:

Mainstream reliance on the Internet as a publishing medium has grown since the early 1990s to influence nearly every segment of society today: churches, small merchants, universities, hospitals, charities, museums, multinational corporations, and newspaper, magazine, and book publishers. Also local, state, and federal government agencies. Also teenagers, nutcases, politicos, pornographers, crooks, and your talented cousin Kathy, a pen-and-ink and watercolor artist.

All of these and more tell their stories, sell their wares, and make their cases on the Web. Thus, to understand what we mean by The New Rules of Creating Valuable Content for Today’s Readers takes a working knowledge of core communication concepts and terms directly related to the influence of the Internet.

Some sound so deceptively familiar that you may still be taking them for granted. Some are so new that you may have been ignoring their new implications as irrelevant to your still-largely-print-based work up until now.

Whatever your particular spot on the new-media learning curve, you need to be aware of the implications of these terms, which have fundamentally altered as Internet use and portable publishing technologies have evolved: literacy, community, user-generated content, conversational media, Web writing style. Information search, access, hierarchy, and usability. Standard American English usage. Editing. Publishing. Reading. Content.

This book is a great resource for anyone who has to communicate on the Web.

Yeah, I know: I’m blowing my own trumpet, and you’re (correctly) accusing me of being biased. Well, I’m proud of my involvement in this book. And looking at the other chapters, I’m a bit humbled by the company I’m keeping.

But if my word isn’t good enough for you, here are some other opinions:

“This book is a must for every would-be Web superhero.” — Chris Brogan, cofounder, PodCamp.org

“Exceptionally intelligent, comprehensive, and accessible, this is the only Internet-style book anyone needs.” — Rosalie Maggio, author of The Art of Talking to Anyone

 The book will be released on December 26, and I’ll be selling copies here. In the meantime, I’m holding a drawing for a free pre-release copy, so if you’d like to toss your name in the hat, send me an e-mail with “Elements Giveaway” in the Subject line. I’ll announce the winner on December 17.

And drop me a line if you want to order a copy. Everyone who orders before the official release date—December 26—will get a 10% discount on the regular retail price of $24.95.

…but I’ve been a bad blog host. Projects and real life have had a way of pulling me away from this blog recently, and for the few of you who do read Writing, Clear and Simple, I apologize. I do have a couple of posts in the works, and I need to reply to J’s last comment on the use and misuse of crisis (but that’s going to turn into a bit of a dissertation on prescriptivism vs. descriptivism, so that might take a bit).

I was going to point you all to an interesting article that Seth Godin linked to: In “The Secret of Writing to be Read”, Godin linked to something that author Steven Johnson wrote, and said that “short, simple sentences not only sell more books, but spread ideas farther and faster.”

Now I agree with that idea, that short, simple sentences are a good thing. However, when you read Johnson’s piece—which describes some interesting analysis that Johnson did—that conclusion isn’t explicitly stated. Still, both Godin’s bit (and it really is a bit) and Johnson’s longer post are worth checking out.

Anyway, all this to say, I’m back, and plan on resuming our regularly scheduled irregular blogging. Thanks for sticking around!