Paula’s Writing Tricks
HERE’S WHAT A RESUME LOOKS LIKE IN 2021
If it’s been awhile since you’ve sent out a resume or cover letter, you may be surprised by how SHORT they are today. And with so many people sending out resumes this year (unemployment has skyrocketed with the COVID-19 pandemic), you’ll want to make sure your resume...
REMOTE WORK IS RAPIDLY CHANGING BUSINESS WRITING
10 ways the pandemic has transformed your reader — and strategies for connecting with them Emails, reports, proposals, manuals, and texts look completely different than when I started my technical writing business 21 years ago (hello — texts!). The new remote office...
WHY I STOPPED USING TIMES NEW ROMAN—AND WHY YOU SHOULD, TOO
A few years ago, a global shipping logistics company on the West Coast approached me about refreshing their newhire manual. They felt that the manual “no longer communicated the right image of their company.” Could I help? HOW I MADE THEIR NEWHIRE MANUAL LOOK MORE...
HOW TO WRITE A “LIGHTNING-FAST” FIRST DRAFT
We are pressured to write faster and faster—and every day, that pressure has steadily grown throughout my 19 years in business. For example, in 2005, a reasonable deadline for a 1,000-word technical article might be 4 weeks. This year, however, I had a client who...
RECRUITERS SPEND ONLY 7.4 SEC. ON YOUR RESUME
Sending out your resume? Be prepared to share it with a VERY busy recruiter. TheLadders used eye-tracking software to study how 30,000 recruiters looked at resumes. They discovered that recruiters spend only 7.4 seconds on a resume before making a decision. Here are...
1 SPACE AFTER A PERIOD—OR 2 SPACES?
Should you use 1 space after a period—or 2 spaces? There are lots of opinions about this, and several studies have even been done to answer this question. If you ask The Chicago Manual of Style, they recommend 1 space after a period. But other publications argue for...
THE PERFECT EMAIL SUBJECT LINE = 4 WORDS
Study of 2 million emails shows that 4-word subject lines have highest open rates According to a recent study by Marketo, the best length for an email subject line is 4 words. Marketo reviewed open rates for over 2 million emails and found that subject lines with only...
HIRING A WRITER? Here are 9 interview questions to ask
No matter what type of writer you’re looking for—technical writer, training developer, proposal writer, marketing writer, or business writer—here are 9 interview questions that I’ve used in the past with good results: Tell me about the types of documents you’ve...
9 STRATEGIES TECHNICAL WRITERS USE TO PROOFREAD DOCUMENTS + EMAILS
BY PAULA PETERS, author of The Ultimate Marketing Toolkit There are lots of good ways to proofread a document quickly and efficiently, but it’s hard to be perfect—unless you use multiple proofreaders, or unless you do multiple rounds of proofreading. This is...