One of the central tenets of marketing is that you should understand your target market segment–your intended customers. Who will buy your product or engage your service? What do those people want? What expectations do they have? How will they use your product? Most importantly, what needs do they have that your product/service satisfy?
How does [...]

The classic break-up line is “It’s not you. It’s me.” How many hearts have been broken over these words? Once you get past the ungrammatical use of “me,” you can translate this statement to mean, “It’s I who has the problem because I need someone who is not you.”

Good writing requires good manners. This is especially true when a writer wants the reader to take some action or agree with some opinion. However, if you offend your readers, they probably won’t do what you tell them to do. In fact, one of the easiest ways to offend your readers is to tell them [...]

Using there to start sentences can create problems. It causes the subject of the sentence to be buried in the sentence, which means the reader won’t know what you are writing about until later, creates redundancy, and prevents you from tying a sentence to the overall context of a passage. On the other hand, learning [...]

Often when we are editing, we come across sentences that we can revise in several ways. When we cannot easily select a particular revision, we employ a strategy we call R & R, which stands for “Rephrase and Replace.”

As the word is being used here, “hedge” means to qualify your statements, express them as opinions, or tell the reader that you are not confident in what you are writing.
In the following sample statements, the writer demonstrates his lack of confidence:

“I think the ball is about to explode.”
“If I understand the instructions correctly, the [...]

Writing is a combination of art and craft. The art comes from lots of reading, talking, thinking, dreaming, and writing. The craft is primarily technique. Some techniques are complex, but a few are very simple and will instantly strengthen your writing. In many cases, however, strengthening writing simply means avoiding those things that weaken it.
We [...]

A. What Is Pacing?
Think about runners in a relay race. A member of the relay team starts running, makes a loop around the track, and passes off the baton to the next runner. A new runner grabs the baton, runs for a while, and then does something significant, which, in this case, is passing off [...]