Noun string are, as you might suppose, a series of nouns. Here’s one:

competitive price options

That’s easy to understand. The nouns competitive and price serve as adjectives to modify options.

Deciphering noun strings gets tougher with each noun you toss into the string.

Alternative regulated competitive price options

Postoperative recuperation program procedure indicator sheet

In a noun string, the writer uses a series of nouns as adjectives to modify the final noun. That’s what makes a noun string tough to read: At each noun the reader hesitates, wondering if he should understand this as a noun or as a …

We’ve all been to websites that offend our senses. It might be the copy, the color, too much flashing or that “something” you just can’t put your mouse on that sends you packing. In working with businesses in all industries and sizes the one common denominator is they all have a website. Unfortunately, not all of them are good and some are flat out annoying. Here are a few easy thought processes you can work through to help provide your visitors with a positive visit to your online office.
Be Clear About It’s Goal
I’m stupefied by the number of clients that …

Scott McCloud describes six elements of design in his visual textbook Understanding Comics.

• Two weeks ago I looked at idea and form, which sit at the core of the creative process.
• One week ago I examined idiom and structure, and what role they play in web design.
• Today we finish the journey by looking at craft and surface.

Craft
The craft is all the accumulated bits of knowledge and technique …

When I begin editing a client’s draft, I invariably find these two duos of confusion:

Since used to mean because

Like used to mean such as

Let’s look at each of these pairs of confusion.
Since or Because?

• Since refers to time:

It’s been years since I’ve eaten s’mores!

• Because refers to consequence:

I avoid s’mores because of my marshmallow allergy.

Oh, yes, it does make a difference.

Look at these two nearly-identical sentences about Rafe’s love life. Changing just one word changes the sentence’s meaning.

Since he broke up with flaxen-haired Dominique, Rafe’s dated brunettes.

…

Nowadays information comes at us in a flood. Multiple TV stations run news 24-7, Twitter provides an unending stream of two line summaries of the universe, and no matter what topic interests you, there will never be a dearth of relevant blogs bringing out yet more stats and figures.

Sometimes it would be nice of somebody would just stop and take the time to take all this data that our ever expanding infosphere has made available, and turn it into something understandable.

Worry not: relief is in sight!

Designers and data analysts from around the web have been finding ways to fit …

What is Social Media?
Social Media is a vehicle to share information with a broad audience twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. In addition to being any form of online publication or presence that allows users to engage in multi-directional conversations, it is a way to build relationships with the public. Online tools allow businesses to keep in touch with customers and easily update them on what’s new, whether it is products, services, events, an interesting insight or a new hire to the team. Basically, Social Media is the “wave of the now.”
What to know about Social Media
Social Media …

Well, we finally made it to Facebook. Just like any other small business, we struggled with the decision of whether or not to have a presence in Facebook. It’s free to start; it’s simple to use… but the reality is that it’s an investment of internal resources—mostly time. But given the staggering statistics of how much Facebook is used, we decided to give it a shot. Here’s how we did it.
1. We decided on content
We took this as an opportunity to have a balance of work-related posts and fun/personal ones with the goal of showing the world who we are …

Last week I wrote on idea and form.  These two elements of design are often decided internally before you even begin the search for a designer, and they sit at the core of the creative process outlined in Scott McCloud’s visual textbook Understanding Comics.

However, once you bring a developer into the process, they’re going to want to get at the infrastructure of the design, and for this we’ll need to move onto the next two layers….

Lindsay Gower of Blue Ribbon Writing has been Marissa’s friend and ally since before I joined the company. She is kind, insightful, and passionate about the English language. It has been a pleasure working beside her on websites and blogs.

Thank you, Lindsay, I hope you enjoy these treasures we gathered for you from around the web.
Save the Words!

“Pick …

You take care to send email messages that are grammatically correct and well formatted. But did you know that what you send isn’t always what your recipient sees? In some cases, what you send can deliver a different impression than you intended.
GMail
Here’s a message I wrote up in my Gmail account and sent to myself (to three of my other email addresses).  The photo I attached is of my collie, the smiling Archee McLeash.

Yahoo!
My GMail-generated email landed in my Yahoo! email account with the photo up top. The whole email looked like …