Competition is high on the internet, due almost entirely on volume. So having your writing stand out is no easy task. PickTheBrain runs through five simple steps that should put you in the right direction. 1. You write what you read. Stop reading the same meaningless, repetitive writing everyone else reads. Quality of output directly correlates to…

Although you can write your articles in Microsoft Word or any such software, you might want to test the waters for some alternatives. Online and offline, there is a plethora of options in the blog editing/word processing field. ScribeFire Previously run at Performancing.com this editor runs within your Firefox browser as an add-on. There is…

If you’re a blog reader, chances are you’re also an aspiring blog writer. Launching a for-profit weblog is extremely attractive because it has the potential for endless profit with practically no overhead. Launching a blog is a quick and easy process even for the absolute beginner. The following is what I learned…

Literary legend, George Orwell wrote an essay in 1946 called Politics and the English Language as something of a cure for the state of writing in publications of the day. PickTheBrain.com brings to light 5 rules from said essay that will bring out your writing from the pack. 1. Never use a…

It can be said that the days of blogs just being writings from a particular person’s viewpoint are fading. Blogs nowadays take more of a general or subjective stance, while still remaining, in most cases, personal in nature. Tom Haskins has come up with four distinct types of blog writers and where their motivations lie. It’s…

The best part of becoming a ‘full-time’ freelance blog writer is the freedom of time. Instead of my 9-5 Mon-Fri working week I can work when I want for as long as I want. This is great in theory, yet anyone who has turned to working from home has found this is fraught with pitfalls. Why You…

Student-writers often believe that the secret of good writing is a reliance upon bigger and “better” words. Thus the haphazard thesaurus use that I wrote about last month. Another danger for student-writers involves the assumption that good writing is a matter of stuffy, ponderous sentences. Stuffy sentences might…

Fire and Knowledge published a very thorough article about how to improve your writing. The article traverses industries, so whether you’re a novelist or a business analyst, there is some quality information to be gained from the article. The content is very detailed and provides many tips to help you improve your…

Reading an essay from a college freshman many years ago, I came across a sentence that baffled me — it referred to “ingesting an orange.” I crossed out “ingest,” wrote “eat,” and wondered why anyone would’ve written otherwise. At the time, it didn’t occur to me that my student had very likely started with “eat,”…

Matthew Stibbe from Bad Language writes a post detailing the process and what to expect when trying to write (freelance) for money. What I like about the post is that it touches on marketing and business development, how much to charge, organizing your work, and editing. The article is written with the following…

Note-taking is important for both academic and professional life. Without the skill of note-taking, you may capture less information in a meeting, or you may not recall an important theory that your professor mentioned in a lecture. Michael Hyatt has an article to help you recover the lost art of note-taking. First he gives…

What does it take to concentrate and complete your term paper with high quality? It is usually a difficult task for many of us – we waited until the deadline comes, and without enough information, we guessed the requirements and delivered what we thought is right. DegreeTutor gives you 57 tips to turn around the table…

Great tip for students, or note takers. Have you ever dropped down your notes, but you completely couldn’t read your own writing? Well it happens to me. The Potential Blog spells out 5 quick ways to make your notes more readable. The post has some great points on using color, style of text, brackets, arrow, and…

Once in a while, I receive emails with long paragraphs. After I read through an email like that, I usually ask myself: “Okay, does he mean this, or that?” There was a time when I sat down and read through my archive in my mailbox and tried to understand the difference between huge emails and smaller…

According to a survey developed by OfficeTeam, 84% of executives polled consider one or two typos in a résumé sufficient to remove a job-candidate from consideration. One or two typos! Translated into academic terms, one or two typos in a paper would equal a failing grade. I’m not sure how much I want to trust…