From the friendly caves of Pixie Hollow.
If you're editing your material in-house (or your marketing person is), there are some critical resources to have available.
They are:
- The Style Manual. I prefer the hardcopy version, but it's newly available online, which you can use here. It sets the standard for Australian Government writing and editing. So if you've ever wondered whether it's government or Government, and when, you need The Style Manual.
- Fowler's Modern English Usage, which is by Oxford Uni Press.
- Roget's Thesaurus, which I still maintain is the best thesaurus available.
- A multi-volume copy of your national dictionary. In Australia, that's the Macquarie Australian English. I recommend minimum two volumes. Why? Because the online versions are extremely thin versions of the full shebang, and you're doing yourself a disservice by using them.
- Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think, if you're creating and deplying web content.
- Ann Handley's Content Rules, also for web content.
Depending on your industry, you'll also want available:
- legislation (in Australia you can get it from legislation.gov.au and the various state versions of such)
- access to standards and regulations that may apply to your industry
- a calculator, if you're doing maths (e.g. in a financial setting).
It sounds like a lot, but this is merely scratching the surface.
Your goal is to be as watertight as possible.
Missing from the above list is anything related to plagiarism checking, SEO checking, etc. All of that is the domain of your writer. If your writer is screwing that up, then it's all on them.
Or, you know, you if you're the person accountable for that writer. Ha!
Anyway, this is a good time to let you know that if you're after a pro in this space, you can get access to me for $80/hr. I've got some beautiful editorial support retainer packages available too, which guarantee you access even if you don't have an immediate need for hands-on editing. By way of a gift, I'll also throw in a free assessment of your editorial workflow, so you know what you can improve.
To get it, just reply to this email.
xx Leticia 'powering Amazon' Mooney
Please let me know what I can do for you.
Leticia Mooney is a consultant with decades of experience writing with and for people like you. Her company Brutal Pixie casts the the kind of spells your customers love. It consults to businesses in content strategy, content writing, ghostwriting, content operations, communication strategy, audits, investigations, training and coaching. Leticia is also the mother of an intelligent, engaging, and curious boy, who is named after a character created by J.R.R Tolkien. You can learn more about
her at
https://biodagar.com/about, and her business at
https://brutalpixie.com.
Leticia Mooney
PO Box 1190
Pasadena SA 5042
Australia
Phone/Text (Signal/Telegram) +61 421 925 382
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