If you’ve ever copied text from a web page and pasted it into an editor, you know how ugly it can be. There is big empty spaces on each line and strange indentations where there shouldn’t be any. Some of those white spaces are part of the structure of what you’re copying. Strip them all […]

That’s what you do when outlining some knotty bit of technical guidance for the very first time: “Thorough,” you say to yourself. You go so deep as to make a tree diagram; you have so many levels of indenting going on that by the fourth or fifth you’re unable to focus any longer. Bullet point […]

One of most overlooked pages of a book is the back of the title page. Small print contains all of the publisher’s address information, ISBNs, and all sorts of other legal stuff. Unless a designer informs you there isn’t enough copy here or it’s overflowing into the following page, most authors don’t pay any attention […]

Every opening line are a bet. It asks a stranger for their time, and only allows you about one breath to explain why they should grant it. Writers agonize over what to say in those words yet forget how much they weigh. Too many writers trip their readers over the starting line by making it […]