To Be or Not To Be: No Passive Voice!

June 27, 2008 Leave a Comment

shakespeareThis may be a noble question for Shakespeare but not for newsletters!

The passive voice, often written with a “to be” verb, is great for business, science and other mundane prose. For the quick and informative newsletter, however, it is flat and confusing.

What makes a sentence passive rather than active?

Grammatically speaking, passive voice eliminates the subject and emphasizes the receiver. For example: “The book will be read to the children.”

How boring! How confusing! Who is doing the reading?

Let’s give this sentence some interest and emotion. Let’s give it a subject! Let’s write: “The father will read the book to his children.”

Technically, the passive voice is not incorrect or without purpose—we just use it far too often. Check your newsletter articles. Vary your sentence structure and keep the passive voice to a minimum.

Leave the “to be’s” for Shakespeare!

This posting is taken from the Reaching Readability newsletter by Adunate Word & Design (who, by the way, is me!)

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JWR, Inc., Johnson Creek, WI

June 16, 2008 1 Comment

JWR Inc

JWR Web Site Goes Live!

After many months of diligent teamwork, JWR Inc., of Johnson Creek, Wis., is making its new online debut.

JWR is one of the nation’s leading waste and recycling companies. Starting in 1972 as a small welding and repair shop, JWR is now a major provider of recycling equipment and service to manufacturing, retail, health, food and other industries.

JWR management was looking for a total redesign of its previous website. They wanted a clean, clear and contemporary site that educates viewers of waste and recycling needs and sells JWR as the solution.

As a progressive and growing company, JWR regularly communicates its news to the public. It also offers ongoing sales of used equipment. To do this, JWR staff wanted access to their website yet didn’t want to “mess up any coding.” Together, we incorporated Contribute, a content management program by Adobe, that allows staff to maintain their site to the degree they wish.

This proved to be a most interesting project! In addition to learning the ropes of waste and recycling, I feel environmentally green in my contribution to a viable and sustainable industry.

www.jwrinc.net

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Church Design Matters

June 3, 2008 1 Comment

Church design matters…at least hundreds at the HOW Design Conference thought so.

In a recent posting in Church Marketing Sucks, guest blogger Michael Buckingham writes of his exciting opportunity to present a church marketing and design topic at the HOW Design Conference. For those of you unfamiliar to the industry, HOW is a leader in graphic design publications and conferences. It’s not exactly the conference you’d expect to host a church-related topic.

Buckingham writes that he anticipated “maybe a half-dozen people” to show up for his portion of the conference. Instead it was standing room only. And not only did people come, they discussed, asked questions and stayed afterward.

How exciting is that?!

This is an awesome affirmation of God’s hand at work. It’s great to see people recognizing the need for quality graphic design in church communications. And it’s fantastic to know we can learn from what normally is an extremely secular industry and apply it to our spiritual mission.

God works in wondrous ways!

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