Red Door Wordsmithing

10/25/2017

Andy's story highlights how Shelldale Better Beginnings, Better Futures supports the healthy development of children and strong community connections.

Shelldale Better Beginnings, Better Futures is changing lives in Guelph's Willow Road area. This is Andy's story.

05/03/2017

Here's a short video Red Door put together for the Guelph Neighbourhood Support Coalition--enjoy!

https://vimeo.com/209151312

With the support and guidance of the GNSC, Alisha became a yoga teacher. Here's how she's paying that forward.

04/17/2017

10/14/2016

What does it take to be a foster parent? Here's a little video Red Door put together for Family & Children's Services of Guelph and Wellington County.

For more visit https://www.fcsgw.org/adoption-fostering/fostering/

12/18/2014

Yikes.

10/15/2014

We got gold!

As part of an international competition, the League of American Communications Professionals awarded SNC-Lavalin's 2013 annual report a gold medal for excellence in overall design and content. Red Door contributed the draft primary text for the report.

It's a biggie: approximately 1000 annual reports from 25 countries were presented.

Congratulations to the whole team!

http://www.lacp.com/2013vision/awards-annual-report-competition-snc-lavalin.htm

View Competition Class Performance 30 10 Copyright � 2001-2014 ?

06/11/2013

Yet another proof goof:

05/05/2013

Looking for a way to inject a bit of rhythm and flow into your writing? Try varying the length of your sentences.

Sprinkling your text with a few very short sentences can give your readers a little poke. Like this. And longer sentences, when used to full effect and with the service of a few well-placed commas, can take your readers on a journey rich with an undulating flow of uninterrupted ideas, description and dialogue, deftly deking around the harsh crash of a period's abrupt ending (spot the alliteration!*). But be cautious with those longer sentences.

Here's a glimpse of how our average sentence length has been shrinking over time:

Pre-Elizabethan times: 50 words

Elizabethan times: 45 words

Victorian times: 29 words

Early 20th century: 23 words

Today: 18 words

This doesn't necessarily mean that we writers are dumbing our content down. Clear, concise writing reflects an appreciation for how busy our readers are and the sheer amount of information competing for their attention. People no longer have the patience to slog through a dense brick of text.

So go ahead and use varied sentence lengths to make your writing dance. But remember, particularly with business communications, it's wise to play it safe and ASSUME your readers are busy. Show some respect by getting to the point and getting out of their way!

*alliteration = the repetition of the same sound at the beginning of words in a flow of words (e.g., "description and dialogue, deftly deking")

02/21/2013

How tough can proofreading be anyway? Well, let's see . . . how many Fs do you see in the following text?

FINISHED FILES ARE THE RESULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTIFIC STUDY COMBINED WITH THE EXPERIENCE OF YEARS.

Done? How many did you get?

Interestingly, people who speak English as a second language seem to do better on this exercise. But the rest of us naturally prune out words like "of" as non-essential information (another theory is that we miss the F sound because we sound out "of" as "ov").

So how many Fs are there? Six — and if you got them all then props to you!