Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips I like writing exercises – things that make me think. I came across a good one today from Kenneth Davis at ManageYourWriting.com. He calls it the Alphabet Shift. choose a word you’ve written beginning with a letter from the first half of the alphabet. Replace it with a more effective word beginning […]

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by Dwayne Phillips For writers and those who name products and services: standard items have shorter names than special ones. Attach modifiers to exceptions to the rule, not the rule. Apple recently changed their line of laptop computers. As expected, the newer computers have more performance and a lower price than last year’s models. In […]

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by Dwayne Phillips The May/June 2009 issue of IEEE Software has a paper by Greg Wilson on books that are “Not on the Shelves.” In it, Wilson gives the synopsis of 12 books that should be on the shelves, but are not. At least he can’t find them. Wilson asks for more suggestions of such […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Blogs can be repetitious. Don’t bloggers tire of writing the same thing? No, they don’t. Each blogger is writing what she writes for the first time. I find much good in that. A reporter asks a clergyman, “What are you going to say to that family whose house just burned to the […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Author and consultant Ed Yourdon is updating his book “Death March.” He is working on the book online as a type of blog. You can participate by reading and commenting. The instructions for joining are here. I have joined in the discussion. I like this type of thing – reading something written […]

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by Dwayne Phillips It seems that many knowledge workers “work” four hours a day (and are paid for eight). This merely highlights our ignorance of what comrpises work. Slashdot recently surveyed 24,000 workers. 40% said they worked four hours a day. Another 24% said they worked maybe four to six hours. This means two-thirds of […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Knowledge is difficult to obtain and precious to me. Therefore, I write notes in notebooks and I keep the notebooks. This photo shows my notebooks (click photo to enlarge). I have filled these with various types of notes since 1984. Yes, that is about 25 years of notebooks. I use three types […]

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I write in a journal almost everyday. I started doing this about eight years ago at the urging or Jerry Weinberg. I was about to attend a writer’s workshop led by Weinberg. He sent out an email telling the attendees several things that we might do to  prepare. Journal writing was one of the things. […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Newspapers are dying. They are being replaced by the Internet. The story goes on and on. But why? Newsprint is easier to read for many of us. I always found the big page format clumsy to hold and fold and keep straight, but it was print and I could take it anywhere. […]

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