• Keep your sentences short
• Prefer active verbs
• Use ‘you’ and ‘we’
• Choose words appropriate for the reader
• Don’t be afraid to give instructions
• Avoid nominalisations
• Use positive language
• Use lists where appropriate

Take a look at this website: Plain English Campaign. You can appreciate the values and benefits of using plain English. If you do not know what plain English is, read the Free guides on How to write in plain English.

A job means doing something people want, averaged together with everyone else in the company you are working for. However, that averaging is affected by many factors and the process is sometimes not fair; there is no way to get paid more by contribute more. If you want to earn more, you need to be in a position where your performance can be measured, and you have to have leverage. The key to measurement is smallness and the key to leverage is technology. Therefore, starting or joining a startup is a good way to get rich.

So, young man, are you serious to consider it? The following are recommended readings.

• Small Biz 101: How to Get Started - Signal vs. Noise (by 37signals)
• How to Start a Startup (Paul Graham, March 2005)
• Ten Rules for Web Startups (Evan Williams, November 2005)
• Nick Denton: Startup kit (November 2005)
• Dot Tactics: 9 must reads before you launch a startup

1. Love —The Prophets
2. Know thyself —Socrates
3. Inches make champions —Vince Lombardi
4. Nothing gold can stay —Robert Frost
5. Work is love made visible —Kahlil Gibran
6. No great thing is created suddenly —Epictetus (A.D.200)
7. Well done is better than well said —Benjamin Franklin
8. No wind favors he who has no destined port —Montaigne
9. Sometimes even to live is an act of courage —Seneca
10. Do first things first, and second things not at all —Peter Drucker.

Go to this page, the world’s best quotes in one to ten words, to read the comments made by Frank. I particularly like the comments on the quotes number 5 and 10.

In this resource web: Teaching Resources and Publications, there are a handful of publications and tip sheets for classroom teaching. You may find something useful if you are a high-school or university teacher. For example, I also find this useful: Ten Ways to Make Your Teaching More Effective.

You will become handy with these tools over time. You will begin to recognize their use in the stories you read. You will see chances to apply them when you revise your own work. Eventually, they will become part of your flow, natural and automatic.

The first three tools are already good enough for me to use in my writing.

Tool #1: Begin sentences with subjects and verbs, letting subordinate elements branch off to the right. Even a very long sentence can be clear and powerful when the subject and verb make meaning early.

Tool #2: Use verbs in their strongest form, the simple present or past. Strong verbs create action, save words, and reveal the players.

Tool #3: Beware of adverbs. They can dilute the meaning of the verb or repeat it.

I will surely spare some time to read all of the fifty writing tools. Thanks lifehack.org and Roy Peter Clark.

This article suggests 30 tips about how to be more creative. The following lists some that I think them good and understand how to do. Spare some time to read the article. You might find something good for you.

• The idea doesn’t have to be big. It just has to change the world.
• Put the hours in.
• You are responsible for your own experience.
• Keep your day job.
• Don’t try to stand out from the crowd; avoid crowds altogether.
• If you accept the pain, it cannot hurt you.
• Dying young is overrated.
• The world is changing.
• Merit can be bought. Passion can’t. (The only people who can change the world are people who want to. And not everybody does.)
• Nobody cares. Do it for yourself.
• Don’t worry about finding inspiration. It comes eventually.
• You have to find your own schtick.
• The best way to get approval is not to need it.

Workers are empowered only if they are successful at creating and maintaining personal social networks.

Source: It’s Not What You Know, It’s Who You Know: Work in the Information Age by Bonnie Nardi, Steve Whittaker, and Heinrich Schwarz. First Monday, volume 5, number 5 (May 2000). URL

First Monday is a famous peer–reviewed journals on the Internet, which is indexed in Communication Abstracts, INSPEC, LISA, PAIS and other services.