Acceptable usage
Here you'll find a series of articles that you can include in your newsletter or on your web site.
These articles may be used subject to the following agreement:
Copyright for all these articles is retained by their author (Tim North).
You may not charge for these articles.
You may not alter the wording of these articles.
If you find a typo or other error, please let me know. Thanks.
If you're using the article on a web site, the URL in the signature block at the end of the article should be made a clickable link.
Thanks.
Tim North
The freely reprintable articles
These articles are all in plain-text format.
If, for some reason, you wish to link to these articles, please link to this page, not the individual articles. The reason for this request is that the articles are just plain text and don't contain any links back to this page. Thanks.
Writing-related articles
- Abbreviations made easy
- "Active" and "passive" voices made easy
- "Affect" or "effect": it's harder than you think!
- Apostrophes: a gentle introduction
- Are double negatives okay? Yes!
- Are full stops placed inside or outside quotation marks?
- Avoid buzzwords in favour of plain English
- Book review: The Stories of English
- Business report writing tips
- Choosing a suitable font
- Do you "take" or "make" a decision?
- Effective titles improve proposals
- Four strategies for persuasive writing
- Gaining the trust and confidence of your readers
- How formal should your business writing be?
- Hyphens made easy
- "Less" or "fewer": Is there still a difference?
- Persuasive writing: the carrot-and-stick strategy
- Report writing: reasons to do it well
- Should I "boldly go" or "go boldly"?
- The perils of using jargon
- Ten tips for better business writing
- Ten tips for better e-mail
- Ten tips for writing good sales copy
- What is technical writing?
- "Which" or "that": choosing between them
- Writing an executive summary





