Rethinking the usage guide for the twenty-first century, Pinker doesn’t carp about the decline of language or recycle pet peeves from the rulebooks of a century ago. Instead, he applies insights from the sciences of language and mind to the challenge of crafting clear, coherent, and stylish prose. In this short, cheerful, and eminently practical book, Pinker shows how writing depends on imagination, empathy, coherence, grammatical knowhow, and an ability to savor and reverse engineer the good prose of others. He replaces dogma about usage with reason and evidence, allowing writers and editors to apply the guidelines judiciously, rather than robotically, being mindful of what they are designed to accomplish. Filled with examples of great and gruesome prose, Pinker shows us how the art of writing can be a form of pleasurable mastery and a fascinating intellectual topic in its own right.

    Questioning—deeply, imaginatively, "beautifully"—can help us identify and solve problems, come up with game-changing ideas, and pursue fresh opportunities. So why are we often reluctant to ask "Why?"Berger's surprising findings reveal that even though children start out asking hundreds of questions a day, questioning "falls off a cliff" as kids enter school. In an education and business culture devised to reward rote answers over challenging inquiry, questioning isn't encouraged—and, in fact, is sometimes barely tolerated.And yet, as Berger shows, the most creative, successful people tend to be expert questioners. They've mastered the art of inquiry, raising questions no one else is asking—and finding powerful answers. The author takes us inside red-hot businesses like Google, Netflix, IDEO, and Airbnb to show how questioning is baked into their organizational DNA. He also shares inspiring stories of artists, teachers, entrepreneurs, basement tinkerers, and social activists who changed their lives and the world around them—by starting with a "beautiful question."Berger explores important questions, such as:- Why aren't we nurturing kids' natural ability to question—and what can parents and schools do about that?- Since questioning is a starting point for innovation, how might companies and business leaders begin to encourage and exploit it?- And most important, how can each of us re-ignite that questioning spark—and use inquiry as a powerful means to rethink and reinvent our lives?A More Beautiful Question outlines a practical Why / What If / How system of inquiry that can guide you through the process of innovative questioning—helping you find imaginative, powerful answers to your own "beautiful questions."

    Written for the practicing professional just starting out or looking to learn new tricks of the trade, this revised and expanded edition contains updated industry statistics and benchmark figures, features a new chapter on e-marketing, and provides new information about using financial information to make key management decisions. Highly practical forms and sample contracts are included for up-to-the-minute advice.

     In an incredibly entertaining and inspiring narrative that draws on countless stories from their work at IDEO, the Stanford d.school, and with many of the world's top companies, David and Tom Kelley identify the principles and strategies that will allow us to tap into our creative potential in our work lives, and in our personal lives, and allow us to innovate in terms of how we approach and solve problems.  It is a book that will help each of us be more productive and successful in our lives and in our careers.

    Then he focuses on crafting whole paragraphs—with attention to cadence, consistency of tone, sentence transitions, and paragraph length.In a fun, comprehensive guide, Yagoda lays out the simple steps we can all take to make our writing more effective, more interesting—and just plain better.

    There's more to it than just a detective, a dead body, and Colonel Mustard in the drawing room with the candlestick. Fortunately, Larry Beinhart--Edgar Award-winning author of You Get What You Pay For, Foreign Exchange, and American Hero--has taken a break from writing smart, suspenseful thrillers to act as your guide through all the twists and turns of creating the twists and turns of a good mystery. Drawing on advice and examples from a host of the best names in mystery writing--from Raymond Chandler and Mickey Spillane to Scott Turow and Thomas Harris--plus some of his own prime plots, Larry Beinhart introduces you to your most indispensable partners in crime: *Character, plot, and procedure * The secrets to creating heroes, heroines, and villains ("All writers draw upon themselves and their experience. While the whole of yourself might not be capable of being either a serial killer or an FBI agent, there are parts in each of us that are capable of almost anything.") * The fine art of scripting the sex scene *The low-down on violence ("A crime novel without violence is like smoking pot without inhaling, sex without orgasm, or a hug without a squeeze." ) *And much more!From the opening hook to the final denouement, Larry Beinhart takes the mystery out of being a mystery writer.

    But what makes people say yes to our requests? Persuasion is not only an art, it is also a science, and researchers who study it have uncovered a series of hidden rules for moving people in your direction. Based on more than sixty years of research into the psychology of persuasion, Yes! reveals fifty simple but remarkably effective strategies that will make you much more persuasive at work and in your personal life, too.Cowritten by the world's most quoted expert on influence, Professor Robert Cialdini, Yes! presents dozens of surprising discoveries from the science of persuasion in short, enjoyable, and insightful chapters that you can apply immediately to become a more effective persuader. Why did a sign pointing out the problem of vandalism in the Petrified Forest National Park actually increase the theft of pieces of petrified wood? Why did sales of jam multiply tenfold when consumers were offered many fewer flavors? Why did people prefer a Mercedes immediately after giving reasons why they prefer a BMW? What simple message on cards left in hotel rooms greatly increased the number of people who behaved in environmentally friendly ways?Often counterintuitive, the findings presented in Yes! will steer you away from common pitfalls while empowering you with little-known but proven wisdom.Whether you are in advertising, marketing, management, or sales, or just curious about how to be more influential in everyday life, Yes! shows how making small, scientifically proven changes to your approach can have a dramatic effect on your persuasive powers.

    Geeks Bearing Gifts: Imagining New Futures for News is a creative, thought-provoking and entertaining exploration of the possible future(s) of news by Professor Jeff Jarvis, who leads the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.To Jarvis, journalism helps a community better organize its knowledge so it can better organize itself: “But we in the field came to define ourselves less by our value and mission and more by our media and tools — ink on pulp or slick paper, sound or images over airwaves. Now we have new tools to exploit. Those tools require new skills and create new value. But at the core, we serve citizens and communities.” He offers not a single definitive future of journalism and news, but a range of possibilities depending on how journalists and journalism evolve – with the help of the “geeks” whose advances in media technology offer many opportunities for journalists and media entrepreneurs who are willing to think creatively and take risks.Jarvis, one of the preeminent voices on emerging forms of journalism, news delivery, and community engagement, advises many media companies, startups, and foundations. He is a former president and creative director of Advance.net, the online arm of Advance Publications, and was the creator and founding editor of Entertainment Weekly; Sunday editor and associate publisher of the New York Daily News; TV critic for TV Guide and People; a columnist on the San Francisco Examiner; and assistant city editor and reporter for the Chicago Tribune.

    If its purpose is to entertain or to provoke thought, it makes readers want to come back for more.Revised and updated, this guide covers four essential aspects of good writing:Individual words - spelling variations, hyphenation, frequently confused homonyms, frequently misused words and phrases, irregular plurals and negatives, and uses of capitalization and type style to add special meaningsPunctuation - the role of each mark in achieving clarity and affecting tone, and demonstration of how misuses can lead to ambiguitySyntax and structure - agreement of subject and verb, parallel construction, modifiers, tenses, pronouns, active versus passive voice, and moreStyle - advice on the less hard-and-fast areas of clarity and tone, including sentence length and order, conciseness, simplification, reading level, jargon and cliches, and subtletyFilled with self-test exercises and whimsical literary quotations, "Grammatically Correct" steers clear of academic stuffiness, focusing instead on practical strategies and intuitive explanations.Discussions are designed to get to the heart of a concept and provide a sufficient sense of when and how to use it, along with examples that show what ambiguities or misinterpretations might result if the rules are not followed. In cases where there is more than one acceptable way to do something, the approach is not to prescribe one over another but simply to describe the options.Readers of this book will never break the rules of language again - unintentionally."

    Many of us love to tell them, and even dream of making a living from it too. But what is a story? Hundreds of books about screenwriting and storytelling have been written, but none of them ask 'Why?' Why do we tell stories? And why do all stories function in an eerily similar way? John Yorke has been telling stories almost his entire adult life, and the more he has done it, the more he has asked himself why? Every great thinker or writer has their theories: Aristotle, David Hare, Lajos Egri, Robert McKee, Gustav Freytag, David Mamet, Christopher Booker, Charlie Kaufman, William Goldman and Aaron Sorkin - all have offered insightful and illuminating answers. Here, John Yorke draws on these figures and more as he takes us on a historical, philosophical, scientific and psychological journey to the heart of all storytelling.What he reveals is that there truly is a unifying shape to narrative - one that echoes the great fairytale journey into the woods, and one, like any great art, that comes from deep within. Much more than a 'how to write' book, Into the Woods is an exploration of this fundamental structure underneath all narrative forms, from film and television to theatre and novel-writing. With astonishing detail and wisdom, John Yorke explains to us a phenomenon that, whether it is as a simple fable, or a big-budget 3D blockbuster, most of us experience almost every day of our lives.

    For years, I've been asking myself: How can a guy whose native language is not even English be one of the best U.S. copywriters in history? Now I have the answer... nicely reduced to a simple, understandable formula. And the best thing is that it’s a usable formula. Anyone seriously interested in copywriting should discover Evaldo's secret.” —Bill Bonner, Founder of Agora. “It’s not often that I come upon a copywriting strategy that feels new to me. And even less frequently do I encounter one that is both new and exciting. Evaldo Albuquerque’s “16 Word Sales Letter™” is such a strategy. I’m going to recommend this as a must-read to all my copywriting proteges.” —Mark Ford, best-selling author and chief growth strategist for Agora. “Evaldo is the world’s greatest copywriter you’ve never heard of. Why haven’t you heard of him? Because while others are selfpromoting ... heck, while they’re eating, sleeping and relaxing... he’s cranking out the next blockbuster. He never stops. He’s a 9-figure sales machine and our business’s secret weapon. This book is your blueprint to how the machine dominates. Read it and put it into action. Your royalty check will thank you.” —Peter Coyne, founder of Paradigm Press, Agora Financial’s largest imprint “I'm recommending this book to everyone in my company, and making it required reading for all new hires. When it comes to books on "writing" I try to read everything new, and no matter how many books I pick up, I rarely find any ideas that are innovative (or even useful), but this book shattered my expectations—I found page after page packed with fresh ideas. It's engaging to read, and very easy to implement the writing techniques. “Evaldo has uncovered a new way to write sales copy that is perfect for today's buyers; I really love this book, and after you turn the first two pages, you'll see exactly why. It’s a must-read primer for anyone who writes sales copy…. Read this book—and learn from one of the best.” —Oren Klaff, best-selling author of Pitch Anything and Flip the Script “Few people know his name. Yet, those at the highest levels of direct response advertising consider Evaldo Albuquerque the Michael Jordan of modern financial copywriting. His new book, The 16 Word Sales Letter™, reveals for the first time the secret to his astonishing success. In split tests, the selling formula Evaldo reveals in his book has won, repeatedly, against ad copy written by the world’s top copywriters. When asked at a recent seminar I gave what are the two best books I’ve ever read on copywriting, my answer was Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz and The 16 Word Sales Letter™ by Evaldo Albuquerque.” —Caleb O’Dowd The 16-Word Sales Letter™ is a copy system that has generated over $120 million dollars for Agora Financial in the last two years alone. It’s a simple formula that could help you generate millions in online sales... No matter how competitive your niche is….No matter what kind of product or service you’re selling…And no matter your level of experience. That’s because it can not only help you identify a new big idea for your market, but also help you structure your sales message for maximum emotional impact. And now, for the first time ever, Evaldo Albuquerque is revealing the details of this system in this brand-new book.

    Now in its third edition, this completely updated classic has been expanded to included all new advice on e-mail and the e-writing world, plus a fresh point of view on political correctness. With dozens of examples, many of them new, and useful tips for writing as well as faster on a computer, Writing That Works will show you how to improve anything you write:Presentations that move ideas and actionMemos and letters that get things donePlans and reports that make things happenFund-raising and sales letters that produce resultsResumes and letters that lead to interviewsSpeeches that make a point

    In this entertaining and engaging book, ace-naming consultant Alexandra Watkins explains how anyone--even noncreative types--can create memorable and effective brand names. No degree in linguistics required.The heart of the book is Watkins's proven SMILE and SCRATCH Test. A great name makes you SMILE because it is Suggestive--evokes a positive brand experience; is Meaningful--your customers get it; uses Imagery--visually evocative to aid in memory; has Legs--lends itself to a theme for extended mileage; and is Emotional--moves people.A bad name, on the other hand, makes you SCRATCH your head because it is Spelling challenged--looks like a typo; is a Copycat--similar to competitors' names; is Restrictive--limits future growth; is Annoying--frustrates customers; is Tame--flat, uninspired; suffers from the Curse of Knowledge--only insiders get it; and is Hard to pronounce.Watkins also provides up-to-date advice, like making sure that Siri spells your name correctly. And you'll see dozens of examples--the good, the bad, and the "so bad she gave them an award." Alexandra Watkins is not afraid to name names.

    Writing in their trademark witty, fast-paced style, advertising gurus Ries and Trout explain how to:Make and position an industry leader so that its name and message wheedles its way into the collective subconscious of your market-and stays therePosition a follower so that it can occupy a niche not claimed by the leaderAvoid letting a second product ride on the coattails of an established one.Positioning also shows you how to:Use leading ad agency techniques to capture the biggest market share and become a household nameBuild your strategy around your competition's weaknessesReposition a strong competitor and create a weak spotUse your present position to its best advantageChoose the best name for your productDetermine when-and why-less is moreAnalyze recent trends that affect your positioning.Ries and Trout provide many valuable case histories and penetrating analyses of some of the most phenomenal successes and failures in advertising history. Revised to reflect significant developments in the five years since its original publication, Positioning is required reading for anyone in business today.

    The book includes 228-full color illustrations to demonstrate the points. Based on expert reviews and international studies with participants ranging from students to early technology adopters and business people using websites on a variety of mobile devices, this guide offers a complete look at the landscape for a mobile world. Author Jakob Nielsen is considered one of the world's leading experts on Web usability. He is the author of numerous best-selling books, including Prioritizing Web Usability and the groundbreaking Designing Web Usability, which has sold more than 250,000 copies and has been translated in 22 languages.