Tag you re it or how to write slogans

Some call them "tag lines"; others refer to them as"catch lines" or "tie-in-slogans." Whatever the words used to refer to them, they are perhaps the most important part of your promotional writing. Do you recognize any of these? : "Like a rock..." "Fly the friendly skies..." "It's the real thing !" "Quality is job number one" "The quicker-picker-upper" Most of those tag lines are recognizable by us without even including the name of the company or product. They summarize in a very few words the essence of the thing they are promoting. They communicate a good, positive feeling or relationship to the product. They do it with a simple, memorable phrase that is easily repeated. The shorter the description is, the more challenging it is to write. Anyone can write a 500-word description of a product or service. Now try doing it with 5 to 10 words ! Each word you choose is very important to the message. HERE ARE SOME TIPS for writing good taglines for your business offer. 1) Start by noticing ads on billboards as you drive down the road. Billboard advertisers have but a couple of seconds to grab your attention and sell their product or service. Usually their copy is going to be a very good tagline with a picture of the product or service. These are great examples of how to write effective taglines. 2) Notice other media forms like magazine and newspaper display ads, business cards, brief radio and TV commercials. Observe the thing that caught your attention and makes the message easily remembered. It's usually a concise and well-written tagline. 3) Write down everything you can think of that relates to your business. You may even start with a narrative description in paragraph form. 4) Now, make a list of the top 25 or 30 things that are important and worth mentioning. Whittle that list down to 8 or 10 of the most important things you wish to say. Now eliminate repetition or things that are not really that necessary to your product or service. Get your list of words or phrases down to 3 or 4 central elements. 5) Based on your final core selection, make up some phrases that will serve as your taglines for consideration. Keep them short and use simple, everyday language. Which of these taglines would you remember best? : "Joe's auto repair shop, the lowest-prices and the best service" OR "Quality Care For Your Car !" ===== "The Best Tax Service Anywhere Around The Town !" OR "Your Tax Experts At Work !" ===== "Emergengy ambulance service available 24-hours a day" OR "When Minutes Count!" Well, you get the idea! Do some test marketing with your final two or three best taglines. Discover the one that works best for you and incorporate it into all of your promotional messages. Remember, like any of life's endeavors, experience and practice help to improve your skills level. If you want to be a good writer, write a lot! Best of luck with your promotional efforts.

The casablanca secret

Good writing is often designed around a character who has a distorted vision of himself or of the world. During the story, he is placed under sufficient pressure to force an epiphany, a moment of clarity in which, he sees the world as it is, not as he wished it to be. A classic example is “Casablanca,” where Bogart’s immortal Rick has managed to create an insular world in which he can pretend to be utterly detached and uninvolved. He supposedly has no political beliefs, and no real human connections. But the reappearance of Ilsa forces a cascade of events that cause Rick to reexamine his attitudes about love, fate, patriotism, courage, fidelity, friendship, and life itself. Rick begins as a damaged, closed off character, carrying wounds to his heart and ego. What he WANTS is to be left alone to his self-pity. What he NEEDS is to be re-awakened to a life of purpose. The writers, wisely, give Rick what he needs, not what he wants, and in that manner a classic was born. In Lifewriting™ we trust that the quality of a writer’s skill will be heightened by his evolution as a human being—in other words, his ability to write people will be based on his capacity for honest observation of himself and others. His ability to turn a plot creatively will be based on his understanding of the world as it is—not as we often fantasize it to be. This ability to create moments of suspense, revelation, humor and horror often triggers an “ah! Life is just like that!” response from the audience, a recognition of universal humanity that can transcend culture and time. The easiest way to learn this is to look at our own lives. None of us make it through our years without wounds, damage, pain. Just as physical scar tissue shortens muscles and limits mobility, emotional scar tissue creates “armoring” around our hearts. It also begins to warp our reality, as we create justifications for why THIS relationship self-destructed, or THAT job crashed and burned…once again. It’s never our fault, of course. The opposite, and even more damaging reaction is to take not just responsibility for our failures, but massive guilt as well. Our lives don’t work (so the reasoning goes) because we are bad, terrible, horrible people undeserving of healthy bodies or relationships or careers. Either attitude clouds our vision, makes it difficult to see the world as it is. Those clouded inner eyes and warped “reality maps” make it very difficult to navigate a path to our chosen goals. Again and again we will bark our shins on invisible rocks, crashing into invisible walls, almost as if life is trying to teach us, to educate us, to enlighten us as to the realities of existence. What we WANT is the comforting womb of our illusions. What we NEED is to be born into the world as it actually is. Often, we are dragged kicking and screaming into clarity, forced ultimately to accept the ways we’ve been wrong. “Too soon old, too late smart” is one rather fatalistic way of speaking of this process. Too often, we must be old before we grasp that WE are the ones who sabotaged our dreams of success. We are the ones who refused to exercise and eat reasonably—that our bodies are more the result of our behaviors than our genetics. We are the ones who broke communication in our relationships, who lied and withheld and blamed, and thought that “the other person” was responsible for our misery. We are the ones who refused to grow up, to stop blaming our parents, or society, or racism, ageism, sexism or any other “ism” for our lack of happiness. Too late, we are battered by one failure or disappointment after another, until the ego walls we created to protect our self-image are shattered, and we’re forced into contact with our true selves. The moment of death is supposed to be absolutely first rate at creating such clarity, a realization of our true values, and regret at the way we sold out our true potential. But there are events that create clarity. The birth of a first child. A near-death experience. Accomplishing some worthy and transforming goal. The first deep and true moment of love or friendship. Transformation. In such moments, we see ourselves for the magnificent, wounded, earthy, spiritual beings that we are. We forgive ourselves, and our families, and the world around us, knowing that we have no right to expect more perfection from others than we ourselves possess. And as the saying goes, “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” No perfect people in this world. Accept it. And move on. Stories that deal with these core stressors--life, death, birth, transformation, love—are always, and have always been the most popular stories in human history. Under this stress, your character, robbed of their self-justifying lies, must speak the truth. Under these stressors, they are revealed in their magnificence…or sometimes (especially if they refuse to acknowledge reality) revealed in their venality, cowardice, and dishonesty. This is one of the functions of story. The writer must create story pressures beyond the capacity of the characters to maintain their illusions. Then, and only then, can you reveal their true natures. To do this, just look at the times in your own life that you awakened, transformed, grew, went kicking and screaming into the next level of your life. Then create dramatic exaggerations or simplifications of these passages, and create characters to experience them. Let them be as human—as flawed and magnificent—as you yourself are. As we all are. Heighten their qualities for the sake of drama, to be sure, but always, always, at their core, let them be human, whatever it is that you believe human beings to be. Let them struggle. Let them learn. Let them love. Let them live. Do this, and it will mark the beginning of a beautiful friendship…between you, your muse, and a world audience starved for entertaining truth.

Learning spanish and the pluperfect tense

The Pluperfect Tense In this Spanish lesson, we will learn the Pluperfect Tense. Whether you are learning Spanish online, with CDs, or Learning Spanish software, you will find this lesson helpful in your journey to learn how to speak Spanish. For the most part, the Pluperfect Tense is used to express a past fact or action that occurred before another past action took place. In English, this can be expressed in the following manner: I had thought of you when you called. Although in English we tend to use the preterite to express two consecutive actions in the past, in Spanish this is rarely the case. Instead, the Pluperfect Tense is used. In Spanish, the above sentence is translated to: Yo habнa pensado en usted cuando llamу. Notice how the auxiliary verb haber (to have) is a prominent part of this tense, both in Spanish and in English. The main verb parallels the past participle. Let us take a closer look at the conjugation for the Pluperfect Tense for - ar, - er, and - ir verbs in Spanish. Trabajar (to work) yo habнa trabajado (I had worked) nosotros habнamos trabajado (we had worked) tъ habнas trabajado (you had worked) ellos habнan trabajado (they had worked) йl habнa trabajado (he had worked) ellas habнan trabajado (they had worked) ella habнa trabajado (she had worked) ustedes habнan trabajado (you had worked) usted habнa trabajado (you had worked) Notice how the conjugation for this tense is easily formed by adding - нa to hab--the auxiliary verb haber's stem. The past participle for the main verb is then added to complete the conjugation. This conjugation format is repeated for - er and - ir verbs as well. Comer (to eat) yo habнa comido (I had eaten) nosotros habнamos comido (we had eaten) tъ habнas comido (you had eaten) ellos habнan comido (they had eaten) йl habнa comido (he had eaten) ellas habнan comido (they had eaten) ella habнa comido (she had eaten) ustedes habнan comido (you had eaten) usted habнa comido (you had eaten) Salir (to go out) yo habнa salido (I had gone out) nosotros habнamos salido (we had gone out) tъ habнas salido (you had gone out) ellos habнan salido (they had gone out) йl habнa salido (he had gone out) ellas habнan salido (they had gone out) ella habнa salido (she had gone out) ustedes habнan salido (you had gone out) usted habнa salido (you had gone out) What follows are a few examples of the PluPerfect Tense in Spanish: Yo habнa salido cuando el telйfono sonу. (I had gone out when the telephone rang.) Juan y yo ya habнamos cenado cuando Sra. Patricia nos ofreciу comida. (We had already had dinner when Mrs. Patricia offered us food.) Mauricio habнa hablado con su papб cuando llegу su mamб. (Mauricio had spoken to his father when his mother arrived.) Roberto y Julio habнan bebido ron antes de llegar a la fiesta. (Roberto and Julio had drank rum before they arrived at the party.) Josefina no habнa dormido mucho antes de entrarse en el aviуn. (Josefina had not slept a lot before she entered the airplane.) Now let’s try a few exercises. Translate the following into Spanish. The answers follow the exercise. 1. Clara had cleaned the house when her friends arrived. 2. I had practiced my Spanish before Juan called me. 3. We had eaten too much, when the dessert arrived. 4. Paco and Enrique had finished the exam when the bell rang. 5. You had changed your dollars to pesos before the bank closed. 6. They had gone to the beach before it rained. 7. Marisol and I had eaten breakfast before we went to school. 8. We had learned how to dance salsa before we traveled to Puerto Rico. 9. I had met Diego before he came here. 10. Humberto had written to Carmen when he received her letter. 1. Clara habнa limpiado la casa cuando llegaron sus amigas. 2. Yo habнa practicado mi Espaсol antes de Juan llamarme. 3. Habнamos comido demasiado cuando llegу el postre. 4. Paco y Enrique habнan terminado el examen cuando sonу la campana. 5. Tъ habнas cambiado tus dуlares a pesos antes de cerrar el banco. 6. Ellos habнan ido a la playa antes de llover. 7. Marisol y yo habнamos desayunado antes de ir a la escuela. 8. Habнamos aprendido como bailar la salsa antes de viajar a Puerto Rico. 9. Yo habнa conocido a Diego antes de venir йl aquн. 10. Humberto le habнa escrito a Carmen cuando recibiу su carta.