Monday, March 29, 2010

How to improve writing (no. 27)

The Blogger template’s sidebar phrasing — “View my complete profile” — has long bugged me. Why my? Why complete? Even Geoffrey Pullum might concede that Strunk and White’s “Omit needless words” makes sense here.

Improving this bit of writing involves editing the Blogger template: go to the Dashboard, click Layout, click Edit HTML, and check Expand Widget Templates. Now search for

It appears only once. Replace it — all of it, including “<” and “>” — with whatever words you like, like so:
Click Preview to make sure all’s well, and save.

I found this solution in a helpful post at Sam Regist’s WebBanshee.

[This post is no. 27 in a series, “How to improve writing,” dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

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