Punctuation and Motivation

Wednesday's Wicked Websites

Okay so it's no longer Wednesday but I always said I was a slow writer. You can see, thanks to thinking about the Kaizen Plan, I am getting steadier. Two posts in one week, whew!


Today's websites are not motivational in the sense of asking you to do anything about your mindset. I wouldn't dream of it.

They are motivational in that they consist of short actions which sound like fun and which could be used with promotional material.
I'm early for the first one to give you a fair chance to have entries in by closing date.

International Punctuation Day

Officially it's the Eighth National Punctuation Day tomorrow but it's now pretty international with entries last year coming from all over the world for their haiku contest.


This year, the competition consists of writing and punctuating a maximum of three sentences. Surely something we can all do. Even I might manage in time.


But, and here's the rub, your three sentence paragraph must include the following thirteen (13) punctuation marks:


apostrophe, brackets, colon, comma, dash, ellipsis, exclamation point, hyphen, parentheses, period, question mark, quotation mark, and semicolon. You may use a punctuation mark more than once.

As of yesterday there were already 108 entries received. You can check out the correct usage of each of the marks on the site or leave  a question at  Happy Editing.

Entries to Jeff (at) NationalPunctuationDay (dot) com through September 30

Promo idea

If  you're now worn out playing with punctuation Ps and Qs and need to recharge creatively, lots of sites now offer you the chance to make free banners.


I've been thinking up headers for my new website but on the way made lots of small banners and icons for sites like FaceBook and Twitter.

Happy Editing

Google offers a great array of promotional sites but my favourite was Banner Fans. I found it straightforward, easy to understand and it did not ask me to reveal all my personal details to register. Hurrah.    I can see from this that the size need tweaking and my second line needs some height re-adjustment .That is easily done if you've saved the original information you selected.


Doing this online means registering your details. I used the old-fashioned method of pen and paper.


Twitter URLs


I'm often asked how to post short URLs in Twitter. I cheat. Twitter itself will shorten a URL so that you don't use up too many characters. If I'm retweeting, I just use the link and the link shortener already provided.


Lengthier answers and links can be found in the guide from About.com


Again check carefully to ensure any outside site you use to help shorten the links is safe.


I need to talk. I'm a fan of Web of Trust. Just flagged it up quickly intending to recommend it and my computer flagged up the dire warning: "This site is deemed to be unsafe." LOL