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My Writing Samples Over Time . . . Lots of Time
Yes, I hate to think about the first sample offered here–my
academic writing sample–being almost 20 years old. But you know, it was in school that I was convinced by people with more talent, skill, and experience than I that I wasn’t too bad at this writing thing. To the extent that they were right, I owe my growth and improvement not only to the practice and hard work required to achieve it, but also to the professors I had along the way who didn’t hesitate to pull any punches in their criticism. If I credit myself with anything, it’s my habit of learning from that criticism instead of being defensive. So I’ve included this older piece as an example from the time the seed was truly sown–and also to show that I can get all academic when called upon to do so.
The
next example has its own introduction. It was my first and only foray into a publishing opportunity that allowed me considerable leeway in the direction of my research and the style I chose for the piece. There are probably some neophyte tells scattered throughout, but I’m nevertheless thankful for having been asked to write the article and proud to have seen it in print.
Finally, we come to a
portfolio of my work for Amazon.com. The funny thing about the work I did there is that functionally, it resembled what people more commonly refer to as copywriting.
However, our team was originally assembled to provide B2B-style content for the now-deprecated Amazonsupply.com. As such, our duties often entailed rather in-depth research, the ability to determine from that research what key features are relevant to people shopping for something in the assigned product line, establish standards for writing about that product line, and only then producing copy that was in line with our homegrown style guide. We had
specific instructions to
omit any language in our copy that sounded too much like marketing, in order to allow customers to make buying choices based on product specifications and not the persuasive marketing talent of the writers and editors on the content team. This is why the “voice” across each example in the portfolio is so consistent . . . and so consistently dry.
For each item in the portfolio, I used the product image belonging to Amazon.com as an accompaniment. The images were rarely altered from their original form, except when they were resized and compressed for use on this site. Occasionally I added white space to oblong images to facilitate their resizing. My position with regard to these images is that my use of them on this site constitutes
fair use. All titles link to the original pages on Amazon. Use of the images is for showcasing my work product and nothing more. If an interested party has a legally sound reason to believe that I am mistaken, I invite that party to contact me through the
contact interface on this site.
Now enjoy the samples!
