Writing well or "well, I'm writing..."

Don't be wrong, don't be rude. This Washington Post Freelancer’s Guide to Not Getting Fired concentrates on some of more career-limiting moves of writers for the Post itself; but it's a handy reminder that like deciding whether the glass is half empty or half full, the difference between being edgy and being edged out of the door depends on who's pouring and who's drinking.

Make the deadline, fill the brief. While there are some things I like writing about and specialise in - mobile data and smartphones, Tablet PCs, Microsoft Office, Windows XP and Vista, nifty tools and services on the Web - I write on a very wide range of subjects. If it engages my attention, I like writing about it. That means when editors ask me what I specialise in, I'm tempted to say "good writing, delivered on time and to the brief". Writing to Deadline is about more than that, but the basics never hurt.

Talking of basics, the Wired stylesheet seems to have gone the way of the dotcoms, but A dozen online writing tips has some good pointers. And of course there's always the standards.

• The Economist style guide


• The Guardian style guide

PlaceOpedia

Wikipedia doesn't have maps on most articles, so http://www.placeopedia.com/ is a site where you can tag a place on the map and link it to a Wikipedia article. It doesn't find everywhere (Christchurch matches four places, none of which are in New Zealand or Sunderland) but it's an excellent way of locating places. It would be nice to cross-link with some of the photo-locating projects so you could read an article, find the place on the map and then see what it looks like.