Contributors to the Magazine

Our Visual Thesaurus contributors are a diverse and talented group who graciously share their insights on language, writing, business communications and copywriting, branding and more. Below, please read about their impressive backgrounds and click on links to visit their websites.

Inspired? If you'd like to become a Visual Thesaurus contributor, or suggest a topic we should cover, we'd love to hear from you here.


Nancy Friedman

Nancy Friedman is the chief wordworker at verbal-branding consultancy Wordworking, and the author of a fine blog on naming, branding and more called Away With Words. Nancy has named a venture-capital firm, a laser hair-removal device, a mobile-money service, and many other companies and products. A former journalist, she still writes or ghostwrites articles, speeches, white papers, and books.

Simon Glickman and Julia Rubiner

Simon Glickman and Julia Rubiner are the principals of Editorial Emergency, a Los Angeles-based copywriting agency. Since opening its doors in 2005, EE has wrangled verbiage for the Honda Civic Tour, Disney Interactive Studios, Borders, Target, Mattel, Sony, Universal, EMI/Capitol and assorted other content-hungry customers.

Daphne Gray-Grant

A former daily newspaper editor, Daphne Gray-Grant is a writing and editing coach and the author of 8½ Steps to Writing Faster, Better. She offers a free weekly newsletter on her website Publication Coach.

Orin Hargraves

Orin Hargraves is an independent lexicographer and contributor to numerous dictionaries published in the US, the UK, and Europe. He is also the author of Mighty Fine Words and Smashing Expressions (Oxford), the definitive guide to British and American differences. Click here to visit his website.

Dianna Huff

Dianna Huff is a B2B marketing communications consultant and copywriting expert. You can subscribe to her e-newsletter, The MarCom Writer, at the DH Communications website.

Shannon Reed

Shannon Reed is an award-winning playwright who teaches high school English to a large pack of bright young women at a private school on the beach in Queens, New York.

Debbie Shults

Debbie Shults is a veteran Sarasota, Florida, teacher, literacy coach and now blogger who is working to define a "new literacy" at her middle school.

Steve Slaunwhite

Steve Slaunwhite is a marketing consultant, award-winning copywriter, and author of The Everything Guide to Writing Copy. He works with professionals who need better results from their websites, e-mails, sales letters, ads, and other marketing communications. He is also the editor of www.ForCopywritersOnly.com. His professional home on the Web is www.SteveSlaunwhite.com.

Matthew Stibbe

Columnist Matthew Stibbe is Writer-in-chief for Articulate Marketing, a specialist copywriting agency. His clients include Microsoft, the British Government and leading magazines like Wired and Popular Science. Matthew also writes a blog called Bad Language.