"Almost no exercise will improve your writing more than reading what you write out loud," says PR executive Dan Santow, and "not just meant to be spoken such as speeches and scripts." Dan runs the blog Word Wise, which started as weekly writing tips at his company and spread quickly on the Internet. Lucky for us! Read Dan's entire post on speaking your writing here.

Michael Tangeman, who writes a blog on effective communications called Media Mindshare, says of the "relations" part of media relations: "It gets to the core of the job of media relations specialists, which is not so much to "relate" as it is to effectively "relay" the message of the organizations or individuals we represent to the media, and by extension to the public." How? Michael offers a list of tips and techniques here.

"If you think you smell something at work, there's probably good reason," the folks behind Bullfighter software say. "Bull has become the official language of business. Every day, we get bombarded by an endless stream of filtered, jargon-filled corporate speak, all of which makes it harder to get heard, harder to be authentic, and definitely harder to have fun. But it doesn't have to be that way." How can you fight this? Download free software here, and Bullfighter will help you rid the you-know-what from your writing forever.

"Track Changes" is the popular tool in MS Word that lets you work on a documents collaboratively, a handy option that many of us use every day. But as the website Law Practice Today cautions: "Some features could lead to potentially embarrassing, revealing or compromising situations." When attorneys raise the red flag, it pays to take precautions. How? Read the article here.

Its final edition published in 1911, the "Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia" filled 12 volumes with over half a million entries, the largest dictionary of its kind. (See the Wikipedia description here) This singular work of scholarship was never again revised or expanded -- but it's now available on the web. Click here to check it out. (For a little fun, look up the definition for "ship" -- complete with 251-point illustration of a merchant sailing ship)

The Church of the Customer blog, written by marketing gurus Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba, recently ran a post on the power of the company memo: "The lowly memo still has juice. Maybe more so today, thanks to social media. Several recent memos that leaped over their corporate moats illustrate three types of company communications that create waves in the word-of-mouth waters." How? Read the post here.

Building Rapport is a blog that advocates plain language and clear writing -- and offers concrete advice on how to get there. It recently featured an entry called, simply, "Simplify," where it lists a half-dozen or so ways to get to the heart of whatever matter you're writing about. Read the post here.