Articles

Writing about technical writing, search, and what makes people finish a piece.

Occasional pieces on the craft: explaining difficult subjects, what search is becoming, and why most technical writing loses the reader before the argument arrives.

A handwritten lesson plan resting beside a closed laptop on a wooden desk.

October 21, 2026

What Learning to Teach English Taught Me About Marketing

I finished a Level 5 TEFL course expecting to learn how to teach English. I did, but it also made me say out loud things about marketing that ten years of professional copywriting had never forced me to. Writing for someone reading English as a second or third language is not the same as writing simply, and the gap between the two is where most copy goes wrong.

An old feature phone with a keypad resting beside a modern smartphone on a wooden table.

September 24, 2026

What R200 Teaches You About Copy

The smallest campaign I ever ran had a budget of about two hundred rand - ten euros, give or take - spread across four or five days. At that level you cannot buy your way to anything. Every impression has to be pointed at someone who might actually care, and the words have to do work that money would otherwise do for you. It was the most useful marketing education I have had.

A printed page marked up in blue pencil beside a closed laptop on a desk.

September 21, 2026

What Editors Wanted, Generative Engine Optimisation Rewards

The internet spent twenty years teaching writers to think about machines. Keyword density, meta tags, header hierarchy, link building. An entire profession grew up around the question of what a crawler wants, and the answer was almost never "good writing." Then the machines changed, and the answer changed with them.

$An unbalanced scale weighing a cluster of technical components against a single crystal refracting light.$

February 18, 2026

Beyond the Whitepaper: Why Expertise Makes Explanation Harder

Most technical companies lose readers in the first paragraph, and it isn't a writing problem. A look at why expertise makes explanation harder, and what to do about it.

A television camera filming a press conference, with journalists seated in front of a podium.

January 20, 2026

The Investigative Strategist: What Journalism Teaches You About Technology

What a newsroom teaches you that a marketing course doesn't: how to check things, find the actual story, and write it before the deadline.

A single key resting beside a closed padlock on a wooden surface.

December 22, 2025

Rented Land: Who Owns a Creator's Audience?

Creators' hardest problem is late payment and platform risk, not reach. What ownership would have to mean to be real, and why adoption keeps stalling.