Fuse & Company

Fuse has worked with terrific organizations on a variety of interesting challenges. Some of the results are outlined here.

Click on the name of any client to view our work with them.

HORTICULTURAL NONFICTION
		Pirating Plants is written in conversational prose that appeals to the mildly sentimental tastes of many gardeners.

DIRECT RESPONSE MARKETING
		Rebranding involves a coordination of tone, content and graphics. These pieces, directed toward librarians, are provocative in a thoughtful, even erudite way.

OFF-THE-WALL HUMOR
		Humor sometimes requires hyperbole. Absurd, arching hyperbole. The reincarnation website Fuse built includes some of the best writing we've done while coloring outside the lines.

CATALOG COPY
		Catalog copy tends to be dry. But it doesn't have to be ungrammatical, clumsy or dull. After all, anyone bothering to read entries in a particular catalog must have some animated interest in the subject matter. Mercifully, excerpts only here.

COOKBOOK PROSE
		On a lark, Peter researched chocolate chip cookies, gathering nearly as much detail as the seminal work The Varieties of Religious Experience. The resulting (curiously, narrowly definitive?) cookbook is a lot of fun.

A GARDENER'S THOUGHTS
		The editor of House Plants & Porch Gardens wrote a brief editorial every issue that strayed from the conversational but rarely whimsical tone of the magazine. It was, after all, seriously horticultural. Honored as such at the White House (not Trump's). Here, an editorial.

There is a difference between written and spoken English. Sentences on a page normally follow certain gramatical rules and every professional writer ought to know them. Standard Written English has a formality that can't be denied. Actual spoken English is something else. In most currently-published use of the language, especially in commercial/marketing prose, a fine wire is walked by the writer. Certain liberties with formal use make text more conversational and so more accessible to many readers. But other transgressions stick out like sore thumbs.

In large part, the written use of language depends on the audience. In a newsletter intended for librarians, dangling a participle, splitting an infinitive or failing to hyphenate phrasal adjectives is bad. So are confusing less and few or beween and among. But in some editorial use, sentence structure, grammar and punctuation can loosen up, some. And sentences can start with "And." Incomplete sentences sound like spoken English and so put the reader at ease and make the content feel more intimate.

Audience determines the balance between the prescriptive and descriptive rules of the game.