43 Comments

Your comments about pronouns are on point and will make me consider them more carefully in the future. However, you made one glaring error that caused me to comment out loud in disbelief. (I’m alone.) “It’s” is not possessive. It’s a contraction of “it is.” The possessive of “it” does not contain an apostrophe. That is just one of the little exceptions we proofreaders have locked in our brains.

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I noticed this too and thought, Sarah's going to kick herself when she sees it.

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*kicking*

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Hee hee 😅

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Mortified and so grateful to you, Ibby.

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Thank you Sarah. I'm glad to hear you will be offering one and two day intensive workshops. I can't wait to join. Thanks for the pronoun tips as well. Very helpful.

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Yay!

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Your autenticity IS Great, thanks for your words

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Thank you!

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Sarah, regrettably I can’t afford the courses at the moment but I do appreciate your candor. I’ll take all of the suggestions under consideration. I have suspected I may be doing some things incorrectly. Be safe and be well!

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Brian, it's so good to have you. I offer tons of value here and will continue to help everyone as much as I can.

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With tags, groups and sections it can feel like too much flexibility.

Part of the beauty of Substack (and previously Medium) is that someone else has constrained you to decent design choices so that you can focus on your writing.

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Tech question: I love the layout for multiple topics. How do you create stylized headings and how do you center them? I have yet to find a left, center, right justification tab!

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You can create them in Canva. You’ll want them at least 800-1000 px wide to ensure they don’t get pixelated. :)

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Thank you!

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Thank you!

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The groups vs sections was news to me - thanks for sharing that! Can't wait to dig in!

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Thank you, Sarah, this is very helpful 👍

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The video was helpful! I had set up sections when I truly wanted 'groups'. Thank you Sarah!

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This was so helpful. (Kidding about using THIS). What was helpful was your friendly reminder about overusing pronouns. I often use the 'find' feature in Word after writing a piece and type in a pronoun. Sometimes I get a cringe-worthy number of times I used a certain pronoun and know it is time to go back and clarify.

I have a question: Can you have too many Groups? Is there a magic number that will perk interest but not overwhelm?

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I love that you used that :)

In terms of the number of groups, you're only allowed ten rows in the Advanced Design Features.

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Sarah - I believe I signed up to get the emails but they haven’t been coming.

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The emails for the notes boost challenge. Sorry about not clarifying that.

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It’s the same for me

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Here’s everything you need to know: https://www.substackwritersatwork.com/p/notes-boost-challenge-starts-tomorrow

Make sure you

* Opted into the Notes Boost section

* Have email notifications, not push notifications turned on

* You’ve added serialize@substack.com to your contacts

You can access the Boosts every day here: https://www.substackwritersatwork.com/s/notes-growth-challenge

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Thank you, Sarah. I did have notes boost notification off in my settings, silly me 🫣

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Make sure you

* Opted into the Notes Boost section

* Have email notifications, not push notifications turned on

* You’ve added serialize@substack.com to your contacts

https://www.substackwritersatwork.com/p/notes-boost-challenge-starts-tomorrow

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Thank you, Sarah. It's a huge challenge for beginner. I will reread this: Repetition is a mother of science.

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Substack is challenging!

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I’m very interested in the writers at work studio ☺️

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Yay!

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When are you planning to start it off? I have found your advice very useful and much needed. After your recent writing tip, I searched one of my posts and found too many ‘this’ and ‘that’ pronouns. My aim for this year is to improve my writing, so the studio is coming in the right time 👏

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Wow! This additional post is awesome and so helpful. TY for sharing the nitty gritty and the quality all at once!

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Excellent, Mo. I was wondering how this format would work for you all. It's a go?

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I’d say so! You have really up-leveled our participation and in so doing, our learning curve. Love how you keep iterating Sarah!

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This is very useful

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I have sections and want to combine into one. How do I delete one section? I want to focus on one substack only.

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Follow the directions in this post.

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