Archive for February, 2009

How To Write Ezine Articles In Clusters

Posted on Feb 28, 2009 10:07:50 AM

Writing several articles at once might seem pretty much impossible to do if you are just starting to write Ezine articles and find producing them one at a time hard enough. However, writing articles in clusters is not difficult and, once you understand how it’s done, you will enjoy the benefits. A group of articles written as a cluster can easily be turned into a series but for now we are looking at the how to produce a group of unique articles written at the same time around a central topic.

Some of the main benefits are as follows:

1. Writing articles in groups saves time when you are researching your subject;

2. It gives you space to fully develop a theme;

3. It gives you more unique content for your blog or website;

4. It gives you extra articles to submit to ezines or to sell.

When you write an article for publication in ezines, you have to keep the word count within certain guidelines (about 500-800 words is usually most acceptable). If your article is too long, ezines might not be prepared to give up the space required to reproduce it. If the article is too short, there is a danger Ezine publishers won’t take it seriously. Cluster writing is definitely not about turning out a number of truncated Ezine articles instead of one full length one. Neither is it about stretching or padding your material (you’ll only ever get a poor fit if you try that). It is about making full use of ideas and not wasting time or words.

If you are writing about a topic you know well, you will find yourself constantly having to edit your articles to keep the word count down. Instead of throwing away the excess material, paste it immediately into another document with a new title. I would suggest keeping the titles similar – eg “Puppy Training, Why To Do It” and “Puppy Training, When To Start”, you can swiftly move on to “Puppy Training, The Best Methods” etc. Don’t let the document get too big, anytime your word processor reaches page 2, it’s time to think about breaking it into two.

As you write, be alert to any tendency to wander off topic. You might be writing about how it is one thing to have a cute puppy jump on your bed but quite a different experience when that pup has become a 10 stone hound with muddy paws. Suddenly you remember something about doggy vitamins. Instead of popping the idea into one of your puppy training articles as an aside, put it into another new document which you can later use as part of a new cluster about dog nutrition. With one quick “cut and paste” you have kept one article focussed on the main topic and saved an idea, which might otherwise have been wasted, for a new project.

If you are writing an article on an unfamiliar topic, you might think you won’t have the problem of needing to cut down your article and will have trouble finding enough to say. However, if you undertake proper research about the subject matter (as you should if you want your article to be taken seriously), you are bound to come across material which relates to the article you have planned but does not quite fit it. Make notes of all this related material. If you get ideas for further articles as you are researching, make a note of these ideas. Research for article writing takes time, so make the most of it. Even if you can only manage two articles on an unfamiliar subject, it is two for the price of one.

Let’s look at how to use just one passing idea as the basis for a group of articles. Take the thought “my first home business venture reminds me of Apollo 13″. To make this idea into an article, we have to say what is behind the initial thought. Otherwise, the reader will be left thinking “What, it nearly got lost in space?” or “You were trying to land on the moon?”. With no explanation or clarification, the idea is meaningless to anyone but you.

The thoughts behind the idea could be about a series of numerical coincidences in regard to events, about surviving near-disasters, about how duct tape solved a huge problem and about the power of prayer. With all these four things encapsulated in the idea, you have the basis of a four paragraph article. It does not require much of an imagination stretch to see that you could have the basis for four separate articles clustered around a central idea.

Never let an idea or a word go to waste. For the time and effort cluster writing saves, it is worth trying to use the technique even in the early days of your Ezine article writing career. Once you try it, you will realise it’s even better than “buy one get one free”.

How Can You Write For Fun And Profit?

Posted on Feb 27, 2009 07:17:56 AM

Every writer dreams of the day when they can profit from their writing. While income opportunities abound for writers each method has drawbacks.

Newspaper and magazine reporters can make a good living but their subject matter is often closely regulated and directed. Corporate writing can be even more lucrative but even more tightly controlled. Freelance writing offers more freedom but is also more uncertain. Publishing books is even more uncertain. So what is a writer to do?

Forget all those old-school writing methods and focus on the internet. Don’t write for anyone but yourself. You really can profit from writing only about what interests you. Don’t worry about the market or the editors. Write for yourself. Not only will it be more fun and rewarding for your soul but for your checking account as well.

I am going to share an easy (and cheap) 5-step formula that can help you start your own writing business today, but first I want to share one important fact.

This is not a get-rich quick scheme. It will take some time to earn, perhaps as long as three months to begin turning a profit, but if you keep working at it you should see your income grow exponentially each month and you should be able to count on that income and know what you have to do to increase it. You will have total control over your income and that is very powerful.

1. Create a blog account at one of the free blogging sites available online (we used to use Blogger.com but there are many other good options). This will serve as your internet base. It really is the cheapest and easiest way to get online today. Yes, you could create a free web site at one of the many available but blogs are more attractive to the search engines. Plus they offer you the ability to personalize it but most of your energy will be spent on content which is the king of the internet and the real reason you want an internet presence.

2. Now sign up for a free ClickBank affiliate acccount which will give you immediate access to something to sell.

3. Sign up for a contextual or pay-per-click advertiser such as Google, Yahoo, Revenue Pilot, or SearchFeed and you’ll start earning from visitors as well as customers.

4. Develop your blog. Make 10 your immediate goal then work your way up to 25, 50 and 100 and so on. Your entries can be your opinions, thoughts, or ramblings; poems or short stories; or articles.

5. Promote your blog through article marketing, link development and submitting your blog feed. I would suggest your primarily focus on article marketing as if offers the ability to not only develop links but also delivers traffic plus as a writer it is easy for you to create articles or use a selection of the material you’ve already created for your blog.

Yes, it really is that simple and while you can later grow by buying your own domain name (or names) and publishing your blog on your own site you do not need (and likely should avoid) investing money in expensive tools

Getting started on the web can be free (as you see above) or inexpensive if you concentrate on what you really need. The simple truth is that you don’t need a lot of fancy, expensive tools and programs. In the long run a domain name is a good investment. A domain name will cost you between $5 and $10 a year depending on whether you go .com or .info (or one of the many other options available). You don’t need to find a web host or create a site. Simply point the domain at your blog for now and continue with the development and promotion of your blog. The advantage of owning your own domain name is simply that later when you have the money, time, and knowledge to develop your web site that domain name will already exist and have filtered through the search engines. It also offers some marketing advantages that a free blog cannot.

At some point you may decide you want more flexibility and control than a free blog can offer and that is when you will want to run your own site. You can find a good web host for as little as $5 a month and shouldn’t pay more than $20 a month for a reputable host that offers all the tools and utilities you might need for your current site–including blog software. Maybe down the line you’ll need to upgrade but by then you’ll know your income and your needs.

Really the only other regular expense that you might consider to make your internet business complete would be a mailing list tool. You can do this for just $20 a month and it will be worth every penny for sales, customer service, and promotion. But this is not necessary to start out and you may decide that it isn’t important to your efforts so you can skip it entirely.

Once you have your blog set up and monetized (by offering ClickBank products, advertising, and/or selling text links) then you are in a position to begin profiting from your writing. The way to profit it to increase your traffic so you need to get serious about your article marketing efforts because each article you distribute will generate immediate traffic and create back links for search engine optimization. Also you need to continue to grow your blog by adding fresh content regularly. This will create repeat visitors as well as bring the search engines back again and again. Simply publishing new articles and new blog entries each week will increase your traffic. The more articles and entries you create — the more traffic you will generate.

Once you have found your rhythm with your existing blog you may well decide to branch out and create a second blog on a different or related topic. Now you should be able to work even faster because you are more experienced but likely more motivated as well because you can see just how rewarding it can be to write for fun and profit.

New Technical Writer: Use The Persona To Create The Most Useful Section Of Your User Document

Posted on Feb 26, 2009 10:16:01 PM

OVERVIEW

A good User Document includes sections on how to set up, use, and care for the product. However, to create a great User Document , the technical writer should use the Persona, generated in the analysis of the User/Reader, to create the topics for the most useful section of the User Document. This article describes this procedure.

THE MOST USEFUL SECTION OF A USER DOCUMENT

The most useful section of a User Document is the one that helps the User get what he/she wants/needs done right now!

Writing such a section might seem to be an impossibility. How do you know what the User needs to do now?

The only thing that you, as a writer, can do is to play the odds. That is, determine the topics that have the highest probability of being of interest to your User. And “of interest” means “getting what the User wants done, right now.”

We created Persona (an almost-real representation of your product’s User) in another article in the “New Technical Writer” series (see the links in the “Resources” or “Author Information” section of this article). We can use the Persona to create a topic list for this section.

USING YOUR PERSONA

This step in using your Persona is missed by almost all User Documents that I have seen. Yet this step will result in a User Document that is most satisfying to your Reader. Here it is:

Imagine your Persona using your product. Now, what are the main things that your Persona will want to do with your product.

As an example we will use a photo editing program (Acme FotoPhixer, a hypothetical product from a hypothetical company) that comes bundled with a point and shoot digital camera. Our Persona is a typical user of such a camera.

Ask: What does that Persona want to do with Acme FotoPhixer?

The short answer is that they want to improve their photos. HOW can they improve their photos with Acme FotoPhixer? In OUR words (not the words of the User) we could tell them how to:

* Rotate

* Crop

* Red-eye removal

* Adjust brightness & contrast

* Removing unwanted items from the photo

* Focus/Blur

* Save

* Print

* Share

These names are what we, the photography experts might use. However, “crop” may be meaningless to our Persona. In fact, we could move crop into “Removing unwanted items from the photo.”

The “Focus/Blur” topic is interesting. If a photo is out of focus or blurred, there is really nothing that our software can do to improve it. However our Reader does not know this, but still wants to do it. We should include topic with this text: “It is impossible to fix the focus or remove blurring in a photograph. You might be able to improve this using the [Sharpen Effect] tool in FotoPhixer.” (The [] specifies a reference to the topic in the User Document.)

DON’T HIDE THIS SECTION

If your Reader cannot quickly find what he/she wants to do in your User Document, then the document has failed. Since we created this section to answer the User’s pressing needs for the product, then we must make this section very accessible to the User — they have to be able to find it easily.

“Fixing (Improving) Your Picture” is a PERFECT, User-oriented title. That is the correct title for this section. Don’t bury this gold under titles such as: “Tutorial” or “Use FotoPhixer’s Tools.” These titles do not suggest answers to the User’s questions.

You should make this section very easy to find in the User Document. It’s the key section of the User Document. It has the information that most Readers want, most of the time (by your analysis). Place it prominently in the User Document.

SATISFYING THE READER IS EASIER THAN YOU THINK

Producing this section is easier than you think.

First, imagine that you were NOT going to include this section. Your User Document would still have to cover all of the features, tools, and user interactions for the product. You need to do that to satisfy your boss. It’s also logical. If a feature is not described, then why is it in the product?

Thus you have created a topic list for a “classical” User Document.

Now we create our User-oriented section, “Fixing Your Picture.” Here are the steps:

1. List each of the topics for fixing a picture, using titles that the Reader will understand.

2. Provide a brief overview, perhaps with a picture showing before and after the use of this fixing method.

3. Then list the steps for that topic, and provide links to the documentation for the relevant tools for each step

Done!

Actually, I would recommend using what I call a “Visual Index,” which is described in the links in the “Resources” or “Author Information” section of this article.

Within Document Re-usability

We could call this organization method “within document re-usability.” Here the writing for a topic exists as an item in the “reference” section of the User Document. By referring to that item when it is needed for performing a User-oriented task, we make the text do double duty. This results in reusability within the document.

HOW TO GET THE TIME TO WRITE THIS SECTION

Put less detailed effort into the documentation for the product’s features that will be rarely used. For example, FotoPhixer includes tools to make the image look like it’s made of stone, or produce 3D effects, etc. These are rarely used, and have a similar set of controls. Instead of detailing the use of each of these rarely used features, write a global usage, describe the controls, encourage the User to experiment, and remind them of the un-do and cancel capabilities.

You can create the “most useful” section with the time you save by not thoroughly documenting these rarely-used items.

THE BOTTOM LINE

You can make your User Document much more effective if you think about your User/Reader and what he/she wants to do with the product. Use this information to create an easy to find section in your User Document that meets your Reader’s needs.

Pahl Overcomes Heartbreaking Winter To Capture Bronte Prize

Posted on Feb 26, 2009 01:21:51 PM

After a three-month span that included the sudden and early deaths of both the canine companion he called “daughter” and his beloved father, indie lit penmaster Nelson Pahl deserved a break.

He finally got one&ndasheven if it pales in comparison to his heartbreaking winter.

Pahl’s Bee Balms & Burgundy, published on independent imprint Caf

Short Story Ideas – How To Have Them

Posted on Feb 26, 2009 12:13:37 PM

Hopefully, when you want short story ideas, you don’t sit there waiting for inspiration. It’s better to write anything, and do it right now. English writer Graham Green attributes much of his success to a simple habit: He forced himself to write at least 500 words daily, whether he felt like it or not. Perhaps creative inspiration can strike at any time, but it strikes more often when there is work instead of waiting.

What do you write though? Here are a couple new ideas for generating new short story ideas.

Explain This

I once created a car travel game called “Explain This.” Someone suggests an unusual scenario in a sentence or two, and then each player explains it in a plausible way. It’s an entertaining way to pass the miles, but also a great way to come up with short story ideas.

Just start with an odd scene, anything that pops into your head. You might start, for example, with “Todd handed out the dollar bills to the people as they walked by, trying to distribute as many as he could quickly, before the police could stop him.” Now explain that. Our minds insist on explaining things, so you’ll find an explanation if you try. If it’s interesting enough, you have your next short story.

As I look at the scene in my mind, I imagine the dollar bills are signed or otherwise identifiable, and they can be traded at a big seminar for a gift worth even more. A person could spend it and get a soda – or get something truly valuable for it. Maybe this will go in the marketing ideas file instead of the short story ideas file.

Maybe Todd is handing out the last of his money as per the instructions of his spiritual leader. Could it be a “get rich quick” cult that requires all members to start from zero? A religious movement based on getting rich? Someone could make it into a plausible story.

Short Story Ideas From Combining Stories

Here’s a fun technique that is hopefully useful, but is at least worth a few laughs. Just combine old stories into new ones. The less similar the stories you start with, the better. The story of Adam and Eve combined with “I Robot,” for example, could lead to an interesting new story. Maybe a pair of robots start a new world. “Original sin” might be the arising of their own consciousness, or their rejection of man as their master.

Hmm… “The Miracle Worker” and “Gorillas In The Mist?” Struggles of an ape that learns at last to speak and be independent? “Star Wars” and “Cool Hand Luke?” The story of a man who livens up the deathly atmosphere of a penal colony in space? “Frankenstein” and “Gone With The Wind?” The possibilities are endless. Start cranking out those new short story ideas.

So What’s Your Villain, Or Villainess Like?

Posted on Feb 25, 2009 07:09:32 PM

My, my; what a Question, It truly depends on who the villain (ness) is. Are they related to the character? Have they always been around manipulating from the sidelines? Or are they someone who has recently appeared? It also depends on the type of personality they have. Are they outgoing, possibly highly influential or are they

the type that hides and attacks when you back is turned.

Yes you have to give the villain some type of background without going to far, you also to consider are they misguided and will be redeemed in the end, or are they truly going to get what’s coming to them.

Each story has a different Hero/heroine so also each one has a different Villain/villainess as such it is only when the tale unfolds that you truly get to know all the characters involved.

I will always have to deal with evil and all around bad guys for the simple fact I write fantasy, if I ever branch out into other genres I may not even have a villain at all life itself is demanding enough, not too mention most of the hero’s are jerks we have to reform throughout the story.

So do I ever want to whip my bad guys, of course? They wouldn’t be bad guys if we didn’t.

I never really know my characters until they start to come to life on paper and then they surprise the hell out me. But I imagine for those who know what each character is like or at least a rough outline does the same thing for the villain. And some times a secondary character just becomes too nasty not to be the bad guy.

As far as how real we can make them, unless you go inside their minds you have to depend on the other characters to help you build them and tell their story some throughout and explain their actions in the end. While doing all of this you makes them real and believable while telling there past as well.

I am not sure if I answered any questions or just raised a few more. I do know one thing absolute on this subject, if you ask a hundred writers you are going to get a hundred answers, all will be different the only thing the same will be well aren’t villains characters too?

Why Should You Depend on Other People?

Posted on Feb 25, 2009 11:47:02 AM

Humans are so dependant on other people’s opinions. Having been assessed positively we feel powerful, successful, intelligent and beautiful. We judge ourselves according to others’ comments on our actions. When being criticized or laughed at, we feel bad, depressed and nothing seems to make us happy anymore. This happens only because our ways are not accepted in the society. “Ego” cries for positivism, but none appears for you base your facts on the opinions of others. The truth is that you will never be in favor of everyone surrounding you. There will always be a group of people that will not positively assess everything you do. One thing that will help against criticism is self-confidence that one should grow within him/herself.

A student may be a perfect example. Since childhood people are likely to overestimate own possibilities and paint the picture of the future in pink colours. When working out a plan for future, we do not consider the majority of possible failures that might occur on the way to success. Perfectionism is a bad feature that is worth getting rid of. Nevertheless it is present in the back corner of a young student’s “ego”. Can you imagine a devastative consequence of a failure? The tutor praises the skills and intelligence. He feels like he is on top of the world and can do anything. You get used to good things easily. When the genius is recognized you start to think of yourself only as of a genius. And after everything goes smooth and bright there is a point when someone, even your beloved tutor, comes to criticize you and your work. Instead of an expected “A” you get an “F”. The perfect world falls apart because this error doesn’t fit into your plan. At this point you build a characteristic of your actions from the way your tutors, colleagues give you. This is the main error in your system of values and priorities. You tend to overlook the world from the point of view of other people. What one should do is to build up his or her own system of values and of course taking into consideration some of social priorities. But every final decision you take should be based on your decision. A failure should only stimulate to move forward and to overcome.

Interference of the society is unavoidable. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to close yourself in a world full of illusions. Hardships make a person more experienced, wiser, stronger. The more you hide and close into depression, the more time you loose to improve the situation. The reality is harsh but it is impossible to live beyond it.

Over Optimizing Article make your Site Blacklisted from Search Engine

Posted on Feb 23, 2009 05:39:01 PM

A keyword is a word that is going to be placed in your article several times, not just once as that would make every word a keyword. Keyword density is crucial parts of optimizing your articles for search engines. But it is important to note that there is also such a thing as over optimizing your articles for particular words, this is known as keyword stuffing.

When you over optimizing your article with stuff keywords in an article a search engine spider will detect that you are trying to trick it into placing your article high in the search engine results for that word, and will instead punish your site and your page for doing such. This may even affect the rankings of your other pages or get your site blacklisted from a major search engine if you are found keyword stuffing too many times.

Keyword density is how many times your keyword is placed in your article. Most use a percentage to determine how many times they will put a keyword in an article. For instance, if you have a 400 word article and want to achieve a keyword density of 6%, then you will need to have the keyword in your article exactly 24 times. An effective article must have a keyword density between three until eight percent from overall article. If you use very high density and over optimize your article search engine will marked your article as a spam.

Having the right keyword density in your article makes it more likely that you will make money off of that article because it will go up in the search engine results and be seen by more people. But you must remember please be careful when you optimize your article don’t over optimize your articles with very high keyword density, you will get your site blacklisted from a major search engine.

How to Write Checklists

Posted on Feb 21, 2009 07:52:28 PM

There are a number of strategic reasons for using checklists, a writing format which helps you make your point(s) by writing at least some of your document in lists, rather than all in standard paragraphs. For example, checklists may convey the idea that you have carefully analyzed a situation, that a sequence should be followed, or that you are a well-organized person.

In this article, I have a follow-up, in which we look at the creation of checklists.

How you create your checklist will depend on its type. In some cases, you will want readers to follow a sequence of steps; this is a sequential checklist. On the other hand, if it’s just a list, like a shopping list, then it would be a non-sequential list.

If you write non-sequential checklists, use bullets or boxes to indicate a new line or new item, as in:

* something

* something else

* another thing again

One quick note about bullets: if you’re printing and distributing the message, then you can use conventional bullet forms (usually a square or round dot, whether solid or hollow). If you’re sending the message by email, use an asterisk because not all email programs handle bullets properly (something to do with ASCII characters).

If the steps must be taken in sequence, then you’ll use numbers or letters as your bullets. And, if that sequence has several sub-steps within each step, you would follow convention by using these types of characters, in this order:

* Roman numeral;

* Capital letter;

* Standard (Arabic) number;

* Lower case letter.

For example:

I The Beginning

A. The first part of the Beginning

1. The first part of the first part

a) and so on.

Indentations are helpful when working with highly structured checklists, like these. They show at a glance the importance of each component in the list.

A couple of other types of checklist might also be considered — flowcharts and mind-maps. A flow-chart means a series of boxes illustrating the linear steps in a process. These are especially helpful if the checklist includes decision points. For example, “If the computer starts, do this” or “If the computer DOES NOT start, do that.”

A mind-map refers to a number of boxes with interconnecting lines (not necessarily in a sequence, but perhaps showing interrelationships). In this case, the idea is to show how different aspects of the same issue connect with each other.

One final thought: outliners, whether stand-alone or in word processors can provide checklists, along with appropriate indentations. If the content fits the checklist format, an outliner may help you create one quickly and easily.

Shakespeare Cipher Stories, Part 1

Posted on Feb 19, 2009 09:24:17 AM

Did Shakespeare write Shakespeare? Many people doubt that, for various reasons&ndashthe most obvious one being that a barely literate actor from the sleepy village of Stratford-on-Avon could not possibly have written with such accuracy and familiarity the many scenes in the plays that invoke the classics or the pomp of nobility and royal courts. Furthermore, no manuscripts by Shakespeare were ever found, and only six Shakespeare signatures are known to exist. The signatures all look different and give the impression they were written by a man who was not used to holding a pen. Some speculate that others’ hands may have guided his own as he wrote them.

If someone other than William Shakespeare wrote the plays and poems published under his name, who was it? And did this secret author insert clues as to his real identity in his works? These are two separate questions, and one does not necessarily imply the other. Various bright Elizabethans have been championed as the true author simply based on their literary abilities, their fitting educational and social background, and plausible motives for wanting to conceal their authorship&ndashamong them Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford; Roger Manners, Earl of Rutland; William Stanley, Earl of Derby; and Sir Francis Bacon.

In the last few centuries, quite a few people in the old and the new world alike have undertaken the search for hidden messages in Shakespeare’s works that would prove such authorship. Anagrams, acrostics, word ciphers, string ciphers, letter ciphers, they’ve all been found. But are they all for real?

Anyone interested in the various ciphers said to have been found in Shakespeare’s works should read The Shakespearean Ciphers Examined by William and Elizebeth Friedman. This thoroughly researched book from 1957 is out of print but copies can be found in libraries or on the Internet. Mr. Friedman, a professional cryptologist who helped decode the tantalizing Enigma ciphers employed by the Nazis during World War II, has been called one of America’s foremost cryptographers.

The Friedmans investigated dozens of ciphers allegedly discovered in the works of Shakespeare and analyzed them according to professional criteria of what constitutes a valid cipher. It’s fair to say that in the process, little of the various cipher claims was left standing. One of the better-known efforts they showed to be unsound was that by Ignatius Donnelly. Donnelly, an attorney and politician, published The Great Cryptogram in the late 1880s. He revealed an elaborate and very impressive mathematical system of “root numbers,” “multipliers” and “modifiers” that produced messages such as “…that More low [Marlowe] or Shak’st spur [Shakespeare] never writ a word of them.” The numerical sequence to identify the word “More” on that particular given page ran like this: [root number] 516-16=349-22b&h=327-254=73-15b&h=58. 448-58=390+1=391.

However impressive Donnelly’s mathematical sequences, some who tried to reproduce his efforts came up with startling results. The Friedmans cite a Rev. A. Nicholson who took the same text passages that Donnelly started from and, beginning with the same root number and employing the same intricate method, came up with a message of his own: “Master Will I am [William] Shak’st spurre [Shakespeare] writ the play and was engaged at the Curtain.” Thus, the subjective nature of the system rendered it invalid.

The Friedmans dedicate a large portion of their book to the bi-literal cipher discovered by Mrs. Elizabeth Gallup Wells, who believed that Francis Bacon was the true author of Shakespeare’s oeuvre. This part of the book is especially fascinating because the Friedmans themselves worked for Mrs. Gallup for several years. Once Mrs. Gallup’s decoding work gained notoriety, she attracted a benefactor, Colonel Fabian, who then employed a large research staff working on decoding the various texts. Elizebeth Friedman joined the team in 1915, William followed in 1916. They remained with her almost uninterruptedly until 1920.

Mrs. Gallup started out on solid ground, since she worked with the bi-literal cipher invented by Francis Bacon himself. Bacon published this cipher in October of 1623, just a month before the First Folio of Shakespeare’s complete works appeared. The bi-literal cipher is based on mixing two type fonts that are different enough to be distinguishable yet not too different to draw general attention. The First Folio is set in a curious mixture of italics and roman type styles, which quite naturally led to the suspicion that it may be hiding Bacon’s bi-literal cipher.

Mrs. Gallup believed, somewhat arbitrarily, that the cipher was embedded in the italic words in the plays, and deciphered lengthy passages that revealed Bacon’s authorship as well as his hidden life story. Once the Friedmans became involved in this work, they gradually came to the realization that Mrs. Gallup was the only one at the research center who could distinguish between the two fonts and produce meaningful messages. Everyone else invariably failed. Furthermore, Mrs. Gallup herself was unable to reproduce passages she had previously deciphered without considerable deviations. She also frequently omitted or added letters to make the cipher work. An FBI expert consulted by the Friedmans in the 1950s proved that there was much variation between individual italic letters in the Folio and that there were no characteristics that supported the strict classification into two fonts.

Since Mrs. Gallup’s work could not be reproduced independently by other decipherers, the Friedmans concluded that although Bacon’s bi-lateral cipher itself is a sound cipher, Gallup’s work was biased and unacceptable. That is not to say there couldn’t be a bi-literal cipher hidden in Shakespeare’s works; it only means that if there is one, it hasn’t been found yet.

References

Bacon, Francis &ndashDe Augmentis Scientiarum (1623)

Donnelly, Ignatius, The Great Cryptogram (1888)

Friedman, William F. and Elizebeth S., The Shakespearean Ciphers Examined. (Cambridge University Press, 1957)

Wells Gallup, Elizabeth &ndash The Biliteral Cypher of Sir Francis Bacon Discovered in His Works and Deciphered by Mrs. Elizabeth Wells Gallup (1899)

See William Stevenson, A Man Called Intrepid.