Adjectives can take three forms. I'm not talking about liquid, solid or gas; I mean positive, comparative and superlative.

Simply put, the positive form of an adjective describes a single noun or pronoun.

• Rex is smart. John's car is fast.

The comparative form of an adjective compares two nouns or pronouns.

• Laura is smarter than a fifth grader. I am older than dirt.

The superlative form then compares three or more nouns or pronouns.

• Thunder is the biggest of our three dogs. Nashville is the greatest city in the world!

Not sure when to use more/most, double the last consonant or change y to i? Here are a few general rules. But remember, there are always exceptions.

As hard as we work to produce flawless magazines for our clients, sometimes unforeseen imperfections arise that are out of our control—especially if a problem happens once the magazine reaches the printer. Take the issue of New York magazine we received this week, for example. If you look closely at the cover, you’ll see a color strip at the top of the page, a white strip of binding on the left side and letters running perilously close to the bottom edge. What happened? Barbara Mathieson, Hammock’s production director, explains.

Funny name, useful application

We're long-time wiki fans, but we know that this kind of content management system isn't as popular as it ought to be. A number of prominent wiki sites (like, say, Wikipedia) don't make it as easy to contribute as they could, so we suspect a lot of people dismiss wikis out of hand.

But, wikis don't have to be hard. (And I'll throw in on a personal note, they don't have to be ugly, either.) If you're in one of the situations below, you should be considering a wiki:

It sounds too simple to be worth saying, but if your communication doesn't serve the needs of your audience, they won't be happy and you will lose them. That can present challenges, as Scott Adams demonstrates here. But if it were easy, you'd be Wally. (PS: Encourage audience feedback, and make it simple and easy for them to give you a piece of their minds, especially if yours has run out of ideas).

We’ve found that organizations seek the help of a custom media partner like ours for lots of different reasons. Some have internal communications departments, but don’t have the editorial, design or production expertise to accomplish their goals. Others recognize the cost savings and predictability of working with a partner rather than keeping the resources necessary to produce media in-house; while others have expertise in one type of media, but look to us for help creating and integrating new media. Our relationships with our clients are all unique, but here are some of the more common reasons we have found for organizations to hire a custom media company:

Avoiding an Interview With the Spontaneity Vampire

Hammock's writers are experienced interviewers and interview critics, with credits from the White House to Death Row. Still, we have had our share of interviews whose subjects drained every drop of energy from the experience.

The best interviews appear to be spontaneous - as though the subject just penned a long, emotive and utterly frank letter to you, or plopped down in the chair next to you for a long-delayed and much-anticipated tete-a-tete.

This, of course, is an illusion. Great interviews are almost always great performances — by the subject, the interviewer or both. Both have prepared thoroughly for the experience and rehearsed it in their minds. Most of the time, though, editors and producers play key supporting roles in turning lesser interviews into something greater than the sum of its parts.

You can't be too careful with stock photos.

One wonders how much time the Birmingham City Council - of England - has spent actually out and about in their own city, after the council authorized and issued a brochure bearing a picture of Birmingham - Alabama.

The British city fathers tried the old "we were just looking for something generic" excuse, but that sounded pretty lame, given they were praising their citizens for recycling efforts. Surely they had a nice shot of their town someplace?

It's a cautionary tale for those of us who use stock photos. Consumer Reports readers often point out instances where the same stock image has been used for similar, or even competing, products and services. I know I have seen the woman in the center probably 10 times over the past few years, advertising jewelry, cosmetics and face lifts.

Some years ago, at another company, we were asked to do a story on a client's newest acquisition - a mortgage processing firm. The acquisition's corporate brochure had a cover photo of those lovely Victorian homes in San Francisco known as "the Painted Ladies." Upon close examination, it was clear there was a guy in his Fruit-of-the-Looms standing in a window. We never told the client, since the brochure was dumped right after the acquisition.

I must've stared at that Word document for almost two hours straight Wednesday. I was writing an article for a client, using beautiful and powerful words and making sure the flow was nice and smooth. I had read it over and over again to make sure I hadn't missed anything. They were going to love it.

At one point I finally let myself go to the kitchen and get a nice glass of ice tea, and when I returned to my desk, there it was: a spelling error right in the title. Spellcheck didn't catch it. (It was a word, after all, just not the word I wanted to use.) How did I miss it before? I would definitely be sending this piece to a fellow editor for proofing of course, but I wanted it to be in the best shape possible before then.

So I started thinking: How can we self-edit to produce our best work?