English is, to quote The Economist, the language of global business. You may feel you already have many of the secrets of better business writing at your fingertips, but writing for an international audience can require a new set of rules. Here are five top tips for...
Catie Holdridge
First spell check, then grammar check – now tone check?
Email is an integral part of our business lives, but it’s also a liability. Sometimes a simple attempt at being brief and concise can make you come across as curt and unpleasant. It’s far too easy to be overconfident about conveying tone effectively in email, and...
Hit or myth? You shouldn’t split an infinitive
Split an infinitive and you can be sure someone nearby will start clutching their ears dramatically and berating you. But is it really wrong to occasionally split one? (Oops, we just did.) While playing by the rules of grammar is wise, it doesn’t mean you should...
Management-speak: bull fighter
Management-speak is one of the biggest irritations in modern office life, regularly appearing near the top of surveys on workplace annoyances. What is management-speak? It isn’t quite the same as jargon, which, as a specialist language, can provide clarity and be a...
Is it ‘taller than I’ or ‘taller than me’?
The question of whether to use 'I' or 'me' in sentences such as ‘Doris and I went to the opera’ is one we've covered on the site before. But it turns out the I-or-me question doesn’t end there, as another recent posting on our writing advice forum proves. When...
A guide to the differences between UK and US English
According to playwright George Bernard Shaw, the UK and the US are ‘two countries divided by a common language’. We may not need translators to converse, but you can save potential embarrassment or confusion by learning some of the writing differences. Most UK-English...
Forgiveness: the answer to writer’s block
New research indicates there may be an easy solution to beating writer’s block: forgiving yourself. Leaving writing tasks to the eleventh-hour is bad for you and your reports. Other than causing unnecessary stress, last-minute scribbling raises the chances of making...
Famous writers on writer’s block
‘Writing is easy: all you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.’ So said Gene Fowler, the American journalist and author. If you – and your forehead – have ever felt the pain of writer’s block, it’s worth taking some...
Idioms don’t travel well
When writing anything for a global audience, it’s best to leave idioms out of it. Idioms are groups of words whose meaning is usually metaphorical and cannot necessarily be deduced from looking at each component word. Unsurprisingly, this can make them...
Jolly good, what? British accents are quite safe
Patriots and language guardians rejoice: any perceived threat to our mother tongue from pervasive Americanisms – at least as far as our accents are concerned – seems largely without substance. New research by the British Library has revealed that English...
Banish bad writing to Room 101
Good writing is powerful. Bad writing belongs in Room 101. George Orwell, creator of that fictional torture chamber where people’s worst nightmares reside, determined to rid the world of the terrible writing habits he believed threatened our mother tongue. The...
Mind the traps: three grammar pitfalls to avoid
If you missed out on learning grammar at school – because it was no longer being taught in detail or you were too busy smoking behind the bike sheds – it’s worth swotting up on it now. Getting it wrong can give your colleagues and clients a poor impression of you;...