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...

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;...

Writing messages that are effective for all your readers is not as easy as it may first seem. New research shows that patients may be risking their health because warning labels on medications are not clear enough. The researchers, led by Professor Theo Raynor at the...

David Cameron has referred to it as his ‘mission’ and his ‘passion’, but it does seem that very few people are entirely sure what the ‘Big Society’ is actually all about. This isn’t too surprising when even those well and...

Jargon can bring clarity for experts and irritation for laypeople, but could it sometimes be life threatening? Yes, according to the coroner heading up the inquest into the London terrorist attacks of 7 July 2005, Lady Justice Hallett. Simple impatience with unclear...

The latest plan to boost children’s literacy levels involves a reading test for six-year-olds, which includes made-up words like ‘mip’, ‘fack’, ‘zort’, ‘koob’ and ‘glimp’. The Government scheme is...

They say money talks. But why does financial language so often leave the poor reader in need of subtitles? Since the credit crunch, the thorny issue of finance has dominated the media. If only we all had a euro for every story we’d read on the subject,...

Those who see themselves more as ‘number people’ than ‘word people’ might be surprised to learn that their understanding of numbers is actually dependent on language. New research has found that, without language, it is impossible to properly...

We received this question from a Write Now reader: Should I say 'a block of bedrooms has / have been reserved'? I think it is 'has' as it refers to the block, but on past papers I can see it has said 'have'. Please advise. Sandra Thanks, Sandra: good question. You’re...

Whatever online persona you may have chosen to adopt in your blog, your deepest personality traits may be given away by your choice of words, a new study has found. The specific words bloggers use relate to which of the ‘big five’ personality factors...

How many words can you use to say, ‘Rain all day’? A wet start to the day with some heavier bursts of rain around. It is likely to stay wet for much of the day with further rain at times. Nice work, BBC Weather.