When many people set out to write a report or proposal, they start with a standard template or adapt a previous document. On the surface, this makes sense. After all, why waste time reinventing the wheel? Surely anything that reduces the effort of writing has to be a...
I hope you are well. No, really – I do. But have you ever noticed how those five words have become the default opener for almost every email? Why do we write that? My colleague Catie recently pondered this question on LinkedIn, after seeing a jokey post about it on...
AI is already transforming how many of us write. But evidence is beginning to emerge that it may also be harming our organisations in a way that could be hard to undo. The tech definitely has the potential to be a huge help for hard-pressed knowledge workers, who...
I’ll never forget the first time I was asked to write a report. I had recently graduated and was two months into a new job with the Environmental Health department of a local authority in Swindon. The day before, I’d accompanied my manager on his safety inspection of...
Simplicity is often misunderstood and underrated. One of the biggest myths in business writing is that complex topics need complex documents. The more important the topic, the more complex we think our writing needs to be – especially when the stakes are high. Writing...
Years ago, not long after I started Emphasis, I found myself in conversation with a young training manager for one of the UK’s biggest companies. We were meeting to discuss his organisation's training programme and I was curious to understand what he was focusing on....
Many of us are still hoovering up pine needles from the living room carpet. There may even be a lone chocolate rattling around the Quality Street tin on the coffee table. (Orange Cream, anyone?) But countless New Year’s resolutions made when the fairy lights were...
Disappointingly, the good people at the Oxford English Dictionary have chosen not to name Documentese as their 2024 Word of the Year. But as their pick was brain rot, I'm calling that a close second. After all, one definitely leads to the other (or to whatever the...
There’s one critical problem with most articles and videos on ChatGPT. And it’s glaringly obvious to anyone who works in a sizeable organisation. Not that there's any shortage of professionals who are now leaning on AI to make writing easier. As each month goes by,...
I faced a slightly awkward moment in a meeting recently. Some consultants were presenting their ideas to me, but I stopped them five seconds into their first slide. It was incredibly complex, and I really wanted to understand it. The trouble was that my mind kept...
A colleague had a bizarre experience recently. While browsing the website of a well-known electrical-goods company, she idly clicked the Get Help button. But instead of taking her to an FAQ page or opening a live chat as she'd expected, to her horror, the button...
Some rules are made to be broken – even ones that I laid down just a few weeks ago. You know how I said recently that it's usually best to put your main points first? Well, there are some times when that's not such a good idea. Obviously it's still true that few of us...