By any measure, our High-impact business writing course in London has been a runaway success. For over 19 years, we’ve trained thousands of professionals in every sector and industry how to inform, impress and influence in everything they write. But until now, anyone...
Tim Cawood
Is it stationery or stationary? [VIDEO]
Two of the most commonly confused words in the English language are 'stationary' and 'stationery'. It may come as a surprise that they are separate words, but they are different – 'stationary' and 'stationery' mean entirely different things, even though they happen to...
How well does your board understand your business?
The monthly report to the board or senior management team is much more than just one more chore you need to get through. It provides a vital connection between you and the people who can steer your company. It could have a direct effect on the decisions they make....
Got writer’s block? Try this.
For many people, MS Word is practically synonymous with writing on a computer. Even die-hard Mac fans frequently use it in preference to the Apple alternatives. I used to be among this group. But in the past year, I've found a way of hugely improving my efficiency...
The best fonts for business documents
For those of us who don’t deal in fonts every day, the number of fonts on offer can seem overwhelming – but it doesn’t have to be. Serif vs sans serif Fonts generally fall into two categories – serif and sans serif. Those with small projecting features are...
Five ways your web writing is annoying your readers
Having a website is a wonderful thing: it allows you to confuse and frustrate people thousands of miles away without ever having to hear their complaints. This makes it very hard to see what the problems are – and very tempting to pretend that they don’t exist. Your...
Five steps to writing a great LinkedIn profile
LinkedIn, that's that online CV thing, right? Well, kind of. But with more than 200 million registered users, 2.8 million company pages and 2.6 billion page views per month, LinkedIn is more than just that, writes Emma Beals. It has 11 million users in the UK, and 74...
Twitter challenge: how short can you go?
In my previous article for Emphasis, I looked at long and short words and their relative merits, writes Stan Carey. One place where shorter is usually better is Twitter, where everyone has to stick to the 140-character limit – unless you use a tweet extension...
Is singular they OK?
Is singular they OK? Dear Madam or Sir I have just discovered your excellent website and begun perusing some of your articles. In the one by Jack Elliot on technical writing I noticed one linguistic point that we (translators at a company in Germany) often discuss but...
'Whether' or 'whether or not'?
Blog reader Helen asks: Can I have some advice on how to use 'whether'? As in 'whether to write something' or 'whether or not to write something'. Leaving out 'or not' feels incomplete but putting it in feels unwieldy and unnecessary. You can test this by asking...
What is the difference between 'ie' and 'eg'?
Blog reader Fritz asks: I realised just recently that I have been using ‘eg’ and ‘ie’ as though they were interchangeable, yet I have a nagging suspicion that this isn’t the case. Can you enlighten me? The two Latin abbreviations do...
Communication Lab 7: confessions of a media manipulator
Subscribe via RSS / iTunes | All podcasts Click the icon above to hear this interview (36 minutes) Our guest in this special episode of Communication Lab is Ryan Holiday, who dropped out of college at the age of 19 and went on to become global marketing director of...