When most people think of Leonardo da Vinci, they think of him as the artist who painted The Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. But da Vinci was also an inventor, an architect, a musician and an engineer. To be successful as a nurse manager, you need to adopt da...

As the seasons turn and the nights draw in, we continue to track how often the terms 'recovery' and 'green shoots' appear in the broadsheets. And we ask: can we look to the newspapers for renewed hope, or mere cold comfort? With only the most intermittent exception,...

It is 40 years ago, almost to the day, that the internet made its first connection. On 29 October 1969, a computer in the University of California connected with one several hundred miles away in the Stanford Research Institute, just long enough to receive the message...

A new dictionary is set to make sense of that most inscrutable of languages: teen speak. This comprehensive reference book, called Pimp Your Vocab, aims to allow bemused parents and teachers to comprehend such ‘teenglish’ terms as ‘owned’...

You may remember that, back in July, we threw down a gobbledygook gauntlet, by calling an amnesty on business double-speak and offering a prize for the biggest offender. After painful hours of digging through piles of tangled, mangled English, we can present you with...

It's amazing how many good ideas are lost in translation – not from one language to another, but from the brain to the printed page. One reason could be that it's so tempting, when you suddenly find that you're unable to get your idea down on paper effectively,...

Whether the message is good, bad or indifferent; now is no time for silence, says Rob Ashton.   During the ancient wars, if you wanted to deliver a message you hired a messenger to hand over the scroll personally. But approaching enemy lines to pass on bad news...

Expert trainer Kathy Gemmell explains how to use design to create easy to read, high-impact documents. Learn how to: Make a document look readable Select the best width for margins Use headings and subheadings to guide your reader. You can listen here.

Someone once said that writing is easy. You just sit at your keyboard and wait – till the beads of blood form on your forehead. For anyone who has ever suffered from writer's block (and that’s all of us), this will be a familiar scenario. It doesn’t...

Last month we announced the launch of our index tracking the use of the words ‘green shoots’ and ‘recovery’ in the newspapers. So where are the press putting us now? June’s references to ‘recovery’ actually topped May’s...

The meeting room is booked and you’re waiting for your clients to arrive. The reception is strangely quiet and no-one turns up. It’s a mystery. After 15 minutes, you resort to re-reading the invitation you sent out, and a horrible realisation dawns on you:...