Welcome to the blog – advice, opinions and musings on how to make words work
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....
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...
A colleague had a bizarre experience recently. While browsing the website of a well-known electrical-goods company, she idly clicked the Get Help...
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...
How much do big words and flowery phrases really impress our peers? A lot less than many people think, it seems. I've talked before about the...
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Have you ever wondered why you can never seem to get a document written until its deadline is looming? You might have been paralysed by writer's...
I confess that I can be a little paranoid at times. And never more so than when I'm sending important emails. It usually goes something like this....
A client contacted us recently while still recovering from a mild trauma. He was the head of risk at an investment bank and had just finished...
If you ever struggle with writing at work, take comfort in knowing that to do it at all should be impossible. In fact, the whole idea of...
One of our Emphasis 360 members has emailed to ask if it's always necessary to write a cover letter when applying for jobs or internships. Their...
When you've finished an email, all you need is a friendly, professional sign off. And there's one popular choice. That choice is 'Kind regards'. For...
There are some words that can just drag your writing down. They're heavy and dull, and they have a nasty habit of lugging even more weight in with...
Just because someone has been writing documents for years, that doesn't mean they're doing it well. I wish it were that simple. The fact is that...
No-one ever said writing documents was easy. If you're like a lot of people, the idea of having to put your own words to paper (or computer screen)...
There's no getting away from it: research is addictive. And there's a good reason for that – we're all hard-wired to search. It's a survival...
Our courses are transformative. It's the norm for participants to leave the training room full of confidence and buzzing with ideas. This is true...
In case you've missed it, there's an election looming large here in the UK. But did the parties just throw away their opportunity to write...
Very often, people who struggle with business English as a second language assume all their problems stem from the fact that it's not their native...
I love my job, on most days. We help people with a task that millions find very stressful and problematic. So it's incredibly rewarding to be able...
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...
Generally we advise giving Latin a wide berth when it comes to writing work documents or emails. There are exceptions, of course. Lawyers depend on...
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