Welcome to the blog – advice, opinions and musings on how to make words work
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...
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...
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...
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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...
The strange thing about writer's block is often it's not writing that's the problem at all. It's thinking. 'Thinking is to humans as swimming is to...
‘What’s the right format for my report (or proposal)?’ is a question we get asked a lot. The short answer is that there isn’t one. At least, there...
There’s a subtle but useful difference between ‘compared to’ and ‘compared with’. 'Compared to’ highlights a similarity between two things....
Some differences between UK and US English are well documented. For example, most people know that football is a different game in North America and...
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...
Recently, we were asked to settle a dispute between colleagues over the word that. The example given was: 'The consensus was the chief executive was...
How do you vanquish writer’s block? Some say to just start writing, even if you later have to delete half of what you’ve written. Some say to begin...
Here's the good news: if you’re worried your documents are not as good as they could be, your grammar is probably not the problem. Don't get me...
Apostrophes are unpredictable little blighters. No sooner have you mastered the basics than they pop up in new and unexpected places, apparently...
Bullet points can bring clarity to an otherwise dense report, delivering quickfire information. But overuse them and you could shoot yourself in the...
Here are the plagiarists of Internet Town With Ctrl+C and clattering keys They prowl and creep when you’re asleep And take whatever they please....
In our post on units and spaces, we asked readers to take a short survey. We're delighted to report that 130 people did – and here are the results....
Recently a reader asked us whether it was correct to put a space between a number and a unit (eg ‘4 cm’), or to close them up (‘4cm’). Well, what a...
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