Welcome to the blog – advice, opinions and musings on how to make words work
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. After agonising over the message itself, often rewriting it several times, I hit send and the clock starts ticking. If...
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...
Struggling to write is a universal human experience. We all find it hard to some degree, as I've explained before. But if the key word is 'human',...
It's tempting to think that writing comes easily to everyone but ourselves. But if we could see inside their heads, we'd probably find that their...
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An embarrassing mishap befell me during my recent summer break. It happened when I was searching for the bathroom in an unfamiliar West Country pub....
I found myself in a strange situation recently – I was approaching a long Zoom call with genuine excitement. It was a webinar by an expert I'd just...
Telling someone they need help with their writing rarely lands well. You may be right. They may even agree with you. But they'll still probably feel...
One of the biggest dangers of relying on AI writing bots is perhaps not the most obvious. It’s not that what they produce is inferior to human...
Is it learnt or learned? Spelt or spelled? Dreamt or dreamed? If you’re unsure, you’re in good company. Neither the dictionaries nor the newspapers...
Do you have one of those friends that you love to bits but whose every word should be taken with an enormous bag of salt? Well, that’s basically the...
Subscribe via RSS / iTunes | Download | All podcasts 32 minutes Listen now to the latest programme, featuring linguistics expert Dr Lynne Murphy...
Have you heard about the tiger that’s turned into a giraffe? The real story isn’t quite so magical as that sounds. But Sainsbury’s...
The question of whether to use who or whom may seem abstract, or pertinent only to the pompous. But, technically, it’s no different from...
‘Run-on sentences’ may sound like a newspaper headline announcing that sentences are flying off the shelves. In fact, they are a product of the...
Oh, jingle bells! Under the influence of one too many eggnog-laced espressos, we’ve only gone and rewritten verses from three popular...
Disclaimer: the views expressed in this article are those of the author and not those of the rest of the staff at Emphasis. We like robins here, and...
Do you know your palates from your palettes from your pallets? It’s a particularly important distinction if you work with food or wine –...
Last month, we set you a proofreading task. After the results were in, two things became clear. One: you like a challenge. And two: some errors can...
One of our readers, Marc, wrote in with this question: ‘Should it be you and your partner’s luggage or your and your partner’s...
A question for the drivers: how much of the drive to work this morning do you remember? The answer, probably, is not much, because you’re so...
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