Welcome to the blog – advice, opinions and musings on how to make words work
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 reading a report on a major incident in the lending team. The report had rightly flagged the problem in the first two...
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...
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....
Our newsletter Writing Matters will help you to get your point across, supercharge your writing and make sure you stand out from the crowd. We’ve helped over 80,000 professionals achieve their goals.
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...
Most of us don't like the way we look in photos. We wince slightly when we glance at a picture that includes us. Despite how it might feel, though,...
Subscribe via RSS / iTunes | Download | All podcasts 34 minutes In this series of lively podcasts, Emphasis CEO and former scientist Rob Ashton puts...
The proofreading competition is now closed. Taking the time to proofread your writing – whether it’s a letter, report, proposal or even just an...
It’s turned into proofing week here at the Emphasis blog. In this final part, we aim to finish turning you into mistake-spotting machines. How...
It’s a rule beloved by schoolteachers: starting a sentence with and or but is wrong. It’s also one of the few rules of grammar many people remember...
Ah, what a wonderful language English is. You can bear a child, bear a responsibility, ask someone to bear with you, bear a heavy load or bare your...
Should you write ‘the person that’ or ‘the person who’? Reader Simon Walters, of FD Solutions, wrote in about one of his language bugbears. Namely:...
Grammar is about the rules that structure language. Knowing and using grammar effectively is a sure-fire way to make sure you are understood, which...
SEO (search engine optimisation) is often high on the business agenda. Being found online is vital for most organisations – and harder than ever to...
The language women use in meetings could be holding them back in business, according to new research. The study, an 18-month long examination of the...
Blog reader Bill Friar got in touch with us to air one of his professional writing bugbears: ‘I would dearly love to see an item on the...
It’s not often that punctuation makes the headlines. But the uproar over the apparent threat to the Oxford comma has proved that passion for...
A Sussex-based brewery has upset fans of punctuation with its inconsistent use of apostrophes. Apostrophe Protection Society member Jonathan Cook...
Get your own PDF copy of The Write Stuff, the definitive guide for everyone who writes at work.