Welcome to the blog – advice, opinions and musings on how to make words work
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 main points first? Well, there are some times when that's not such a good idea. Obviously it's still true that few of us...
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...
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...
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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....
This may be a post mostly for our non-native English speaking readers. When to use in or on at any given moment is something native speakers give...
Subscribe via RSS / iTunes | Download | All podcasts 32 minutes Rob Ashton and Andy White discuss the secret life of pronouns, proofreading tips and...
Apple boasts that there are now more than 500,000 iPhone apps available. Some are useful, and some less so (we particularly love the virtual...
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...
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