Welcome to the blog – advice, opinions and musings on how to make words work
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 cats,' the late psychologist Daniel Kahneman once argued. 'They can do it, but they prefer not to.' (Kahneman was no...
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....
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...
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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,...
Let's start out with a quick question. Look at the line on the left in the image below. Which one on the right do you think is most similar: A, B or...
Much of what we write often sails way over our readers’ heads. The problem is that we take our own knowledge for granted and assume that everyone...
Dignity is an inherent human right, according to the United Nations. (And who are we to argue with them?) But what began as a subject for the UN has...
The increasing use of the word ‘recovery’ in the press during the recent financial crisis may have contributed to the UK’s...
The media should exercise caution when reporting the Euro crisis, researchers warn, as the language that journalists use seems to be affecting our...
In our e-bulletin, we like to take a wild specimen of business-writing bull by the horns and tame it, so that it can be understood by all. The Ban...
He began by turning Shakespeare into txt spk. Now it’s Dickens for da yoof of today. Martin Baum, a father from Bournemouth, has rewritten...
Browse the business aisles of any bookshop and you’ll find an array of ‘how-to’ titles. Whether you’re hiring or firing,...
A delegate on one of our courses suggested a subject for the blog. ‘Can “into” and “in to”,’ she wondered,...
Get your business writing noticed with these easy-to-follow tips. Start with the reader in mind Do they know much about the topic? Do they...
We sometimes learn as much from our failures as from our successes – often more so. But if we simply move on and never communicate these...
Compared with pondering the placement of the much less familiar semi-colon or the enigmatic apostrophe, the ubiquitous comma might seem hardly worth...
We might all have certain choice words that we resist saying to our work colleagues or boss at times. But these are probably quite different from...
As the adage goes, anything worth having is worth fighting for. But it can be a rude awakening if you’ve signed onto a nursing degree course...
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