Welcome to the blog – advice, opinions and musings on how to make words work
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, this has very little to do with how we actually look. It’s because the face we're seeing is not the face we see in the...
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...
The headline almost leapt out of my screen. It was June 2020. Every day was bringing another batch of harrowing news stories. Yet this one, on the...
One of the biggest killers of great ideas (and even greater careers) has to be impostor syndrome. I've met countless professionals who were held...
I've got a quick question for you. How many people live in the Australian capital of Sydney? Is it two million? Five million? Seven million? The...
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A paper to the board can be incredibly powerful. But you have to tell them what you want and make sure they actually read it.
Organisations are full of documents that don't work. The CEO of a London bank recently told me that he'd spent 20 minutes of his last board meeting...
If you're putting off writing a tricky email or text right now, you're not alone. According to a recent poll by YouGov, almost one in three adults...
Getting someone to read a document is often a bit like pushing a car that won't start. You have to overcome a ton of inertia at first. But it then...
Ever wondered about the etiquette of address in letters? Write Now reader Joanne King asked us for a guide to using salutations and ‘Yours...
The words ‘obese’ and ‘obesity’ may soon be off-limits at Liverpool City Council. The idea is to avoid causing offence, but...
A guest blog on the Law Society Gazette's website says that writing pitches is not something that lawyers can afford to skate over. The article,...
PowerPoint has revolutionised presentations. But too many people now use it as a substitute for thinking. They launch the application before...
It’s not an accident that one of the West End’s most popular stage shows at the moment is about a character in search of his purpose....
Poor literacy at work is still a major problem, new research has found. The report, Literacy: State of the Nation, examined the UK’s literacy...
It’s easy to think of email as an electronic form chatting, but to do so can be dangerous. For instance, you may say something in email that...
In his second article on writing skills for nursing students, Rob Ashton explains what to do when inspiration doesn’t strike. D-Day has...
Rob Ashton explains how to use writing skills to become a recognised industry expert. If you take a poll to find the world’s top music...
We probably all know what it’s like to get frustrated over an item of punctuation, but most of us don’t get the chance to pass a law...
We’ve been paddling down various creeks for Ban the bull in the past few editions of Write Away, trying to clean up and make sense out of what we’ve...
Back in January, we lamented that the UK was sitting on a glut of unwanted Christmas presents. Matching present to person is seldom an easy task. It...
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