Welcome to the blog – advice, opinions and musings on how to make words work
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 C? It’s pretty obvious that the answer is C, right? Or so you'd think. Yet three out of every four participants...
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...
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.
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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...
People read your documents until they can stop. Then they do. But that's not because we have limited attention spans. The truth is that we can focus...
When is it right to use may and when to use might? Opinions vary, depending on what you read. Here are a few guidelines culled from the Economist...
Being a capable wordsmith may not be what you signed up for. But clinical nurses are spending more and more of their working day on writing tasks....
People power counts for a lot in writing. ‘One in a hundred people’ is likely to produce a much bigger reaction from readers of your...
We’ve made it even easier for you to find the tips you need by breaking down our podcasts into bite-sized chunks. If you’re determined...
Almost a month into the first year of the new decade and the time may have come to pick a side: is it ‘twenty-ten’ or ‘two...
It’s the start of the new year and the UK is sitting on a glut of unwanted Christmas presents. Matching present to person is seldom an easy...
There’s been another U-turn on the effects of texting on children’s literacy skills. The latest research, conducted by Dr Clare Wood at...
As more people join us on our crusade to rid the English-speaking world of business writing that doesn’t seem to speak English, we can only...
The colon is a common cause of bellyache. The semicolon can leave people dazed and confused. But rather than cutting them completely from your...
We're often asked about when to use capital letters. Why is it so confusing? The answer lies somewhere between what we’re used to seeing...
Remember last year: the pain of putting off that report day after day, finally bashing it out in a blind panic the night before it was due? ...
Free podcasts offer expert help with writing reports, proposals, emails and more A new source of free help is at hand for anyone who has ever...
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