Welcome to the blog – advice, opinions and musings on how to make words work
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 back by a lack of confidence in their own knowledge and expertise. It’s almost always unjustified and it always breaks my...
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.
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...
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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...
One of the biggest business-writing myths has to be that shorter is always better. 'Less is more,' say those who claim to be in the know. Keep it...
Imagine you've just got a text from a friend. Which of these two messages would you react to more strongly? A: 'The forecast doesn't look great...
Have you ever written what you thought was a perfectly clear email, only to get a reply ten minutes later that left you scratching your head?...
The health sciences have their own language. And those who don’t understand it can simply feel like they’re not part of the club. If...
If you're suffering from writer's block at the moment, spare a thought for the civil servants behind today's G20 summit. By 3.30 today, they have to...
Thinking about jumping onto this bandwagon. But where will it all end? So might read my inaugural ‘tweet’ – by definition: an...
We had this question from a former course attendee: Hi there Please can you settle a dispute! Is it Mother's Day or Mothers' Day? Many thanks Here's...
Council leaders have banned some 200 examples of the worst management jargon. But there are signs they've fallen into the lazy-writing trap...
Today, as you may have noticed, is Friday the thirteenth. If that bothers you, then you're not alone. In fact, the fear of Friday the thirteenth...
Clear writing is dangerous writing. If you edit out all the padding and get to the point, you might actually say something, and this can be quite...
Last Thursday marked the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin: an event that did not go uncelebrated at Emphasis HQ. And even as we hung the streamers...
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics. So said Benjamin Disraeli (and later Mark Twain, who was quoting him). Yet...
Microsoft has announced it's to open its own shops, in a clear bid to grab a slice of the Apple retail action. Apple trades on its image as the...
Kill the fatted calf: it seems we do now have a definition of the word 'Depression'. (See 'What's in a word?', below.) According to the Economist,...
There is a corner of Emphasis Towers dedicated solely to the behind-the-scenes team known as Operations. We are the stage-hands to the...
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