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 answer, of course, is none of those. Canberra is the capital of Australia, not Sydney. Well done if you spotted the...
Writing Matters
Welcome to the blog – advice, opinions and musings on how to make words work
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The board want insights as well as facts
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.
The report-writing secret that most of us miss
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...
Use this structure for tricky emails
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...
Are your reports grinding readers down?
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...
This Netflix technique works for documents too
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...
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Shorter is not always better
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...
Don’t let data drag down your documents
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...
Why people misread your messages
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?...
Why you miss your biggest typos
Have you ever missed an obvious typo and wondered how? Maybe it was even in a title in bold, 24-point type. Or perhaps you overlooked a howler in a...
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