Welcome to the blog – advice, opinions and musings on how to make words work
Simplicity is often misunderstood and underrated. One of the biggest myths in business writing is that complex topics need complex documents. The more important the topic, the more complex we think our writing needs to be – especially when the stakes are high. Writing...
Years ago, not long after I started Emphasis, I found myself in conversation with a young training manager for one of the UK’s biggest companies. We...
Many of us are still hoovering up pine needles from the living room carpet. There may even be a lone chocolate rattling around the Quality Street...
Disappointingly, the good people at the Oxford English Dictionary have chosen not to name Documentese as their 2024 Word of the Year. But as their...
There’s one critical problem with most articles and videos on ChatGPT. And it’s glaringly obvious to anyone who works in a sizeable organisation....
I faced a slightly awkward moment in a meeting recently. Some consultants were presenting their ideas to me, but I stopped them five seconds into...
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A colleague had a bizarre experience recently. While browsing the website of a well-known electrical-goods company, she idly clicked the Get Help...
Some rules are made to be broken – even ones that I laid down just a few weeks ago. You know how I said recently that it's usually best to put your...
How much do big words and flowery phrases really impress our peers? A lot less than many people think, it seems. I've talked before about the...
Have you ever wondered why you can never seem to get a document written until its deadline is looming? You might have been paralysed by writer's...
In the 1991 blockbuster Terminator 2: Judgment Day, the time-travelling Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) reveals in deadpan tones how artificial...
Most people think their driving is above average. That's a statistical impossibility, of course, otherwise it wouldn't be an average. Still, it's...
What is a full stop (period) for? Well, surely it's how we tell one sentence has ended and a new one is about to begin. To many people, that would...
In March 2015, Monica Lewinsky walked into the world-famous spotlight of the TED stage in Vancouver, Canada, to deliver a presentation called 'The...
Writing is one of those work activities that we just assume we can do. So much so that it's not even something we tend to give much thought to. Yet...
It's that time again. A new year, a (seemingly) new beginning and a brand new chance to do everything a bit better. Clean slates are always...
Some say that, in business writing, brevity and clarity are king – and everything else is padding. Forget the waffle, cut the crap, and get straight...
If you're feeling generous and you're offering money off something, is that a discount on or discount off the usual price? This was recently the...
You’ve finally made time to sit down and write that key document. You’ve pounded something out on the keyboard and you desperately want to get it...
Two of the most commonly confused words in the English language are 'stationary' and 'stationery'. It may come as a surprise that they are separate...
Tables are a staple of many business documents – from management accounts to a marketing plan or an activity update. And most people know how to...
What's one thing you can do to transform everything you write at work? In fact, not just what you write: what your colleagues write too – even...
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