Welcome to the blog – advice, opinions and musings on how to make words work
When many people set out to write a report or proposal, they start with a standard template or adapt a previous document. On the surface, this makes sense. After all, why waste time reinventing the wheel? Surely anything that reduces the effort of writing has to be a...
I hope you are well. No, really – I do. But have you ever noticed how those five words have become the default opener for almost every email? Why do...
If 'excitement' doesn't quite sum up your feelings about AI right now, what does? Discomfort? Frustration? Denial? If so, you’re not alone. This...
You might think of artificial intelligence mainly as a new way to draft short emails or outline reports in seconds. If you do, you're in good...
AI is already transforming how many of us write. But evidence is beginning to emerge that it may also be harming our organisations in a way that...
I’ll never forget the first time I was asked to write a report. I had recently graduated and was two months into a new job with the Environmental...
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Simplicity is often misunderstood and underrated. One of the biggest myths in business writing is that complex topics need complex documents. The...
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...
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...
I confess that I can be a little paranoid at times. And never more so than when I'm sending important emails. It usually goes something like this....
A client contacted us recently while still recovering from a mild trauma. He was the head of risk at an investment bank and had just finished...
If you ever struggle with writing at work, take comfort in knowing that to do it at all should be impossible. In fact, the whole idea of...
The strange thing about writer's block is often it's not writing that's the problem at all. It's thinking. 'Thinking is to humans as swimming is to...
Struggling to write is a universal human experience. We all find it hard to some degree, as I've explained before. But if the key word is 'human',...
It's tempting to think that writing comes easily to everyone but ourselves. But if we could see inside their heads, we'd probably find that their...
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