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Choose your words wisely
Posted by: Catie Holdridge
19 / 06 / 17
With the summer holidays fast approaching (hooray), there’s a question you might soon find yourself pondering. Perhaps it’ll be when you’re penning a postcard from more tropical climes. ‘Having a lovely time,’ you write. ‘Though I haven’t been able to sit down for two days, as I’ve managed to get terribly sunbur—’ Oh. Hang on. […]
Posted by: Jacob Funnell
04 / 08 / 16
Look through your inbox or an online forum, and it won’t be long until you hit someone making a request and concluding with ‘thanks in advance’. But they’re probably making a big mistake. What’s more, they may have no idea about the hornets’ nest of irritation they’re poking just by using a few short words. […]
Posted by: Stan Carey
15 / 07 / 16
We’re often advised to avoid long words in our writing when shorter words will do. Like many simple style tips, it’s useful but not something you should obey blindly. Writing guides generally agree that short words are preferable. Many take their cue from traditional authorities such as the Fowler brothers, who on page one of […]
Posted by: Rob Ashton
05 / 07 / 16
There aren’t many corporate CEOs who put improving writing skills at the top of their action list. In fact, I’ve never heard of a single one who stood up at a shareholders’ meeting and said, ‘We’re going to invest in improving how our people communicate in their reports and email, because it’s critical to our […]
30 / 06 / 16
How can you make your writing engaging? Or, more specifically, how can you make your business writing engaging? Why, surely that’s a contradiction in terms! Right …? A lot of people do seem to make a distinction between 1) Work Writing, and 2) Pretty Much Every Other Kind of Writing. It essentially amounts to this: […]
20 / 06 / 16
Cowardly writing is the linguistic equivalent of your unreliable ex. It avoids committing. It leads you astray. It wastes your time. And it evades all entreaties to be straightforward or say what it really thinks. You can recognise it by its long sentences, convoluted structure and overuse of words and phrases such as ‘clearly’, ‘it […]
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