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30 / 06 / 16
How do you make writing engaging?
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: […]
27 / 07 / 11
Management-speak: bull fighter
Management-speak is one of the biggest irritations in modern office life, regularly appearing near the top of surveys on workplace annoyances. What is management-speak? It isn’t quite the same as jargon, which, as a specialist language, can provide clarity and be a useful shorthand when used in the right context. Management-speak, on the other hand, […]
09 / 03 / 11
Well, we know it's big
David Cameron has referred to it as his ‘mission’ and his ‘passion’, but it does seem that very few people are entirely sure what the ‘Big Society’ is actually all about. This isn’t too surprising when even those well and truly behind the idea are not helping matters. Phillip Blond, director of the think tank […]
07 / 03 / 11
Dangerous jargon
Jargon can bring clarity for experts and irritation for laypeople, but could it sometimes be life threatening? Yes, according to the coroner heading up the inquest into the London terrorist attacks of 7 July 2005, Lady Justice Hallett. Simple impatience with unclear terms is a more serious problem when it comes to understanding the situation […]
10 / 12 / 09
The offence of bad language
Finally, a House of Commons report that is a cause for celebration. This is Bad Language: the Use and Abuse of Official Language – the result of an investigation into the many ways in which politicians and civil servants may baffle and intimidate readers with their use of jargon-heavy, euphemism-filled waffle. By making such official […]
01 / 05 / 09
Is it a feathered sky-dwelling nest-builder? Is it an aerodynamic pan-destinational person carrier? No, it’s Sloganizer!
Are you struggling to come up with a new nugget of corporate gobbledegook? Could your report benefit from some indecipherable doublespeak? Are you floundering from a lack of filler? Never fear. Sloganizer to the rescue! The new application for the iPhone brings the old paper Sloganizer right up-to-date – and right into your office. When […]