Have you ever said something and realised, a nanosecond after the words were out of your mouth, that what you meant to say and what you actually said were two different things? We’ve all done it, and the results usually range from mild embarrassment to sharing a laugh. There’s not usually too much danger of […]
Did I Really Say That? Read More »
It’s often said that everyone has a book inside them. Whether or not that’s true as a whole, it’s certainly true that every business owner has at least one book in them — and often far more than one. Which leaves the question, have you written your book yet? Most people who dismiss the idea
Allow Me to Introduce the Book You Haven’t Written Yet Read More »
Promising and delivering are fairly central to any business. After all, if we don’t promise, no-one knows what we have to offer, while if we don’t deliver on the promises, our reputation won’t last long. So how does that apply to writing? The Promise Why should anyone read anything you write in connection with your
Promising and Delivering in Writing Read More »
Do you write blogs or emails that require the reader to scroll down? Or posts on Facebook that end in the infamous “Read more”? If so, there’s a good chance that not many people are reading them. People today have very short attention spans — and that’s by no means confined to kids. The reality
Compelling Your Readers to Scroll Down Read More »
There are white horses cut into hillsides all over Britain. They’re still being created — the horse near Folkestone was carved as recently as 2003 — but the oldest, and perhaps the most inspiring, is the White Horse of Uffington, on the Berkshire/Oxfordshire border. I visited it for the first time this summer, though I was
White Horses and Copywriting Read More »
George Orwell has left a significant mark on how we speak and think. He’s given us phrases like Big Brother and Room 101, a yardstick to measure political manipulation and, when I was younger, an irrational fear of reaching the year 1984. He’s also given us Newspeak (and any number of similar coinings ending in
George Orwell and the English Language Read More »
Most, if not all, areas of expertise or professional interest come at a cost: the instinctive pain caused by non-experts getting it spectacularly wrong. I’m sure, for instance, it annoys doctors to hear popular medical fallacies, or accountants to come up against misinformation about tax obligations. I’m a writer, both by personal interest and profession.
Painful Apostrophes Read More »
Everyone who writes makes typos. I certainly do. A while ago, I was writing a piece about insurance and discovered I’d invented an entirely new type of policy — against fire and food. Needless to say, I corrected it, and that’s really the point. You won’t avoid making typos, but the aim has to be
In a recent speech about Brexit, Theresa May claimed that the process wouldn’t be “plain sailing” and there would be “bumps in the road”. Politics and Brexit opinions apart, the comment did leave me wondering why anyone would attempt to sail on a road — with or without bumps. This isn’t May-bashing — she was
Plain Sailing on a Bumpy Road Read More »
Everything around us is a story. Whether it’s the way reality is, or whether it’s how we’re programmed to see the world, we seem to be surrounded by meaningful sequences of events that tell us how and why things happened. They range from great world events to jokes or urban legends, and to some extent
A Dark and Stormy Blog Read More »