The opening line of any piece of copy is crucial. Here's a simple tip. Read more
Once upon a time, good communication was simple. You wanted an engaging web page, so you wrote as interestingly and concisely as possible what you wanted your reader to know. Then along came Google... Read more
Here’s the thing with a writing brief. The better it is – the more comprehensive, the more informative, the more detailed – the better the copy you’re going to get back. Read more
Like sugar and Shiraz on our waistlines, some words add inches to your writing. They’re not inherently ‘bad’, but too many and you veer into the ‘flabby’ or ‘heart attack’ categories. Here’s what to look out for. Read more
I saw a good article recently about the tendency of primary school teachers to insist their pupils use flowery language and long words rather than straightforward ones. However, having just seen my son go through A-Level English Language, I can report that it’s happening at the other end of the school journey. Too often my... Read more
The thesaurus gets a bad rap. School teachers forbid it and Stephen King is a famous opponent. In his first novel Everything Is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer wrote the bad English of Ukrainian character Alex by using a thesaurus to change small, ordinary words into big, ill-fitting ones. The compounded effect is horrifying and hilarious.... Read more
Paste the sentence below into Google and you’ll find the exact text on tens of thousands of US accountancy firms’ websites. We take pride in giving you the assurance that the personal assistance you receive comes from years of advanced training, technical experience and financial acumen. Read more
For years, we (and countless articles and radio features) have been ranting about the misuse or overuse of words like ‘innovative’, ‘solutions’ and ‘going forward’. But we still see them everywhere, so we sometimes wonder whether we’re fighting a losing battle. Read more
As copywriters, we already have first-hand experience of how certain sectors’ obsession with ‘process’ and using impenetrable, jargon-heavy language is strangling the common sense out of, well, just about everything. So how pleased we were, when this brilliant but worrying article appeared on the BBC News website. Read more
If marketing copy is easy to read, for everyone, then surely the messages are getting across. And that’s the point, right? So it’s baffling to see businesses and organisations, large and small, across all sectors, encrypting their communications with words like ‘holistic’, ‘deliverables’, ‘driving’, ‘actioning’, and ‘engagement’. We’ve long known there’s no conceivable justification for... Read more
