Beauty, so the saying goes, is in the eye of the beholder. And my eye certainly beholds some words to be more beautiful than others. Beautiful is, itself, a beautiful word. So too is umbriferous (providing shade). And when a … Continue reading
The apartment building in which I live is about to have some maintenance work done. A couple of days ago, the company we have employed to do the work sent a note out to all residents. It’s just a short … Continue reading
A UK entrepreneur, Charles Duncombe, believes that poor spelling is costing online merchants millions of pounds in lost sales every week. Mr Duncombe says ‘when you sell or communicate on the internet, 99% of the time it is done by … Continue reading
‘What is written without effort is, in general, read without pleasure.’ – Samuel Johnson
I recently received some information from an organisation that, I understand, considers it warrants the epithet august. The information was in a document that ran to just over 1500 words. Eighty-two of these words were in the first sentence. The … Continue reading
Here’s a true story. A good friend of ours runs a small marketing consultancy. A little while back, his firm was pitching against several much larger rivals for a contract to help launch a new courier service. As the days … Continue reading
‘Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words or your reader will surely skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them.’ – John Ruskin
Confusing statistics are up 18.7 percent on the same period a year ago. At least that’s how it looks to me. As I flick through a selection of the online newspapers that accompany my early morning cup of coffee, I … Continue reading
What is it with headline writers and the phrase ‘set to’? Is there something in their contracts that says they must use the two-word phrase on every possible occasion? If you Google ‘set to’ you are likely to find that … Continue reading