Shortly before she died, a writer friend gave me a copy of R L Trask’s Mind the Gaffe: The Penguin Guide to Common Errors in English. ‘I think that you and Larry will get on very well,’ my friend said. … Continue reading
Not everything you write is worth your reader’s reading. Most writers, having toiled over a piece of prose, are reluctant to admit that, sometimes, what they have written is simply not good enough. Perhaps it doesn’t say what they need … Continue reading
I have spent my working life in the communication business. I have written for print media. I have written for radio. I have written for film and TV. And, for a good part of the past 20 years, I have … Continue reading
A year or two back, we were approached by a fast-talking (literally) businessman with a bunch of almost totally unrelated ideas and sentences that he wanted us to assemble into ‘a key document’. ‘What’s the key message of this key … Continue reading
Back in my student days, it seemed that almost every one of my contemporaries owned a copy of Desiderata. It was usually displayed in poster form – alongside the mandatory posters of Jim Morrison, Bob Dylan, and Che Guevara. More … Continue reading
Many years ago, when I worked in advertising, it used to be said that there were three legs to the successful copywriting stool. The first was: Who are you writing for? The second was: What is the single most important … Continue reading
Many years ago, I wrote what I thought was a pretty polished piece about the opening of a new hardware store. I handed my copy into my editor and, 15 minutes later, she was standing by my desk. ‘I read … Continue reading
I began my working life during the era of the memorandum. Back then, memos came in many flavours. Some were written to inform the reader; but, as Dean Acheson famously quipped, many many more were written simply to protect the … Continue reading
I was doing a bit of ‘housekeeping’ recently and I came across a draft of a document that a client had sent us to tidy up. It was Grade A gobbledygook. But its author, a senior manager in a technology … Continue reading
‘Many races are won on the start line. To finish well, it’s usually vital to start well.’ That was the opinion of one of the most successful sailing coaches I ever had the opportunity to work with. But it’s also … Continue reading