One of the best ways to check your writing is to read it out loud. I realise your colleagues might not appreciate this technique if you work in an open-plan office, so you might need to step outside for a bit. But it’ll be worth it, I promise. If you run out of breath while
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“I’m sorry I wrote such a long letter: I didn’t have time to write a short one.” That quote, in slightly different permutations, has been variously attributed to Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway and Blaise Pascale, among others. We can’t say for sure who said it, but we can say for sure that it holds great
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Imagine if you stood in the kitchen with a shopping bag over your shoulder and said to your significant other, “Attached hereto for your kind information, please find the grocery shopping you requested me to action.” Ridiculous, right? And yet, that’s exactly what we do the minute we step over the threshold at work –
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We take great care with our appearance in the business world – from the way we dress and decorate our offices, to the design of our logos and corporate branding. We don’t always take the same care with our words. And yet, the way we present ourselves and our business in written communication is a
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The end-of-year madness is almost upon us, and there’s a mad scramble to wrap up this year’s projects and start planning for next year. In the mess of looming budgets and deadlines and feeling like there just aren’t enough hours in the day, suddenly you realise there’s also a whole lot of content you’re going
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You see it all the time – people doing a bit of a ra-ra for their companies online, tweeting or posting on Facebook, using the hashtag, nailing their work colours to the mast. On the face of it, it all seems quite positive. Look at the statistics! You’re getting posts and engagement and the whole
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I often express my irritation and outrage at brands and companies who don’t proofread the content they send out into the public domain – whether it’s a street pole ad or a social media post. And the pushback I get very often, is, “It doesn’t matter. People will know what we mean.” So instead of
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Writing is about words, right? Well, of course – but numbers also have the power to trip a writer up, and not just because you don’t think you’re mathematically gifted. Consider a speech I was reviewing on this week, where the speechwriter had the speaker talking about ‘several vital issues’, then saying the first one
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As I’ve written before, communication consists of at least two parties – a sender and a receiver, and many of us don’t consider the receiver when we craft our messages. However, there’s another crucial aspect to think – the way the receiver likes to communicate. Using their preferred form of communication will often yield better
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That’s the question you should be asking before you send out that press release. If you can’t answer that question, I guarantee most people won’t get past the first paragraph. Case in point – I was recently asked to review a release for a big multinational company. They’d had a report compiled about their progress
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