Give your company a voice
I’m often asked for writing tips so here’s one that will instantly make your business communications punchier. Ditch the waffle. Cutting ‘filler words’ is the single biggest thing you can do to give your writing more oomph.
What do I mean by filler words? Those unnecessary words and phrases that don’t add anything but we’ve got in the habit of using.
Here are some examples:
Instead of saying “each and every day”,
Even if the #Covid19 pandemic means many of us are restricted to a staycation, it’s the time of year when our thoughts naturally turn to holidays. So today I focus on the most gleeful communication of them all – the out-of-office autoreply.
What should you include in your out-of-office response?
The best auto responses include the following:
Here are some examples
A fairly standard out-of-office message might go something like this:
“Hello.
A hysterical interview with comedian Michael McIntyre on The Jonathan Ross Show prompted me to write about tautology – the use of unnecessary words. Michael was highlighting, in his own inimitable style, how Americans feel the need to simplify perfectly adequate English words. (Watch the clip here!)
To demonstrate, Michael cited examples including sidewalk (pavement), trash can (bin) and his personal favourite, horseback riding (horse-riding). It was extremely funny but he makes a serious point: many of us (and I include myself here) use unnecessary words in everyday life.
An article in The Times newspaper this week highlighted the importance of keeping up with changing attitudes. A leprosy charity has criticised the Church of Scotland’s official magazine over a crossword clue that it claims fuels “archaic, derogatory and harmful” attitudes.
Readers were asked to solve “Outcast (5)” for the puzzle in the Church’s Life and Work magazine. The answer was revealed to be “leper”.
Changing attitudes
Linda Todd,
If you’ve never used a copywriter before you could be excused for assuming we do something in the legal field. Or that perhaps we’re involved with trademarks in some way. But copywriters are none of those things. We’re professional writers responsible for writing the persuasive text – or copy – that’s used in marketing and promotional materials.
These marketing materials can take the form of online communications – websites, landing pages, promotional emails and e-newsletters,
It’s a generally accepted rule that numbers one to ten are spelt out as words whereas numbers over ten can be shown as a figure. That convention aside, however, much simply comes down to your personal preferences.
Round numbers and approximate amounts can be expressed in either words or figures. For instance:
“More than 29 million people have now received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine[1].”
But,
Do you rely on an accountant to produce your business’ annual accounts? If your business suffered a catastrophic IT failure, would you get out your screwdriver to fix it yourself? And if you had a legal problem, would you try to resolve it yourself or contact a solicitor?
In all these cases, I’m guessing you’d call in a professional.
It should be the same with copywriting. Because what you put out there matters.
The apostrophe is the small but vital punctuation mark that makes the difference between knowing your sh*t and knowing you’re sh*t.
Yet, despite their importance, apostrophes are one of the most misunderstood punctuation marks. We’ve all smiled (or groaned) at the apostrophe slip-ups we see daily. Who hasn’t winced at greengrocers’ signs like “Tomatoe’s” and “Apple’s”? Not to mention numerous other abominations such as “Carvery’s”, “Crisp’s” “Tattoo’s” and “Open Sunday’s”.
But apostrophes are simple if we remember one simple rule:
That there are only two possible uses for an apostrophe.
Causes
You may scoff but “writer’s block” really is ‘a thing’. Back in the 1970s, clinical psychologists Jerome Singer and Michael Barrios carried out research into the phenomenon. They concluded that there are four main causes of writer’s block:
It’s Halloween tonight, which seems a good time to talk about fear. I’m not talking about the fear that comes from mysterious goings-on, creaking floorboards and unexplained noises in the early hours when no one else is awake. Oh no, I’m talking about something far scarier than that . . . the creeping dread that, one day soon, you’ll run out of work.
This is a genuine worry that most self-employed people, with a few notable exceptions,
