Give your company a voice
There have been so many grammar-related news items recently, it’s been a while since we looked at grammar. So today let’s tackle conjunctions – the everyday words we use to link parts of a sentence together. Here’s an example of the simplest kind of conjunction:
I can help you with writing printed communications and also website copy.
Here, it’s the word ‘and’ that is the conjunction – it is a link and nothing more.
In one of the largest known bank heists in history, hackers breached Bangladesh Bank’s online systems and managed to steal a staggering $80m at some point between 4 and 5 February this year. The criminals then contacted the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to move money from Bangladesh Bank’s New York bank account to branches in the Philippines and Sri Lanka.
Thankfully, a tiny typo stopped them from getting away with a further $850m.
It’s been a while since I tackled euphemisms – the art of avoiding use of a potentially offensive word while still attempting to get your message across. Much to the bemusement of those of us who grew up in more thick-skinned times, we must now avoid using words that are clear, direct and honest for fear of causing offence. So an almost blind person becomes ‘partially sighted’, my all but deaf mother-in-law is ‘aurally challenged’ and I can claim to have never been drunk – merely ‘merry’ or ‘a bit worse for wear’ (especially over the Christmas period).
If one of them is to avoid rubbing your colleagues up the wrong way by using annoying buzz words or pompous corporate-speak you’ll find this list of the most irritating phrases extremely handy. According to a survey conducted by Marketing magazine, the ten sayings to avoid at all costs in 2016 are:
A typically hysterical interview with comedian Michael McIntyre on The Jonathan Ross Show prompted me to write this week about tautology – the use of utterly superfluous words. Michael was highlighting, in his own inimitable style, how Americans feel the need to simplify perfectly adequate English words to the extreme. (Watch the clip here!)
To make his point Michael cited examples including sidewalk (pavement), trash can (bin) and his personal favourite,
If you’ve ever winced with embarrassment when a spelling mistake has slipped through the net despite careful proofreading, spare a thought for the printers responsible for a rare typo in the Ten Commandments published in a 400 year old edition of the bible. The seventh commandment in the so-called Sinners’ Bible (also known as the Wicked Bible) printed in 1631 is missing the word “not” so inadvertently states “Thou shalt commit adultery.” To this day,
Nine-year-old Ammarah Mahmood is a girl after my own heart. Given a school project to find examples of apostrophe misuse, she spotted 15 glaring examples of apostrophes in the wrong place during a 15-minute walk round her local market in Keighley, West Yorkshire. Apostrophes are one of the most commonly misunderstood punctuation marks so here’s a quick recap of when and how to use them.
We’ve all smiled at signs such as “Tomatoe’s” and “Crisp’s”.
In a true story, a woman’s spelling mistake has resulted in her facing prison for attempted murder. Jacqueline Patrick tried to kill her husband of 26 years by spiking his cherry-flavoured Lambrini with antifreeze. When Mr Patrick was taken to hospital his wife handed paramedics a note that stated, “I Douglas Patrick do not wish to be revived as I would like to die with dignaty (sic) with my family by my side,
A family firm that had taken 134 years to build up was destroyed virtually overnight by a simple spelling mistake in an official document. The Cardiff-based engineering company Taylor & Sons Limited collapsed within a month after Companies House officials confused it with a similarly named business in Manchester. They meant to announce that Taylor and Son Limited was being wound up but mistakenly referred to it as Taylor and Sons (with an ‘s’).
Rumours quickly spread that the Cardiff firm was in trouble leading to orders being cancelled and credit being withdrawn.
Whenever something bad happens to a Brit abroad the news item invariably mentions that the hapless individuals have been “offered consular assistance”. Ever wondered what form that assistance actually takes? According to Alan Fairs of the Foreign Office, it means “We’ve told them our phone number” while “receiving consular assistance” means “They’ve spoken to us and been told it’s nothing to do with us. Especially at weekends.”
While on the subject of jargon,
