Season’s greetings!
Image courtesy of S Hermann & F Richter c/o Pixabay.com
With the festive season almost here, Melanie Silver and all the Words etc team wishes you a Happy Christmas and New Year. Here’s to a great 2020 for all of us!
Apostrophes without catastrophes
Why apostrophes matter
The apostrophe is the tiny but vital punctuation mark that makes the difference between knowing your sh*t and knowing you’re sh*t.
That’s why I was sad to spot a news story last week announcing that apostrophe defender John Richards has thrown in the towel. After dedicating nearly two decades of his life desperately trying to protect the apostrophe, which he calls “an endangered species”, the 96-year-old founder of the Apostrophe Protection Society has reluctantly conceded defeat: “The barbarians have won.
Could this be the end of the line for hyphens?
A shock report in The Times warns that hyphens have become the most overused form of punctuation. English language researchers at English Today, a quarterly journal from Cambridge University Press, are causing quite a stir in the normally staid world of academia by naming and shaming the worst hyphen offenders.
And we’re not talking amateurs here but professional writers including Professor Richard Dawkins, Ian Hislop, editor of Private Eye,
Mum’s the word
Birth of a new language
Mumsnet, the online forum for mothers, has unexpectedly given birth to a new language – female slang (“Mumglish”?). Since Mumsnet was founded in 2000, ‘MNers’ (Mumsnet members) have created hundreds of their own acronyms for often-used phrases, with new ones being added all the time.
As you can imagine, relationships are a common topic of discussion and account for a large chunk of acronyms.
Why you need a professional copywriter
As a professional copywriter, it constantly amazes me that many businesses persist in producing their marketing communications in-house, regardless of whether they have the necessary skill and resources. This is misguided for so many reasons.
I’m guessing those very same people wouldn’t dream of drawing up their business accounts themselves (unless they’re trained accountants). And if their business was to suffer a catastrophic IT failure causing plummeting productivity with every minute of downtime,
