‘Kill business speak, ‘Ditch the jargon’ is one of the three conclusions of Everyone’s Business (CBI), a new piece of research by the Confederation of British Industry into what people think about business. Or, in the more emphatic words of PRWeek magazine, business should ‘Divest the crap’. The CBI survey of public attitudes, conducted with Porter Novelli and Opinium in 2017, comes on the back of the recent...

I was interviewed by Human Communications, for my suggested tips for better business writing – and about the origins and golden nuggets in my book, Business Writing Tips.  Here is the interview in full:   First of all, why do you think some people worry when it comes to business writing? I think some people may have worries about breaking ‘rules’ that they think they learned at school. For example, the question I’m most...

I wrote elsewhere about the challenges of writing emails … Leading on from that, here are my emailing tips for getting your email RIGHT- avoiding mistakes, keeping the right side of colleagues, and getting your email acted upon fast. It all comes down to these email tips, or what I call ‘The 5 P’s’.   Tip No. 1 – The email’s Purpose Before you start writing your email, think what you want to achieve from...

          Reader           Writer                Topic    There are three players in a piece of writing – the writer, the topic and the reader (as in the triangle above).  Two of these dominate in any piece of writing, and which two should influence the types of words used.  Why?  Because usage of certain words can enable you the writer to influence your reader – what they know about and think of the topic, their...

I did a couple of courses on writing recently, which may sound rather strange and unnecessary for me, as a writer – but they were from a linguistics perspective (given by Dr Michael Kranert). Here are a few things I found interesting: Men and women … they use language differently Men are from Mars; Women are from Venus.  Maybe, or maybe not … but the book points out they use language differently: Clearly, language and communities...

GREAT writing tips below, from an article ‘Take the First Step’ by the novelist and professor of creative writing, Colum McCann (The Guardian, 13 May 2017) – relevant for writing non-fiction as well as fiction.   Your first line ‘It should plunge your reader into something urgent, interesting, informative.  It should move your story, your poem, your play, forward. It should whisper in your readers’ ear that...