‘Which side of the bed did you get up this morning?’ That’s the question that several people attending my training courses have been asked by their bosses. And anyone who works in public research will know that once two or three people say the same thing there is probably some wider truth in it. (In the same way, MPs know that it is time to sit up and take notice of us once they get a handful of letters reporting the same...

  Is your email inbox overloaded – or do you spend too much time on your emails?  READ my 6Ps for making your emailing day a lot lot easier. ( You can also read my blog posts on Tips for email and Avoiding the PESTS of email )   1)  Use the 3-Part structure to save time on emails Many people get 30+ emails every day – their inbox is overloaded.  And dealing with so many emails is time consuming and not easy. If an email...

I have pooled together my training experience and tips from my book on Business Writing Tips into 20+ Expert Briefs on Writing.  Here is a list of the topics covered.  Contact me for copies of any of the briefs. HOW TO WRITE WITH EASE AND SPEED Effective writing is as easy as ABC Do your writing jobs take too long? The 5-stage POWER model is your answer Find writing frustrating? These 4 Ps will make it considerably easier ‘Less is...

‘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...