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Does my chin look squashed in this helmet?

Next time you’re scribbling that email, letter or blog post at work, take a minute to consider the true meaning of the words you’re using. A promise to ‘decimate’ your rivals, for example, might have entered modern parlance as a euphemism for coming out on top, but is in fact a threat to drag ten per cent of your colleagues out into the street and butcher them.

‘Decimate’, literally meaning ‘to kill one in ten’, dates from the days of the Roman army, and was a method used by the generals to ensure fear and loyalty in the ranks. Lots of words evolve their usage over time – something known in posher circles as ‘semantic shift’. ‘Awful’, for example, used to mean inspiring wonder. And ‘egregious’, which now suggests something extraordinarily bad, used to mean almost the exact opposite – something remarkably good.

Why should these linguistic evolutions occur? One theory is that although there are around a million words in the English language, most people only use about five thousand, so we make the most of those we have by gradually investing some with multiple (or morphing) meanings. Always best to use a dictionary before making any inadvertent promises of bloodbaths…

A useful pointer from onlinecollegecourses.com about some of the best writing books for writers of all genres, including copywriting.

It’s an American site, so the list favours US books and authors, but still some great titles on there that are worth checking out.

Countdown to perfect spelling. (Any excuse for a photo of Richard Whiteley...)

Good news for all of us who care about the written word. A study has shown that spelling mistakes in company websites jeopardise around half of all online sales.

Now, we’ve all given in to our better judgement occasionally and purchased a 99 with flake from a van promising Finest Diary Ice Cream. Some of us might have taken it a step further and relented to buying our bangers from a shop branded Quality Butcher’s.

But when it comes to making a serious purchase online, entrepreneur Charles Duncombe – who carried out the research – says nothing makes potential shoppers click away faster than a torrent of typos.

It’s pretty obvious why: a website littered with errors loses major credibility in the eyes of the customer. After all, would you trust a firm with your credit card details if you can’t even trust them with an apostrophe?

The good news is that correcting sloppy spelling and grammar can undo the damage and double your sales. It’s a reminder to us all that it’s worth reaching for the dictionary before hitting the upload button.

Spelling can’t be everyone’s forte, of course. If you’re afraid your bottom line is suffering from a surfeit of slip-ups, the team here at Wordsworks is happy to write and edit your business text.

Get in touch via tab above, or to read more about Charles Duncombe’s shock spelling stats, visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-14130854

We don’t usually encourage our clients to use slang in their writing, but if we ever did, we’d probably have Green’s Dictionary of Slang firmly by our sides.

It’s only the 30th slang dictionary published since 1535 apparently, which is quite bizarre when you think what an important element of spoken English slang has become.

Did you know, for example, there are 4,589 terms for drink, drinking and drunks? Or 2,183 terms for men? Or that ‘stallion’, meaning a sexual athlete, was coined by Bishop Stephen Gardiner to King Edward VI in 1553? A Bishop of all people. What would he know?

Here’s a great article from the author himself about his fab new dictionary.