Posted by: Gareth on Thursday, December 8, 2011
Just an excuse for a photo of Stephen Fry...
Looking for an unusual Christmas gift? Or just fancy a bit of festive do-gooding? Then take a look at www.adoptaword.com, a fantastic initiative from children’s charity I CAN.
You can adopt a word for a year for £15, and every penny that’s raised goes towards I CAN’s work helping children with communication difficulties.
Very appropriately, Stephen Fry adopted the word ‘Wordy’. We chose ‘crumpet’, which we eat a lot of here at Wordsworks Towers. What word will you pick?
Posted by: Chris on Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Great explanation of the difference between compliment/complement and complimentary/complementary on the Oxford Dictionaries website – I for one stand corrected on my use of complementary to mean ‘free of charge’.
Incidentally, the OD website is a fantastically useful resource for vocabulary and grammar tips and advice.
Posted by: Gareth on Monday, November 1, 2010
Exciting news at The Studio, with a new member of staff - and a bit of publicity to boot.
With another mouth to feed, of course, it means we need more copywriting work! So if you have any brochures or reports that need copywriting or editing, blog posts to write, flyers or leaflets to produce, scripts or speeches to prepare, webpages to fill, or…well, you get the picture.
Just drop us a line for a quick no-obligation quote.
Posted by: Zoe L on Tuesday, July 27, 2010
No, this isn’t a post about a poor taste 70s sitcom, but rather a watch out for website URLs which may do you more harm than good!
You’ve spent time and money, toil and trouble on your new website and catchy URL, of which you are justifiably proud. But before you publish, take a minute to just check that your URL (website address) won’t inadvertently bring a whole different type of customer to your site.
Aside from choosing a unique name for your URL (hard enough considering there are over one hundred million already registered), it needs to be snappy and memorable.
But what looks snappy and memorable to you, immersed in your site and in your project, might not look quite so enticing to someone else in the cold light of day. If you’re going international the risks can be even greater, as a nice snappy URL in English might mean something completely different in a foreign language.
Andy Geldman, a self-employed computer programmer, has a whole website (well, Facebook group) and book devoted to ‘slurls’ – domain names innocently chosen by serious businesses but with amusing consequences.
Here’s a taster (these websites have now been re-named as we presume the faux pas was brought to their attention):
www.scentofart.com – design service offering everything from web design to custom car paint
www.arsecommerce.com – ARS e-commerce is an internet marketing agency with offices in 3 US states.
www.ipanywhere.com – a software service for accessing your computer remotely
So, think carefully for your next website or you could be in the next edition of Geldman’s book.
Posted by: Gareth on Monday, January 5, 2009
We were sad to read about the death of composer Vic Mizzy recently. Mizzy was responsible for the irresistibly catchy theme tune for the Addams Family (you know the one: “buh-buh-buh-bump…snap-snap”)
In a piece about Mizzy on BBC Radio, however, we were quite surprised to hear the Addams Family described as a ‘dysfunctional family’, which if my memory serves me well, does them a huge disservice and is an incorrect use of the word ‘dysfunctional’.
Here at Wordsworks Towers, in the context of a family, dysfunctional would tend to mean broken, maybe violent, abusive, loveless, irresponsible… those kinds of negative characteristics.
The Addams Family may have been many things, but they were none of the above. One of the running themes of the show was the passion between Gomez and Morticia, their love for their children Wednesday and Pubert/Pugsly, the closeness between all the extended family (including Uncle Fester, Cousin It, Grandmama and, of course, Thing.) They were not abusive or violent to one another. They were not irresponsible. They always stood together as a family, supported each other and enjoyed each other’s company.
Calling them dysfunctional is not just lazy journalism, it is plain wrong. The Addams Family is one the most functional families I know.
