Archive

As well as spending our days writing about the delights of the aerospace sector, corporate law or enticing graduates to sign their lives away, some of us at Wordsworks Towers like to pen a bit of fiction too. The problem is, ideas come at you at all times of the day and night.  So always be prepared with a pad of paper.

Often you get the most fantastic ideas when you are in the most random places. Great ideas, even, that are then lost in to the oblivion that is your mind.

The other night, I had a fantastic dream and woke up reeling from it. It was so fantastic I knew it might lead to some impressive story writing project yet to be defined. Alas, I didn’t write it down and now it’s gone! Never to return again.

What I learnt from this maddening experience is that you really should write your ideas down. Creative or not it really is no matter. Your brain only has so much temporary information it can store at any one time and given that working life can be hectic there’s absolutely no chance of us remembering everything we want to.

So in the name of great ideas that are wasted on brains that act like a sieve, buy yourself a notebook or get using your notes on your mobile and make sure that wherever you are, whatever you are doing, that if a good idea for a story, feature or news item brightens up your imagination you have no excuse for letting it slip away.

Nice to see that Barack Obama – lauded as the most powerful public speaker in American politics for a generation – has been using some of our favourite writing tips in his speeches.

Remember three’s company, where we talked about grouping your points into three to create more impact? Well they don’t get much more powerful than these three:

“If there is anyone out there who still doubts America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy – tonight is your answer.”

They are the opening lines of his victory speech in the November presidential election – widely regarded as one of the finest speeches in modern US politics.

Here’s another bit:
“It’s been a long time coming, but today, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America.”

And just to show he’s not a one-trick pony, he uses another technique to great effect, the power of pairs. This is a favourite politicians’ trick of not saying one thing if you can equally say two, adding emphasis to the message.

So he says, “people who waited three hours and four hours…”, instead of saying the less powerful, ‘people who waited hours…’

There’s also a lesson there about being specific. By specifying three hours and four hours, rather than a vague ‘hours’, it resonates more strongly with the audience and the impact is that much greater.

Let’s hope his policies are as effective as his speeches…

One of the key purposes of business writing is to write in a way that reinforces your brand. It’s also one of the main areas where much business writing often fails. If your brand is about dynamism, energy and modern thinking, your writing needs to support that. So that means using appropriate language, tone and structure.

We were recently working on a recruitment brochure for a major professional services firm. Being a recruitment brochure, the firm wanted to suggest energy, innovation, friendliness and approachability. But one of the main contributors insisted on using words like hence, thus and amongst. Fine words in themselves, but ones that jarred with the firm’s branding message.

Words like hence, thus, amongst and whilst, have a whiff of old-fashioned formality, of stuffiness and of, well, naffness. It’s one of the reasons why most newspapers rarely use them, preferring while to whilst, among to amongst, and just avoiding hence and thus altogether.

You should do the same. Unless, of course, you’re deliberately looking to suggest old-fashioned fustiness and 1950s propriety. In which case, good luck.

No,  not a comment on the weather, but one of the main considerations for anyone trying to tighten up their writing. Good writing is all about clarity – getting your message across clearly and concisely. But in the wrong hands, words can often cloud, rather than clarify, the intended message.

Have a read of what Julian Critchlow had to say in a recent letter to The Times:

Sue Whiting, a “retired special educational needs co-ordinator”, asserts in her letter (Oct 10) that “there are likely to be 20 per cent of children in any classroom with specific learning differences”.

My initial reaction on reading this was that, surely, all the children would have learning differences: that is the human condition. However, on closer analysis I deduced that what was stated was not what was actually meant. Surely Ms Whiting’s unadorned meaning was that 20 per cent of the children would, for one reason or another, have learning difficulties.

…

Orwellian usage of this kind debases the language as a tool for expression. It leads, at best, to lack of clarity and, at worst, it is downright misleading and stifles legitimate debate. It needs to be rooted out.

Julian Critchlow, Savage Club, SW1

Hear, hear for Mr Critchlow. It’s not always easy to be honest in your writing. But if you can manage it, you’ll usually be rewarded with better understanding and more engagement from your readers.