http://www.wordsworks.co.uk Making words work harder for your business. Fri, 12 Sep 2008 16:30:08 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en It's been a busy summer at Wordsworks Towers. We've been working on a graduate recruitment brochure for one of the largest law firms in the world, some branding and messaging for a major global advisory firm, a prospectus for a leading further education college and an interactive learning tool ... http://www.wordsworks.co.uk/2008/09/08/busy-bees/ One of the key purposes of good 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 ... http://www.wordsworks.co.uk/2008/09/05/stay-on-message/ We recently advertised for a job here at Wordsworks Towers. One of the candidates sent us an interesting snippet of word trivia which intrigued us: she claimed that the plural for rhinoceros was actually rhinocerotes, and not the more commonly-used rhinoceroses (or indeed, rhinos). Well, a quick check of the Oxford ... http://www.wordsworks.co.uk/2008/08/18/on-the-horns-of-the-rhino/ They say three's company (don't they? It might be two, but for our sakes, let's say three), and when it comes to fluid, high impact writing, three is certainly the magic number. The rule of three is simple. It says that when you're describing something - the features ... http://www.wordsworks.co.uk/2008/07/13/threes-company/ This month's word was chosen purely because we love its feel of old fashioned, fusty bookishness: Betwixt (adverb or proposition) - meaning 'between' "Betwixt" and "between" have similar origins: they both come from a combination of the prefix 'be-' and an Old English root meaning 'two'. Both words ... http://www.wordsworks.co.uk/2008/07/09/word-of-the-month-betwixt/ Isn't the web great? There's all sorts of great writing tips out there. I came across this excellent - and funny - article about writing for the web. It cocks a bit of a snoop at some of the web-writing theories about how people read online. My view is that while ... http://www.wordsworks.co.uk/2008/06/26/is-the-web-making-us-lazy/ We came across this lovely story recently of an RAF pilot fighting the authorities for his right to wear a moustache. It got us thinking what an odd word moustache is, so we looked it up to save you losing any sleep over its peculiarity. Apparently, the English word ... http://www.wordsworks.co.uk/2008/06/20/hair-today/ Some of the most effective tools for clearer business writing are so obvious we tend to overlook them. Take bullet points, the unsung heroes of the print world. Bullets work because they: Add structure and organization to your writing Provide multiple entry points in to the ... http://www.wordsworks.co.uk/2008/06/13/hit-em-between-the-eyes/ The deipnosophists among you (go on, look it up), will love this site, Luciferous Logolepsy. It's dedicated to weird and wonderful obscure English words. It's certainly luciferous and not just for logoleptics. http://www.wordsworks.co.uk/2008/06/06/amaze-your-friends/   It's funny how certain words or phrases become fashionable. I'm not talking about obvious mots du jour like groovy or wicked, but more discrete verbal fashions. Iteration, last month's word of the month, for example, seems to have been popping up all over the place in the last few months, ... http://www.wordsworks.co.uk/2008/05/30/followers-of-fashion/