Author: Sarah Turner
Play Buzzword Bingo this Christmas!
18 Dec 2009
This is the card I sent to Turner Ink’s clients and friends this Christmas. If you, or anyone else in the office, want to play Buzzword Bingo, just print out the card below. Enjoy! ...
7 things your visitors hate about your website
15 Dec 2009
1. You talk about yourself How many times have you seen this? 'Barratt and Bloggins was formed in 1982 and has successfully been delivering award-winning cutting edge solutions for our clients for the last 25 years.' Blah, blah, blah. Here’s the thing: people visiting your website only care about themselves. They want to know what you’re going to do for them; how quickly you’re...
This year’s Golden Bull Award goes to…
10 Dec 2009
This week saw the 30th Plain English Campaign award ceremony, held at The Brewery, London, honouring the best and worst in written communications. There was the imaginatively named Web Award for the ‘clearest website’, won this year by the Financial Ombudsman Service. Whilst The Daily Telegraph, BBC Radio 1, and Birmingham Mail were all winners in the media category for excellent journalism. But...
Why are there no apostrophes in America?
01 Dec 2009
I was watching Stephen Fry’s QI show on TV last night. And the subject of possessive apostrophes in place names, such as King’s Cross Road or Marshall’s Place, came up. Of course, it was only last year that Birmingham City Council did away with apostrophes in their place names. So out goes St Paul’s Square and St Mary’s Road and in...
Don’t love ya no more: how ‘unfriend’ became word of the year
25 Nov 2009
Want to know what this year’s best word is? Tweep? Obamamania? Jedward? Nah. It’s ‘unfriend’. Blimey. How brutal. Last week, The New Oxford American Dictionary chose ‘unfriend’ – a verb meaning to remove someone as a friend on a social networking site like Facebook – as its word of the year. And what linguistic luminaries did it beat? How about ‘sexting’,...
Online PR: what’s it all about? An interview with Jonny Stark of immediate future
19 Nov 2009
Posted at 12:39h
in Interviews with cool people, Press Release writing and PR, Social media
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For this month’s interview I’ve managed to pin down the ridiculously busy Jonny Stark, an Account Director from online PR agency immediate future, to talk about online PR, using Social Media and, of course, Twitter. Turner Ink: Hey Jonny, thanks for stopping by. Ok, tell us a bit about online PR. How does it differ from traditional PR? Jonny Stark: People get...
Why are (some) PR agencies right up their backsides?
13 Nov 2009
Copy spotted on a PR agency website today. I dunno. Perhaps luxury goods brands like this kind of thing. But it all seems a bit lah-di-dah to me. What do you think? [Something] PR is cognisant of the connoisseurship and the hunger for luxury goods and services by the affluent market. Our agency knows how to communicate to that luxury lifestyle...
How did that get published? Prose that wasn’t fit to print
10 Nov 2009
I have a secret desire to write novels. Ok, that’s not such a secret now. But when I’ve hung up my copywriting boots, my plan is to lock myself away in a drafty attic and bash out a bestselling novel in the style of, I dunno, Jackie Collins or someone. Yes, that’s it. I could write a bonkbuster set in...
Why I’m merry as a pismire: Historical Thesaurus of the OED is finally finished
06 Nov 2009
Did you know that the English language contains more emotionally positive words than negative words? In fact, it’s about a 60:40 ratio. Surprising that. Considering having a good old moan is practically a national sport. The reason we know this is because the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary has recently been published; and what a beauty it is. Conceived and...