A comma should be used to separate two or more co-ordinate adjectives that describe the same noun. Or to put it more simply, if you’re using two similar words to describe a thing, person, place, animal or idea you should use a comma to separate them. She worked in a happy, relaxed office. He pointed to the big, tall guy in the gym. Her boss...
Let’s be frank. Writing a blog post every day, every other day, or even once a week can be a right pain in the neck. Unless of course your actual job is writing for a blog. But if you’re a freelancer or you run your own company, it’s easy to put your own blog on the back burner while you get...
As reported in today's Daily Mail. It was April Fool's Day though...
Today is budget day in the UK. Also known as ‘we’re going to screw you just a bit more and hope you don’t notice’ day. In honour of the occasion, here are a few of the most annoying words and phrases that politicians insist on using. How many will we hear today, I wonder? Right and proper… Full and frank discussion… Look… Going forward… Listen… To be fair… Let’s be...
What with the 2054th anniversary of the death of Julius Caesar this week (Et tu, Brute?) and London’s mayor Boris Johnson urging state schools to start teaching Latin again, the old language has been in the news saepius sepius (frequently). Boris even went as far to say "I firmly believe that we must not starve the minds of students eager to...
This blooper was spotted in the Arsenal programme for this week’s big match against Porto. (We won 5-0 since you ask. What? Oh you didn’t ask.) Fantastic cause. (Great Ormond Street Hospital). Amazing Football Club. But rotten old punctuation. Remember: Child in singular. Children is plural. Anything belonging to children is children’s....
This is the second part of my interview with Andy Maslen. (Read part one here where Andy reveals the inspiration for his latest book, what he really thinks about content mills and why he proofreads his tweets.) TI: So tell us a bit more about your background Andy. How did you get into this copywriting malarkey? AM: I was booted out of...
I’m a little giddy about this month’s interview. I’m delighted to be joined by copywriting expert/god/guru Andy Maslen, who’s also a well-known speaker, coach and author. During our conversation we discussed everything from Andy’s latest book and the future of copywriting to content mills and Andy’s goal-setting paperclip system! We talked for a while. So part two of this interview is...
Me to my nephew Jack: What are you up to? Jack: I’m just looking for something online Me: What you looking for? Jack: Some goal posts. I just put ‘goal posts’ into Google but I couldn’t find what I wanted. Me: What are you after then? Jack: Ones for the garden. Let me try ‘garden goal posts’. Nah. I wanted smaller ones than that. Let...
I had a bit of a light bulb moment last week. It was when I turned on my computer last Monday and saw I had 338 emails in my inbox. Eeeek. How come so many? Well I don’t use RSS. So every blog update comes via email. And to be honest, I’ve been slack with my reading and filing. There were quite...
