Articles on writing, editing, improving content and more

Good writing has always been succinct, yet we’re increasingly seeing emails and articles that are twice the length they ought to be. Why?

We’ve all heard em dashes are a sign of AI writing. Now, we’re hearing the same about key rhetorical techniques.

There’s now a word for the kind of AI writing that at first glance looks good, but when you read it properly – when you truly try to understand what it’s saying, and how it can help you – you realise it doesn’t help at all.

Writing in the active voice will make your copy sharper and easier to read. Yet although many people have heard about it, there’s a lot of confusion about what it means.

I don’t know what I hate more: using AI to write, or people saying not to use em dashes because they appear in AI written copy.

Just because everyone else uses a word, it doesn’t mean you have to. When we’re children, we learn useful, concrete words such as ice-cream, house and cat.

Less is often more – especially when it comes to writing.

An editor once told me you’re not a real journalist until you get your first lawsuit. That was over 30 years ago and although he was (probably) joking, I perversely liked the sentiment.