Articles about writing, editing and improving content

An editor once told me you’re not a real journalist until you get your first lawsuit. That was 20 years ago and although he was (probably) joking, I perversely liked the sentiment. After all, great journalism is all about keeping the bastards honest – and it’s hard to do that without ruffling feathers. The fact that a defamation suit turns your life to hell was a detail that escaped me in my youth.

These days I’m older, possibly wiser, and certainly more wary. After all …

Commas should be easy to use – and yet everywhere I look they’re being horribly abused. Sometimes they’re in places they have no business in; other times they’re missing. This plain English guide says everything I wish my school teachers had explained to me:

Have you got the word “passionate” in your LinkedIn profile? The odds are you do – almost everyone does.

Using clichés in your writing is certainly easy – but it also makes you sound like everybody else. Here’s why:

If you work in marketing, you may have heard people say “don’t sell the steak, sell the sizzle” (though some people say sausage instead of steak). So what does this meat-obsessed saying mean?

You’d never leave someone in the dark if you thought highly of them: and so every time an organisation doesn’t give updates on a situation, it shows how little they care.