Cramming too many words on to a page
There is an option to stop writing. There are also options to edit what’s already written, to cut, to shorten sentences. More words don’t necessarily make it any easier to understand a message. As the 140-character limit of twitter demonstrates, communicating succinctly can be very effective: it concentrates the mind. I can remember sitting in an exam and watching someone walk up to the front of the hall for more paper. I worried that I wasn’t writing enough. It didn’t matter: the few words I wrote answered the questions well enough for me to get an A. I c

I don’t know
Somewhere there is an answer to every question we could ever think to ask. This is incredibly useful as I certainly don’t know everything in this age of social media experts, specialists and gurus. And that’s one of the wonders of social media: if you ask a question, often someone will come back with the answer or, at least, a helpful suggestion. But it can also work the other way: anyone professing to know everything about a topic can be ‘found out’ if their knowledge is deficient. It’s a bit like Viv Stanshall’s character Reg Smeeton whose favourite question was “Did you know there is no proper name for the back of the knee?̶

He’s so outrageous!
If a business doesn’t promote its products and services to potential customers, it won’t be a business for very long. Every business has to do it, from global brands to sole traders. Some people don’t like talking about how good they are, while others are only too happy to hear the sound of their own voices again and again . . . and very often . . . again. How you promote your business is up to you – subtly, vigorously or outrageously – although it’s best to choose a style that won’t alienate customers. What’s important is that the claims you make should not be outrageous, even if the way you make them is. For example, claims

Making the right sounds
What’s the best tone in which to write? It all depends on what you want to say, who you say it to and what you want to achieve. Just imagine the response to someone walking into a pub and talking like the press officer of a local council? Probably some strange looks and possibly a phone call for an ambulance to take them away. Why? Because the institutional language of local government isn’t appropriate in a pub. So how do you know what voice to use and how to develop a style of writing appropriate for your audience? One way is to read out loud what you write and listen to how it sounds. If you don’t feel you’re good at reading aloud, ask a c

Guaranteed sleep remedies
Some words and phrases are used so much in marketing, advertising and public relations that they have lost their original power. New is an obvious one, but enhanced, improved and innovative have also become almost meaningless. How often do official enquiries conclude that “lessons have been learnt”, only for organisations to make the same mistakes again? Often our response can be to turn off, stop listening and, if we’re trapped in a conference or presentation, even nod off to sleep. This creates a challenge when marketing products and services, especially when you do have a genuinely new or improved product and your audience has becom