goodcopybadcopy

I sent my last blog entry to Communicators In Business and got the following reply from Steve Nichols, the editor of the online newsletter containing the survey.

“Ok - fair point. Unfortunately the software package puts that on everything. You’ve made me feel guilty so I have changed the font colour to white to hide the line. Can’t make it get rid of the asterisk though.”

So you’ll notice that the survey no longer contains the nonsensical instruction “all questions marked with an * must be completed”.

A prompt, highly personal response that makes me feel like my opinion is valued. Thank you, Steve - a nice example of good communication.

I was sent an online survey by the British Association of Communicators in Business this morning, asking me what I’d put in my Room 101.

My answer - the second time I responded - was online surveys/web forms that haven’t been tested properly. Try it out for yourself and let me know what you think. Remember: all questions marked with an * must be completed.

Complete survey

Straplines. They tell your customer what you’re about and they capture the essence of your brand. So why do so many businesses seem to bang out the first thing that comes to mind? Here are four that have been getting me all worked up lately – and what I think they can teach us. Read the rest of this entry »

In my last post, I listed five of my top tips for clear communication. My favourite, by far, is the one urging writers to avoid overusing nouns. It’s my favourite because this crime against clarity is the feature of bad corporatese that I come across most often – and it’s easy to fix if you know how. Read the rest of this entry »

Today I attended a panel discussion, in which one of my clients interviewed their clients about their impressions of the firm. (I was reporting on the event for an internal publication).

Asked about what makes a successful business pitch, several of the panel members said that avoiding ‘information overload’ was the most important thing to remember. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m worried that the word ‘after’ will soon be extinct. I don’t know if it’s that writers have suddenly developed a mistrust of the word – or if I’ve just become attuned to their increasing preference for the cumbersome ‘following’. Read the rest of this entry »

Whenever I give a writing course my bibliography always contains a reference to Martin Lukes. Read the rest of this entry »

Regular readers of this blog will recall that in a recent post I ranted about the overuse of the word ‘experience’ by advertising copywriters. I want to return to the topic with some real-life examples of one particularly ubiquitous type of ‘experience’: the ‘dining experience’. Read the rest of this entry »

I thought it was just me. Every time I heard the word ‘regarding’ I cringed inside. It just sounded so affected. What was so wrong with the simple, Anglo-Saxon ‘about’?

It also made me think of snooty secretaries screening their bosses with the kind of fierce loyalty one usually associates with Read the rest of this entry »

It’s a bit of a grumpy-old-man truism that Anglo-Saxon economies are doomed because we don’t actually make anything any more. While those hard working Chinese have been assembling ipods to slake the rest of the world’s thirst for stuff, we westerners have Read the rest of this entry »