Get with the program(me)

Nick Parkhouse | February 2, 2012 - 4:14 pm

One of my current projects is to rewrite the website of one of the region’s biggest motor companies. This morning, I was looking at their ‘About Us’ pages when I happened upon some information about their Customer Care Program.

It got me thinking. Is it a Customer Care Program in the UK? Or a Customer Care Programme?

Program or Programme?

Apparently, the word ‘program’ was predominantly used in the UK until the 19th century, when the spelling ‘programme’ became more common — mainly as a result of influence from French, which has the same word ‘programme’.

So, if you’re using the word in British English, they you should almost always use ‘programme’.

The one exception is when you are referring to the word in the context of computing. A computer program should always be the shorter version of the word.

So, in British English:

You can take advantage of our Customer Care Programme
I can’t get this program to run on my PC
My favourite television programme is Doctor Who

However, if you’re writing in American English you should always use the word ‘program’, whatever the context. The same is generally true of Australian English, where ‘program’ is also mainly used (although ‘programme’ is still in common usage).

So, if you want someone to ‘get with the program’, you probably want to be using the American version. Or don’t use that horrible phrase at all, of course.

As a verb

Using the word as a verb follows much the same rules.

If you want to tell your computer to do something, you will program it. For example, ‘it is easy to program this PC’.

However, if you’re using British English and want to programme anything else, use the longer version. For example ‘the next stage of the plan is programmed for next year’.

So, my clients now have a Customer Care Programme. Lovely.

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Inquiry or Enquiry?

Nick Parkhouse | January 23, 2012 - 11:43 am

I mentioned a week or so ago that one of my aims for 2012 was to avoid blithely using terms and words that I assumed were right and actually undertake a bit of research to check I was using them correctly.

Last time I looked at the correct usages of ‘while’ and ‘whilst’ and this time I thought I’d double check I was using ‘inquiry’ and ‘enquiry’ in the right places. Are they interchangeable? Or do they mean different things?

Inquiry or enquiry?

As with many of these things, the simple answer is ‘either’. For example, the Chambers 21st Century Dictionary presents the two spellings as interchangeable variants in the general sense.

However, there is a subtle difference between the two terms.

In the UK, ‘enquiry’ is generally a term that is used to refer to ‘the act of questioning’, such as:

He enquired about her health
I made an enquiry about the price of a ticket

‘Inquiry’, however, is more commonly used when referring to a formal investigation, such as:

There will be a public inquiry into the riots
The police are making inquiries about the incident

A simple way to remember which to use is to consider that an ‘inquest’ (an official investigation) is related to ‘inquiry’.

Just to confuse you (of course): if you are writing in American or Australian English, inquiry is normally the correct word, irrespective of the circumstances.

Have you any examples of when ‘inquiry’ or ‘enquiry’ might be correct, or suggestions for seemingly interchangeable terms that I can consider in this feature? Let me know in the comments below.

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While-ing away the hours

Nick Parkhouse | January 9, 2012 - 10:05 am

Hello, and Happy New Year to you.

I rarely make specific New Year’s Resolutions. To be honest, I find the idea a bit silly, and I rarely keep to them anyway. What I do sometimes, however, is use the New Year to make a concerted effort to change small things. Perhaps I’ll cook at home a bit more. Perhaps I’ll drink a bit less. And, this year, I plan to try and spend a bit of time learning more about my trade.

So, I’m planning to become a better writer by gobbling up the advice of many other talented people and by improving my general standard of English. I reckon it’s already pretty good, but learning some new words and making better use of the words I do know are two of my aims for 2012.

And, along the way, I hope to share some of what I learn (which may, of course, be second nature to you anyway…!)

While v whilst

It dawned on me over Christmas that I wasn’t sure what the difference is between ‘while’ and ‘whilst’. I always thought that ‘while’ related specifically to two things happening at the same time (‘he watched TV while she knitted a scarf’) whereas ‘whilst’ was a term with a meaning more like ‘whereas’.

Anyway, after a bit of research it turns out that the terms are generally interchangeable – at least when you are using British English. American English doesn’t tend to include ‘whilst’ and so if you’re writing for a US audience, the advice is to only ever use ‘while’.

If you’re writing for a British audience, using ‘while’ will also generally mean that you won’t be wrong.

With the word gradually dying, though, I am keen to keep it healthy! There are three pieces of advice I have found which are useful:

i) ‘while’ can be a noun (‘in a while’) whereas ‘whilst’ cannot

ii) ‘while’ can mean either ‘during the time when’ or ‘whereas’ while ‘whilst’ has only the first of these meanings

iii) ‘while is often used for activities happening in parallel (‘While I was preparing lunch, my wife was gardening’) whereas, in contrast, ‘whilst’ is used where there is more of a contradiction (‘Whilst it may be necessary or desirable to protect populations from cruel and corrupt governments, it is not necessarily our business to undertake regime change.’)

So, it seems that there isn’t much of an issue using either word when writing for a British audience. And, taking point iii) into account, it appears I was pretty much right after all….

Anyone else have experiences or advice on the best way to use ‘while’ and ‘whilst’?

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The Top 5 Divorce Songs

Nick Parkhouse | November 2, 2011 - 12:34 pm

There are thousands of break-up songs in the pop music canon. And, we’ve all listened to them in the past when we needed to get over unrequited or lost love. And, as Elton John sang in Sad Songs, ‘from the lips of some old singer we can share the troubles we already know.’

However, divorce songs take the break-up to a whole new level. They can be cutting, bitter, regretful and moving as they often share the singer or songwriter’s very personal experience.

There are lots of brilliant divorce songs, but here’s my top five.

Abba – The Winner Takes It All

When writing a piece about the world’s greatest songs about or inspired by divorce, it would be hard not to include the single that was voted Britain’s Favourite Break-Up Song in a 2006 TV poll.

Apparently written about the deteriorating relationship between Bjorn Ulvaeus and Agnetha Faltskog, The Winner Takes It All topped the UK charts in 1980 and has repeatedly been voted the nation’s favourite Abba song in polls.

Whether it’s about the writer’s own separation (Ulvaeus says not, the basis of the song being “the experience of a divorce, but it’s fiction. There wasn’t a winner or a loser in our case. A lot of people think it’s straight out of reality, but it’s not”) or it’s simply a break-up song, The Winner Takes It All is arguably the most famous and best-loved divorce song of them all.

Alanis Morrisette – Underneath

Bearing in mind that most of her songs are written about personal experiences, it stood to reason that a difficult and traumatic break-up was always going to lead to Alanis Morrissette penning a less than complimentary song about her own situation.

When the Canadian singer-songwriter split with Hollywood actor Ryan Reynolds, her following album, 2008’s Flavors of Entanglement, was written about the grief and pain she suffered after the break-up. It’s an album that must have made tough listening for Reynolds and lead single Underneath was particularly honest. Underneath opens ‘look at us break our bones in this kitchen/look at us rallying all our defences’ and whilst it’s technically not a divorce record – the pair were only engaged – it’s as bitter and honest a break-up record as exists in modern pop.

Kelly Clarkson – Because Of You

After shooting to superstardom by winning American Idol in 2002, Kelly Clarkson’s record label were reluctant to include the song Because Of You on either her debut album Thankful or the follow-up Breakaway.

Apparently written when Clarkson was sixteen years old to cope with the emotional trauma of her parent’s divorce, Because Of You was polished by producers Ben Moody and David Hodges and released as a single in 2005, reaching the top ten across the world.

From the opening line (‘I will not make the same mistakes that you did/will not let myself cause my heart so much misery’) it’s clear that this is a song written from deep personal experience of the effect that a divorce can have on a teenager. It’s a superb and moving pop record.

Neil Diamond and Barbra Streisand – You Don’t Bring Me Flowers

Lots of songs about break-ups and divorces concentrate on giant, ethereal themes such as the end of love or the pain of the parting of the ways. Others take a bitter look at who is to blame or are written from the position of a child caught up in the split.

What I love about You Don’t Bring Me Flowers, however, is that it does the exact opposite. By concentrating on the tiny minutae of relationships it is somehow way more powerful than songs which talk in general terms.

I’d wager that ‘You hardly talk to me anymore/when you come through the door/at the end of the day’ is the most cutting, acerbic and honest lyric ever written in a break-up song. This is not a vague overview of the deterioration in a marriage; this is the day to day factors which see two people drift apart.

For these reasons, I think You Don’t Bring Me Flowers is the greatest break-up song of them all. Heart wrenching.

Jason Mraz – Love For A Child

The second divorce song written from a child’s perspective, Love For A Child features on Mraz’s bestselling 2008 album We Sing. We Dance. We Steal Things. Loosely based on his parent’s own divorce when he was five years old, Love For A Child is a heartbreaking look at a parental split through the eyes of a small boy.

Mraz told the San Diego Union Tribune: “(One) line is from when my parents were busy not talking to each other. I could hide right down the middle (between them). I could tell my dad, ‘I’m going to my mom’s,’ and tell her, ‘I’m going to my dad’s,’ and then disappear for the weekend and learn (things) the hard way.”

Lyrics such as ‘Was it mom who put my dad out on his ass or the other way around/well I’m far too old to care about that now’ and ‘it’s kinda nice to work the floor since the divorce/I’ve been enjoying both my Christmases and my birthday cakes/and taking drugs and making love at far too young an age/and they never checked to see my grades’ tell the tale of someone caught between two separated parents.

Mind you, there is affection in the song too. Mraz added: “At same time, I had a great upbringing from two families. And the freedom I had, I’m grateful for. You can’t live the rest of your life carrying a pain because your parents couldn’t get along. I choose to spend my life crafting a joy.”

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There’s my top 5 divorce songs. Any that you’d agree with? Any you’d add to the list? Let me know by commenting below.

Posted in writing | Tagged Music writing, writing | 1 Comment

Why Talking At Gigs Makes The Rest Of Us Want To Throttle You

Nick Parkhouse | October 7, 2011 - 11:31 am

What is it with today’s gig-going audience?

I’ve been to hundreds of gigs in my time, and for the last 18 months or so I’ve been reviewing lots of music and theatre events for the Nottingham Post. Over that time, there seems to have been a marked increase in some terrible audience habits to the point where going to a gig – particularly in some venues – is completely losing its allure.

Incessant talking

Last night, my wife and I went to see Noah and the Whale at Nottingham’s Rock City. I was reviewing the gig for the newspaper, and we arrived about 15 minutes before the band took to the stage. Now, I’m a big fan of the band and was quite looking forward to seeing them live for the first time.

About fifteen minutes into their set, a group of four women – aged in their late 20s, I would say – started to fight their way past us to get a better view. If this elbow-led barging wasn’t annoying enough – the start time was displayed prominently and available if you’d called the venue in advance – but it was what they did next that really rankled.

The four of them began to talk to one another. And I don’t mean the odd word or comment. The four of them yakked loudly and incessantly throughout most of the next hour. At one point, my wife told them to shut up as it was pretty much all you could hear. They pulled a rude face at her and carried on regardless.

And then, when the band did one of their more laid back songs – Blue Skies I think it was – it was apparent that chatting was a more serious problem. While Charlie Fink was singing one of the band’s prettier songs it was hard to hear a word he was saying for the cacophony of noise being generated by the audience.

The noise was genuinely astounding. And, it seems it’s not just me that has experienced increased atrocious behaviour at gigs. A friend at the same gig noted: “It is an increasing pain in the arse at gigs where gossip is more important than the band who become background music! Stay at home and play your f***ing CDs!”

And when I mentioned this issue on Twitter, there was plenty of support:

@miketd: “People are talking REALLY LOUDLY at a Noah and the Whale gig? Sounds all too familiar”

@Dan_Bonnington: “I feel your gig talking pain, went to see Mumford And Sons at R.City last year, was completely ruined by constant talking”

@dflite: “Oh christ yes, it’s absolutely inexcusable. People even *turn their backs* on the stage. YOU’VE PAID TO BE HERE! WTF??”

@hopkerhockey: “God yes. Why do people pay £20 to go out for a shouty natter? Birmingham gigs particularly bad for this I think”

What is the point of paying £20 for a ticket only to chat throughout the whole thing? Are they the same people who talk at the cinema? Are they just there as it’s a night out and they’re not bothered about listening to the band?

I like the sound of this place mentioned by @benlocker: “I used to love the Vortex in Stoke Newington “London’s ‘no-talking’ jazz club”…”

So, if you’re one of these gig-going idiots: watch the band and shut up. If you’re not prepared to, don’t go at all. Thanks.

Posted in writing | Tagged Music writing | 3 Comments

Meet The Staves

Nick Parkhouse | September 8, 2011 - 11:59 am

It’s been almost a year since the Staves were last in Nottingham. Sisters Emily, Jessica and Camilla wowed a small audience at the Bodega Social last October whilst opening for Keane side-project Mt Desolation and despite rave reviews, little has been heard of the trio since.

However, all that could be about to change. Sitting at the back of the Glee club, it turns out that the band have been busy this year, with this short tour supporting American singer songwriter Willy Mason just part of a busy autumn.

The trio are clearly excited about what the near future might bring and have clearly been hard at work. “Doing the album has taken up most of our time this year. We’ve also done some gigs, some recording and some more writing, which has been cool.

“We’ve basically finished our album but we don’t know when it’s going to come out yet – hopefully around spring. We also have an EP later in the year – probably the end of October.”

For those unfamiliar with the Staves, think the Fleet Foxes but with female vocals. Soaring harmonies, gentle acoustic guitar and some high quality songwriting mean that mainstream success is surely only a matter of time. Especially, I wondered, with a general resurgence in interest in folk-pop acts?

“I think there’s more interest in the singer/songwriter genre – there was Damien Rice back when that huge record came out – and then there’s people today like Willy Mason, Laura Marling – classic songwriters of today. It’s the simplicity of someone with a guitar – there’s no frills, just them and the music, their voice and their guitar.

“You can connect to that sort of music much better than with the glitz and glamour of stuff like the X-Factor and it’s definitely reassuring that people like to come out and listen to this kind of music.”

While their existing recordings give a taste of what to expect from the band – the beautiful Mexico and Facing West appear in their set – only by hearing the girls live can you truly appreciate the genuinely spellbinding nature of their harmonies. And, the reaction to their live performances seems to be almost universally positive.

“You don’t really get many harmony groups without a big band behind them, so perhaps it’s something that people haven’t seen much of.

“It’s nice when people come up to you afterwards and say that they enjoyed the show, but obviously you’re not going to get that many people coming up to you telling you that they didn’t enjoy it! We don’t have people walking out of our gigs or throwing things at us….

“You can kind of gauge it by the reaction of the audience – when people are quiet and listen, especially when you’re a support band that people aren’t there to see – they don’t owe us anything.”

It’s been a long road for the Staves to even get this far – indeed the trio freely admit that it’s only relatively recently that they made the decision to take the music business seriously.

“We’ve always sung together around the house, in the car. One summer, a friend cajoled us into doing an open mic night at our local pub, so we did some covers and really enjoyed it. We then did a gig of covers and enjoyed that – it has been a very slow process as one of us was always at uni and so it would be a ‘one gig a year’ thing.

“A couple of years ago we thought we should actually try to do this properly. We didn’t take it very seriously at first but then started writing some songs and it went from there. This is our life now – it’s definitely what we want to do. It would be amazing to be able to make a living from this and to do it as long as we wanted to make music together. That’s the aim.”

I wondered that considering recent spats between members of sibling bands – think the Gallaghers and the Followills – whether the Staves also had their family moments.

“Being sisters is a blessing and a curse! We fight all the time, but as we’re sisters you can fight and it’s all OK. There’s no grudges held – it’s very honest. We don’t fight in the sense that we don’t get on, we just spend a lot of time together. We end up squabbling in the car, just like when we were kids – about which CD we want to listen to…

“We can’t imagine doing this with anyone else, though – it’s definitely our thing.”

If you think the Pierces had the ‘sibling acoustic singer songwriter’ market sewn up, you should think again. After the haunting Winter Trees and the rousing new song What Good Am I? rounded off another superb show, a respectful and generous audience seemed to register what many already know; that the Staves are a band going places.

“As for conquering the world, we don’t know. We just want to make music that people feel a connection to, that they enjoy listening to and that we like.”

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The Staves’ new EP is scheduled for release in late October.

Listen to Facing West, Mexico and The Fire at: http://www.myspace.com/thestavesmusic
For more information go to The Staves’ website or the Facebook page

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Pay less: get more – the vagaries of Boots’ pricing

Nick Parkhouse | August 31, 2011 - 12:08 pm

I’ve been into Boots this week to get some photographs developed. Choosing their 24 hour service, I selected the photos I wanted by using their little touchscreen machine.

Now, there were quite a lot of pictures that I needed and once I was finished, I noted that I’d chosen 119 photos at a total cost of £17.85 (a 6” X 4” photo cost 15p).

It was a bit more than I wanted to pay, so I glanced at the price list to see if there was a cheaper option. It was then I noticed their ‘super saver’ offer. This offer boasted a reduced charge of 5p per print if I ordered more 200 photos or more.

I looked at the price list and did a bit of mental arithmetic in my head. It doesn’t take Carol Vorderman to work out that 200 photos at 5p each costs, er, £10. I puzzled this for a moment, and then added a further 81 prints to my order (mostly duplicates of existing photos that I’d chosen which I didn’t really want).

Sure enough, when I’d selected 200 photos, my total bill came to £10. So, I completed my order, took my receipt and will be heading to pick them up later this week.

I’m still utterly perplexed by this pricing policy.

I’d have been happy to pay 5p a photo for my 119 prints. Hell, I’d have been happy to pay £10 for the 119 prints that I wanted. But no – to get this price I had to order 81 additional photographs which, frankly, I may as well lob in the bin as soon as I pick them up.

I do understand reducing the ‘per unit’ cost to encourage people to spend more money. However, shouldn’t the point of such pricing be to increase my total spend, not decrease it? For example, if I’d been offered the 200 prints for, say, £20, I may well have paid the additional £2.15 to benefit from a better deal. But, to save £7.85 by ordering 81 additional photos seems utterly bizarre.

66 photos at their price of 15p costs £9.90. Between 67 and 199 photos costs you somewhere between £10.05 and £29.85. Then, the cost of 200 photos reduces to £10. Indeed, 596 photos would actually cost less than 199 photos using this pricing policy.

Anyone explain this to me? Clearly there aren’t huge economies of scale to be had by ordering a larger number of prints. How can I order nearly 70% more product and reduce my total spend by 44%?

Bonkers.

Posted in Blog | Tagged Marketing, Pricing | Leave a comment

The Quandary Of Examples

Nick Parkhouse | August 25, 2011 - 12:37 pm

Providing examples of your work is nothing new in business.

Drive through any housing estate and you’re likely to see signs adjacent to beautifully paved driveways, well appointed extensions and beautifully coiffured lawns by companies proud to show off their work. And, I suppose that if you were planning to have your loft converted then you might have a peek at your chosen builder’s most recent job to check that rainwater isn’t streaming down the wall of the en-suite.

And, not unreasonably, when I speak to new clients many of them ask me to point them in the direction of websites I have written or ask me to e-mail them examples of my work. You’ve probably had to do the same thing at some point.

What I am increasingly wary of, however, are clients who, after a meeting or conversation, then provide me with a couple of topics and ask me to write something specifically for them. The argument is always that they want to be sure I can write the copy they need before they employ my services.

Now, this happened to me a week or two ago and I spent a good part of one morning coming up with some dedicated copy for a client. This followed a telephone conversation, a meeting and the provision of some links to websites and pieces I had written in the past.

In the misguided assumption that I was imminently to be hired, I duly provided some copy. Then, two days later, I received a message thanking me but telling me that they ‘were interviewing other people’ and that they would be in touch.

This whole episode has put me off writing any specific examples for clients again. Should I provide my time for free? I’m not sure. If I wanted my car MOT’d, I wouldn’t ask the garage to change the oil filter for me first just so I could double check they did a decent job, would I?

So, what do you do in this situation? Are you happy to provide sample copy? Or, do you refer clients to work you have previously concluded and ask clients to make their decision based on these examples? I’d love to know your thoughts in the comments below.

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10 Writing Errors That Make You Want To Poke Your Own Eyes Out

Nick Parkhouse | August 3, 2011 - 9:00 am

You don’t have to be a copywriter or author to be annoyed by hideous grammatical and spelling mistakes. If you’re like me, you can’t help yourself but cringe at horrible written blunders, even when you’re out in town on a Sunday afternoon.

Now, I don’t profess to be completely right all of the time. I use too many commas and I daresay I have used ‘inquire’ and ‘enquire’ wrongly more than once. However, these ten errors are those which I – and many of you – have identified as the ones which make you want to poke your own eyes out.

Whose? Yours or theirs?

A friend of mine posted this photograph to Twitter last week with the caption ‘leaving cake fail!’

Now, I suppose this related to the rather sarcastic tone of the message, however for me (and no doubt many of you reading this) the ‘fail’ could only relate to one thing.

It’s not that there’s a missing question mark at the end of ‘Justin who….’ but rather the ‘sorry your leaving’ at the top.

Man alive. Your, you’re. Their, there, they’re. Who’s, whose? All regular errors and when they occur, it’s like hearing someone scrape their fingernails down a blackboard.

(thanks also to @PenStar_words for this suggestion)

Making nouns out of words that aren’t nouns

Over recent years, the English language appears to be evolving to invent nouns that aren’t actually nouns.

I first encountered this phenomenon on an East Midlands Trains service to London. Having bought a first class ticket (I know. How bourgeois) the train person came wandering up the aisle with a basket of biscuits and assorted other goodies. On arriving at my table, she asked me ‘if I’d like any complimentaries?’

What’s a ‘complimentary’? Yes, I’ll have some complimentary biscuits, but I won’t have a complimentary, ta, as that word clearly doesn’t exist.

I also noticed the other week that people have started sending out ‘invites’ to events. Again, I was aware I could invite someone to a party, but not that I could send them an invite. Silly me. I have been sending invitations all this time.

Do you have any more examples of nouns that aren’t nouns?

Apostrophised plurals

If you have more than one of something, it a) doesn’t indicate a missing letter or b) suggest someone owns it.

In fact, if you’re pluralising something, you don’t need an apostrophe at all. If in doubt, stick an ‘s’ on the end. Or, alternatively, why not use a dictionary to look it up?

(thanks to @TheStevenThomas for this one)

Shoulda, woulda, coulda

Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda warbled Beverley Knight as she reached the top ten with this hit back in 2002. At least Bev had the idea to shorten the three phrases into some sort of daft urban slang, rather than calling the song Should Of, Would Of, Could Of which, I imagine, is what most people would call it today.

It’s ‘should have’ and ‘could have’, people. Or, if you really want, ‘should’ve’ and ‘could’ve’.

(thanks to @TheWordWell)

I AM QUITE SERIOUS

Again, this is a relatively new phenomenon. As @PenStar_Words says: “What really makes me cringe is when someone’s writing something angry/defensive/righteously indignant and to get the point across, they make it full of spelling, punctuation and grammar errors and in all capitals.”

It can’t be just me that finds that when someone is talking to you online with their CAPS LOCK on it MAKES IT SOUND AS IF THEY ARE YELLING DOWN A MEGAPHONE AT YOU? Did Caitlin Moran start this with her ‘SCREAM!’ style of Twittering? Or did someone accidentally write in capitals one day and realised it so upset their readers that capital letters are the new SHOUTING AT THE TOP OF YOUR VOICE?

Either way, yuk. STOP. NOW.

Every now and than

It’s important that you use the right word, as the meanings of some are different than others. (You know the noise you make when you rub polystyrene pieces against one another? That.)

It’s different from, not different than.

Similarly, I’ve seen people use ‘then’ instead of ‘than’. “We had more problems then they did.” Did you? Did you really?

Isn’t it funny! Yes! Everything’s funny!

I have lost count of the websites I have helped rewrite where one of the first steps I have taken is to ask the company to remove all the exclamation marks from their copy.

Come and buy our new products! You’ll get a special discount! 10%!

Your website isn’t the script for an episode of Are You Being Served? It’s supposed to be a serious marketing tool promoting your products and services. If you have something good to say, be bold and say it. Don’t hide behind an exclamation mark.

I dreamt a dream

As a wise man once said, “steer clear of incorrect verb forms that have snuck into the language.”

Whether they are entirely incorrect is open to debate (lots are more commonly used in American English) but I don’t much care for them. I still think Susan Boyle should have dreamt a dream, not dreamed one. Have I spelled her name right, or spelt it right?

Sometimes, they get even more bizarre. I have seen the past participle of ‘bring’ as ‘bought’ and the past participle of ‘light’ as ‘lighted’.

Mind you, I have had arguments with people about the past participle of ‘earn’. People often assume that it follows the same pattern as ‘learn/learnt’, although I have to say I don’t consider ‘earnt’ a word (and neither does my spellchecker).

Checking it, it’s apparently ‘non-standard’ rather than incorrect. Still, I don’t like it.

Commerical mistakes

If you Google the word ‘commerical’ you get about 69,700,000 results. Need I say more?

(thanks to @yourmindandwe for that one)

‘Fresh’ and ‘new’

Billy Connolly once performed a routine where he poked fun at people that make quotation marks with their fingers when speaking. We’ve all done it; normally, in my experience, for the word we use following the adjective ‘so-called’.

Well, this trend seems to have crossed over into written language. It’s not uncommon now to see people describing their products and services as ‘brilliant’ and ‘cheap’. You don’t have to put these adjectives in quotation marks – we do know what they mean.

Still. Perhaps I’m just being ‘picky’.

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So, come on then. What are your pet writing/grammar hates? Are there any from the above list particularly bug you, or are there other mistakes that make you die inside….? Please let me know in the comments below (and please do correct the ironic mistakes I am bound to have made in a post about written errors…)

Posted in Blog | Tagged Spelling, writing | 1 Comment

Get with the program(me)

Inquiry or Enquiry?

While-ing away the hours

The Top 5 Divorce Songs

Why Talking At Gigs Makes The Rest Of Us Want To Throttle You

Meet The Staves

Pay less: get more – the vagaries of Boots’ pricing

The Quandary Of Examples

10 Writing Errors That Make You Want To Poke Your Own Eyes Out

Stand-Up Comedy

A Happy Client

Recent Projects

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